Some faculty are hesitant to do an LC because of the lack of
institutional support (namely, fair payment). When it comes to linking
two courses over an entire semester, I’m very much a fan of Front Range’s
system of paying each faculty for one extra course the first semester of
running a LC; then 2 credits on the second run; then 1 credit each additional
run. (If I have that correctly?)
Other faculty are hesitant because they assume there’s a
tremendous amount of work involved (and there is, especially when
linking two entire courses). What they don’t realize is the spectrum of
ways to set up learning-in-common opportunities.
Therefore, aside from setting up fair compensation, our
committee could share LC stories with faculty, what we’ve done, etc. For
example, when I asked a faculty member in Communication, Marlene Adzema, to
partner in a small way with my Creative Writing class (not an entire semester
of linking courses, but a one-week exchange), she realized she’d always thought
of it as an all-or-nothing proposition, something that would take an entire
additional course worth of effort.
As far as getting motivated to do them, especially in a more
“bite-sized” exchange sort of way, Marlene was reminded of the Green Apps that
Rick Reeves was in charge of, and how faculty sent in a proposal, implemented
it with some compensation for doing so, and then posted reports on what we did
and what we got out of it. I wonder if we could locate funding for
“Learning-Community Apps.”
