Learning Communities

What are Learning Communities?

In a variety of institutional settings and in a number of forms, learning communities have been shown to increase student retention and academic achievement, increase student involvement and motivation, improve students' time to degree completion, and enhance student intellectual development. Students involved in learning communities become more intellectually mature and responsible for their own learning and develop the capacity to care about the learning of their peers (Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education). Taken from: http://www.evergreen.edu/ on 11/6/07.

Learning Communities at UNH

Living/Learning Communities at the University of New Haven provide first-year students in specific majors with outstanding, out-of-class co-curricular and residential experiences. The result is an academic-based peer group that affords participants with additional faculty interaction, collaboration with students within the major course of study, and a variety of activities that complement in-class assignments and pertinent topics.

Students within the community are placed on a common floor with staff that has been specially selected to work with the residential learning community. Additionally, faculty work together with the residence hall staff to use the facility as a setting for co-curricular and social programming, based on the content of the community's major. Finally, participants in the residential learning communities participate in orientation activities that facilitate the transition to the college experience while allowing students to interact with faculty outside of the academic classroom.

Student Experiences with the Living Learning Community

I like the LLC because a large portion of the forensic science majors are grouped together on one floor. Since we're all together, it's easy to form study groups, considering many of us are in the same classes. I also enjoy the monthly activities put on by the faculty as well as the fact that we get to form a connection with professors that transcends both the teacher/student and adviser/student relationships.

- Rob Harvey

The LLC is an amazing tool that I have enjoyed using. I feel that everyone in the LLC has made a bond, kind of like a family. Each of us is willing to help one another if we can. We help each other study a lot because we all understand the course load. 

- Kyle Bulger

Freshman Living Learning Communities for 2012 - 2013