The Second Time Around

The second learning community…….

 I was actually looking forward to this event, because my first learning community was not a success.

The guest speaker was Dr.Harris, and he spoke on the topic of blacks in science and engineering with this topic he focused on dedication and the achievements of blacks that came before us. The presentation started out catchy and interesting, but that didn’t last long! As I looked around the auditorium that was already empty at the beginning of the program I realized people were playing games on their computers, taking naps sitting straight up, texting, or pulling the “ I’m going to the bathroom” and never came back. So I’m sad to say the second learning community was long and boring again! I can not speak for all the freshman students, because I know some people do enjoy the learning communities but I do believe that there needs to be some improvements to keep students in their seats.

 I understand the point of the learning communities and think it’s a great idea. But here are a few of my ideas to keep our attention and to get better attendance. 

*So this all makes sense in my head, but I’m not sure if I did good job of explaining it

 Time:  Make the communities shorter, or have different time slots available

                        *Especially because no one wants the café food after 7pm.

Topics:  Give us topics we could choose from.

Involvement: If each learning community had two topics and we could choose one to attend this would do a few things

Ø  Create smaller groups so the audience could interact with the speaker

Ø    Keep our attention because we were able to choose the topic we listening about

Ø  Would create a opportunity for us to use our freshman seminar class time to discuss and share what we learned about two different topics but still relate them to research

*For example if we could choose a between a topic on the history of fashion or blacks in science and engineering. More people would be attracted to come because they have options. And the fun part would be finding a way in class to bring these two very different topics together and relate them to research.

* The idea of the learning communities is great I just feel like it could be done differently.