Living-Learning Communities That Work: A Research-Based Model for Design, Delivery, and Assessment - Tapa dura

"[This book] provides a much needed Living-Learning Community (LLC) model that promises a unified living and learning experience. Despite LLCs' respected history in American higher education and identification as a high-impact practice, tight fiscal contexts and the press of accountability has continued to make it necessary for institutional leaders to demonstrate with evidence the value of LLCs, and in particular their contribution to contemporary concerns about student retention, learning, and success....The LLC best practices model in this book provides needed resources to institutions and LLC practitioners interested in designing and delivering LLCs that work better for all our students."" - Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and NSSE, and Senior Scholar National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA)

In 2007, the American Association of Colleges and Universities named learning communities a high-impact practice because of the potential of these communities to provide coherence to and ultimately improve undergraduate education. Institutional leaders have demonstrated a commitment to providing LLCs, but they currently do so primarily with anecdotal information to guide their work. As a result, there is substantial variation in organizational structure, collaboration, academic and social environments, programmatic integration, student outcomes, and overall quality related to LLC participation. To establish a stronger, more unified basis for designing and delivering effective LLCs, the authors of Living-Learning Communities that Work collaborated on the development of a comprehensive empirical framework for achieving the integrating potential of LLCs. This framework is designed to help practitioners guide the design, delivery, and assessment of LLCs. This book thoughtfully combines research and field-tested practice to document the essential components for best practices in living learning communities and presents them as a clear blueprint - the LLC best practices model - for LLC design. Practitioners, researchers, and institutional leaders can use the book as a guide to more effectively allocate resources to create and sustain LLCs and to realize the potential of these communities to improve undergraduate education.