St. Cloud State University

Why a Learning Community

“Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.” Academic success & scholarship application Service, volunteerism, & philanthropic engagement Social connections & global citizenship Leadership exploration & development Values exploration & character development	Why a learning community? The idea of learning communities is seen as an alternative metaphor to traditional instruction. What happens when groups of people gather together to provide mutual support for learning and performance? How would that work? Rather than being controlled by classroom instruction alone, we “self-organize” into functioning communities with a general goal of supporting each other in our learning and college experience. One of the lessons of postmodernism and situated cognition is that learning cannot be separated from action. We are learning every day, in everything we do. We add the qualifying term to our definition to suggest a community sharing a consensual goal to support each other in learning. Everybody expects to learn and is prepared to engage in activities at least partly for that reason. This would distinguish learning from those solely concerned with entertainment, political action, or the performance of an immediate task. We do, as individual fraternities and sororities; we have complex agendas, and may have multiple goals that are commonly shared throughout the membership, such as supporting core values and learning among its members. In addition, having a positive environment that will integrate your experience at SCSU is also a college lifestyle choice. You are committing yourself to: • Being globally-aware and supporting diversity. • Being self-aware and striving for meaningful relationships. • Being an engaged member of various communities. • Taking full advantage of opportunities for learning. • Exploring leadership. • Living a balanced and purposeful life.