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Amber Burnette
Professor Connie Douglas
UWRT 1101
4 December 2014
Do Learning Communities Enhance a Students First Year of College?

The mission of learning communities at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is

to increase students academic success, learning, and engagement by creating communities of
students and faculty/staff through common courses, curricular innovations and co-curricular
activities based on a major, theme, or interest. (UNCC.edu) The goal is to enhance
undergraduates' first year experience by providing all interested students dynamic, focused
communities which promote growth and learning through curricular and co-curricular activities.
(UNCC.edu) Acting as a participant observer, learning communities will be studied and observed
to evaluate the enhancement and benefits from students first year of college, who join and
participate in learning communities.
To start this ethnographic research, observations will be recorded and analyzed to further
determine how enhancing learning communities can or cannot be. The Health Connection
learning community is the subject being observed. The learning community is for students who
are interested in careers and majors in healthcare. They participated in an activity called Venture,
which provides a wide variety of learning and growth opportunities through academic
instruction, outdoor adventure tips, challenge courses, team building, and student training.
(UNCC.edu) Students participated in group challenges that involved having to think and
strategize as a team. The groups struggled at points to cooperate as a team, but eventually put
aside individual conflicts and worked together to complete the activity at hand. Overall, Venture

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was a great activity for the learning community to participate in to get the students engaged with
working positively with others.
Observations of the learning community included being inside and outside of the
classroom. The students have classes together every Tuesday and Thursday, the classes consist
of a sociology class which involves other students that are not in the learning community and a
freshman seminar class that only involves learning community students. To grasp the full effect
of the learning community, observations were only recorded from the class that only involved
the learning community students. The class instruction is a curriculum that includes teaching the
students about beneficial campus resources and information that they can use throughout their
college career.
While observing the class, it was found that the professors were engaging with students
on a personal level which is often scarce in college classrooms. During their lesson, students
were more involved with asking questions and speaking up with comments and concerns. The
professors knew the students by name which is rare in most college classrooms. Almost all of the
students were involved in discussion. Not only were the professors more engaged with the
students, but the students were more comfortable and interactive with their classmates. The
learning community almost resembles the ideal of a family.
Along with observations, there was a survey conducted including ten freshman students,
five being involved in learning communities and five not involved in learning communities. The
students involved in learning communities gave a more positive feedback about learning
communities rather than those students not involved in them. Out of the five students not
involved in learning communities, four of them said they would join a learning community if

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they had a chance to do freshman year over. There were a variety of answers, but as a conclusion
of the survey, learning communities are a positive enhancement for first year students.
During secondary research, there were articles found that support the idea that learning
communities enhance college students first year. The first article focuses on the benefits of first
year learning communities, even though the topic is core sciences, this article can still serve in
aid to this ethnographic research. Learning communities (LCs) offer high-impact practices of
active learning and practical application, but such practices demand devoted class time and room
for reflection. (Richardson, Tooker, Eshleman 4) The second article also focuses on the benefits
of learning communities, not specifically on first year benefits. The article also gives results of
surveys concerning aspects of learning communities. As well, the topic of this article is about
medical education, but it can still be beneficial to ethnographic research. The response rate was
83.4% (126/151). Sixty-six schools (52.4%) had LCs. Of the 60 remaining schools without LCs,
twenty-nine (48.3%) indicated that they were considering creating them. LC characteristics
varied widely. (Smith, Shochet, Keely, Fleming, Moynahan 928-933)
To conclude, it is proven through ethnographic research that learning communities can be
beneficial and enhancing to a college students first year. Not only do students agree that
learning communities can be a great benefit to first year students, but researchers also agree.
There are many different learning communities available for students to best fit their interest,
major, and career. There are countless positive outcomes of participating in learning
communities that include connecting with other students, faculty, staff, and the university in a
meaningful way, experiencing a successful transition and acclimation to the university,
experiencing higher academic achievement, showing a greater rate of persistence, more readily

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achieving the articulated learning outcomes specified by departments or programs,

demonstrating increased awareness of departmental, college, and university resources,
demonstrating the ability to be more academically self-sufficient, and experiencing a higher level
of satisfaction with the university experience. (UNCC.edu)
Works Cited
Richardson, N., Tooker, P.A., Eschleman, A. (2014). Core Sciences in First- Year
Learning Communities. Learning Communities Research and Practice, 2(1), Article 4.
Smith, Sunny MD; Shocet, Robert MD; Keely, Meg MD; Fleming, Amy MD; Moynahan, Kevin
MD. (2014). The Growth of Learning Communities in Undergraduate Medical
Education. The Association of American Medical Colleges. Academic Medicine: June 2014
Volume 89 Issue 6 p 928-933
"Venture." Get Involved With. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
"Welcome to Learning Communities." Welcome to Learning Communities. N.p., n.d. Web. 10
Nov. 2014.