Purpose

LeaRN’s primary focus is student learning in 1000 and 2000 level courses. These courses, constituting most of a student’s general studies, occur at a time when academic success is the most fragile and challenging for students and for those who teach them. LeaRN will initiate, coordinate, and assess services and programs that lead to and support student success university-wide, but mainly for selected 1000 and 2000 level courses.  Although the 1000 and 2000 level courses are key to every student’s successful entry into a major and eventual graduation, they receive too little attention at the departmental and college levels.  LeaRN will address this problem by making learning and teaching in the lower division courses highly visible to the university community.  LeaRN will raise visibility and enhance learning through a network of partnerships that will include substantial student leadership.  These partnerships will also join the knowledge and skills of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs in powerful learning opportunities for students.

This purpose will be examined continuously over the next five years and re-framed as warranted in 2008.

Goals

1. Identify and address issues of concern in 1000 and 2000 level general studies courses and spearhead collaborative efforts with colleges, departments, faculty, and student affairs personnel for projects that include ongoing evaluation and research.
2. Initiate opportunities/programs for faculty, students, and student services professionals to work together to improve student success, including probationary students. This goal might include the creation of opportunities for faculty and students to be in dialog about teaching and learning.
3. Design collaborative opportunities to improve student learning and skills in all classroom contexts. This goal might include such areas as information literacy, writing, quantitative skills, self-assessment, oral communication, and technology.
4. Communicate with students, parents, families, faculty, staff, and K-12 constituencies about issues, information, and topics related to student success. This goal includes resource mentoring.
5. Coordinate and improve communication among existing programs now housed in distinct administrative units (e.g., Academic Affairs, Student Affairs).
6. Assess 1000 and 2000 course learning outcomes formatively and cumulatively
7. Assess the effectiveness of all LeaRN programs formatively and cumulatively.

Why Does UW Need A Learning Resource Network? Why Now?

This vision of a Learning Resource Network:  Partnerships for Academic Success (LeaRN), which bridges both Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, focuses its energies into understanding more about student learning and providing examples of ways to assess learning that will be useful to students, faculty, librarians, and student affairs personnel. A confluence of three factors makes the planning and implementation of LeaRN central to student learning, development, and success for the 2003-2008 planning cycle. 

First, faculty, administrators, and student affairs personnel are evaluating data that show too many UW students fail to engage in learning.   According to the Office of Institutional Analysis (OIA), over the last five years, the average percentage of full-time first-year students placed on probation after their first semester is 18%, a higher percentage than comparator institutions. Put another way, nearly one in five full-time first-year students did not achieve academically during the first semester. According to OIA, at the close of the Fall 2002 semester, 21% of the full-time first-year students ended the semester on probation. An additional 2% withdrew from the university following the drop/add period.  OIA’s analysis of retention data (students returning after the first year) reveals that in Fall 2001, full-time first-year students showed a 77% retention rate:  nearly one in four full-time first-year students did not return. National data are also demonstrating problems with learning for entering students. For instance, in August, 2003, ACT data indicate that 74% of entering students are underprepared for science courses. These data indicate that students in the first and second year of university work are particularly vulnerable. At the same time, those who teach first and second year students face enormous challenges and receive too little instructional support.  

Second, a variety of recruitment and retention efforts such as freshman interest groups (FIGs) and learning communities provide powerful examples of collaboration among faculty, student services personnel, and librarians. Such collaborations are essential as their central aim is to engage students in experiences that increase learning and academic engagement. However, too few students participate in these and other similar programs. 

Third, Moving Forward III identifies the assessment of USP as an important goal. We agree that the goal is important and believe that LeaRN activities and assessments described in this document will assist the USP Committee to develop reasonable assessments. The FIG and learning community initiatives involve USP courses for first and second year students and other, more advanced courses.  In these programs as well as others, assessment remains post hoc and uncoordinated. Given a focus on student learning in the first and second years of university work, LeaRN will be poised to support and initiate multiple projects that provide models of ways to assess student learning. 

The Moving Forward planning documents identify the need for an academic success center. As development team members, we believe it important to acknowledge such a need has been discussed at UW since the mid-1990s, producing an array of proposals and much discussion. Many, especially Student Affairs personnel, have expended time, energy, and good intentions on these efforts. The discussions have centered around complex student learning and development issues, a feasible organizational structure, and an agreed upon purpose that the university community, especially faculty, would support. This proposal brings to fruition these discussions by identifying a philosophy, purpose, place, and timeline for LeaRN to come fully on board by fall semester, 2005.  
 

Guiding Philosophy

The academic legacy of a University of Wyoming education is a desire to learn over a lifetime. A curious, thoughtful, and life-long learner is able and willing to work hard, knowing when and how to identify successes and challenges. Life-long learners are able to work independently and collaboratively. They know when and how to seek assistance, whether from a colleague or an electronic database. Able readers, writers, and communicators, life-long learners navigate complex information networks via ever-evolving computer literacy. Above all, life-long learners enjoy the fulfillment and satisfaction of being self-directed, engaged, and successful. Such learners are poised to thrive intellectually, socially, and emotionally.     

A university education creates opportunities to develop habits of mind that will transfer to experiences well beyond the university. We believe that all students need to develop such habits in the first two years at the university. Habits of mind are developed in and out of classroom settings by faculty and lecturers supported by librarians, student services personnel, and others. Carefully structured instruction and curricula provide the foundation for opportunities to learn.

With support, all students must accept responsibility for meeting their academic goals. In and out of classroom instruction should be based on the premise that teaching must flow from what we know about the way people learn. The following research-based findings point us toward best practice in classroom, small group, and one-on-one learning environments: 

1. People learn from others and thrive in learning contexts that promote communities rich with connections and support.  Learning is thus psycho-social and socio-cultural.  These contexts include not only classrooms but also one-on-one tutoring, peer mentoring, supplemental instruction, learning communities, internships, practica, undergraduate research assistantships, service learning, and a wide range of co-curricular experiences.
2. Learning requires that teachers attend to curricula that promote connections and avoid rote memorization of disjointed sets of facts and skills.
3. Learning thrives when students are able to incorporate past experiences, value systems, and personal goals into academic experiences. LeaRN programming and practices must be sensitive to the diversity that makes the University of Wyoming a rich and complex environment.
4. Learning benefits from formative assessment, i.e., a continuous cycle of feedback.  For students to learn, goals and objectives must be clear, timely, and measurable.
5. Learning increases when teachers promote a sense of community that, in turn, increases students’ opportunities and motivations to interact, receive feedback, and learn.
6. Learning is both labor- and time-intensive. Too often, students do not know how to create the time to learn deeply. Every student, no matter how capable, sometimes needs assistance and may need additional time to achieve mastery.
7. Learning increases when the appropriate resources and networks are easily accessible: books, supplemental instructional and curricular materials, computers, electronic networks, software.
8. Learning increases when students take advantage of intense, one-on-one assistance that might be academic and/or psycho-social. At some time during his or her UW experience, every student may benefit from resource mentoring such as advising and academic counseling.
9. In complex university learning settings, we expect faculty, student affairs personnel, librarians, and others to learn as much as students.

The vision for LeaRN was developed by a team that included faculty, student affairs personnel, and the dean of libraries.  This team met from May - August 2003.  The results of their work are presented in the LeaRN planning document submitted to the Vice President for Academic Affairs on September 3, 2003.

LeaRN Planning Document.pdf