Learning Communities: Examining Positive Outcomes

Abstract

Learning communities, designed primarily to increase student persistence and academic achievement, are a common first-year initiative on university campuses. Assessments of learning communities frequently examine indicators that are easily quantifiable such as student persistence and academic achievement, but also examine factors thought to affect these outcomes such as student involvement and satisfaction. This article reviews published studies to determine the degree to which learning communities successfully affect involvement, satisfaction, achievement, and persistence, and attempts to identify the characteristics that produce positive results. The review concludes that first, learning communities do attain positive outcomes, but second, that it is difficult to determine which characteristics of learning communities (i.e., integrated course content, coordinated assignments, academic skills training, mentoring) account for their success due to the small number of studies, the heterogeneity of programs, and self-selection effects.