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WesternU / Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning / Programming and Events / Faculty Learning Communities

Faculty Learning Communities

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What is a Faculty Learning Community (FLC)?

A faculty learning community (FLC) is a peer-led group of faculty members with the goal to build community, engage in scholarly practice, and further develop the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).

If you’re interested in beginning a new FLC, contact CETL! We’re happy to help!
Contact CETL
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What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals. They often share best practices and create new knowledge to advance their professional practice.

If you’d like to start a CoP, contact CETL with your idea!
Contact CETL

Current PLCs

AI Literacy Professional Learning Community

Artificial Intelligence is already influencing how we teach, learn, work, and navigate through everyday life, whether we intend it to or not. To support our campus in navigating this shift thoughtfully and confidently, we are excited to announce the launch of CETL’s first-ever AI Literacy Learning Community.

This cohort-based Professional Learning Community (PLC) is designed for faculty and staff who want to move beyond surface-level awareness of AI and develop the knowledge and skills to use it responsibly, effectively, and fluently in their roles.

PAST FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES

PLC: Artificial Intelligence

The AI Professional Learning Community (PLC) launched in the Spring of 2023. Participants across the campus–including faculty, staff, and administrators–joined this PLC. This AI PLC disseminated a campus wide AI survey in Fall 2023, shared their will research results in a CETL session entitled “Spring into the future: Unveiling WesternU’s generative AI insights” in April 2024. Their research poster was accepted as an ePoster session at AMEE 2024 and the group is finishing up their manuscript for publication.

FLC: Grit and the Growth Mindset
Angela Duckworth defines grit as the power of passion and perseverance for long term goals, be they academic, professional, or personal (Duckworth, 2016). Grit entails “working strenuously toward challenges and maintaining effort and interest over years despite failures and adversity and plateaus in progress“ (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007, p. 1087). Grit is a character trait many believe should be cultivated in students to enhance their academic perseverance and success.

It is not intelligence that makes people excel in a given area but rather effort and practice. The new neural networks that form as a result of hard work and effort are what make us smarter, not our innate abilities. Growth mindset learners believe that new abilities can be developed through practice. Fixed mindset learners believe that intelligence is fixed and avoid challenges for fear of failure (Dweck, 2016). Research suggests that by fostering a growth mindset in our students, we can achieve better learning outcomes.

The desire to bolster grit and the growth mindset has been identified across the Pomona and Lebanon campuses. In response to this, we are launching a Grit and the Growth Mindset FLC for the 2019-20 Academic Year. This FLC will aim to identify and pilot teaching and learning strategies that promote grit and the growth mindset among WesternU students and measure the impact of these upon student learning. Findings emerging from this process will be disseminated to the campus and educational research communities.

References:
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner.

Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101.

Dweck, C.S. (2016) Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.