by:
  Kris Bulcroft,
  Carmen Werder, and
  Glenn Gilliam

  A New Course on Learning

Meeting with TLA faculty and administrators bi-weekly throughout the term, students worked in action groups focused on strengthening undergraduate learning. The course had three learning objectives:

• To identify and articulate features of an optimal learning situation
• To identify and articulate ways of improving learning situations
• To demonstrate an understanding and an appreciation of how to organize and adjust to multiple learning situations

Open to students from across the disciplines, first- through senior year, the class was offered all three quarters of the 2000-2001 academic year with a different learning-related topic each term: "Organizing for Learning" in the fall, "Inquiry" in the winter, and "Self-Assessment" in the spring.

By first considering their own learning in response to web board discussion prompts as well as in written reflections, students studied the factors that contribute to effective learning, factors that inhibit learning, and strategies for dealing with learning situations that are less than optimal. This reflective writing also led to the creation of learning portfolios, and the majority of course participants also conducted special projects on learning-related topics such as general education reform.

Since the course was offered with various topics, students were able to enroll in the class for more than one quarter. Eleven of the total (70) students enrolled for multiple quarters, 6 students for all three terms. As a result of their inquiry, several of the University 397 students also co-presented with TLA faculty at two prominent educational conferences: the Washington Center for the Improvement of Higher Education (February 2001) and the Carnegie Colloquium of the American Association of Higher Education Conference (March 2001).

After completing a full year of this new course, co-facilitators were delighted with student engagement, so the course has been offered a second year and has enrolled approximately 80 more students from across levels and departments. Once again, upper class students and faculty work as a facilitation team, including designing course curriculum together. With a new title to reflect its scholarship of learning base — "Learning Reconsidered" — the course has addressed topics such as ways of knowing, learning styles, metaphors for teaching and learning, and accommodating institutional challenges. During fall quarter, students in the course also participated in dialogue groups sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Academy with faculty, administrators, and student affairs staff as part of a general education reform initiative. In these dialogue groups, students helped compose white papers that were forwarded to the General Education Task Force and have served to inform proposed changes. Uniformly, students express their appreciation for the learning course, and many have voiced their recommendation that such a reflective seminar be part of a general education requirement for all students.

I don't think students are given enough opportunities [like this course] to look at themselves and how their learning connects with the whole university.

I really enjoyed the faculty-student interaction. It helps a lot in establishing trust within our tiny "space" within the university.

Student responses have given testimony to the importance of developing this sense of "trust" and to expanding the space that learners believe they have in their own learning culture. They have indicated that this course, as part of Western's Teaching and Learning Academy, has helped further the commitment made to honoring the student voice. And they have served to echo what Lee Shulman (2000) has termed a spirit of "fidelity" both to student learning and to the institutional community.

• Introduction
• Campus Conversation at Western Washington University (Parts I & II)
• Where are the Students?
• Leadership Inside Out
• The AAHE Summer Academy
• A Web of Connections
• The Teaching and Learning Academy
• A New Course on Learning
• Diffuse Leadership
• A Public Rally for Learning
• Lessons Learned from the Students
• References
• print version