Chapter 9: Unlocking Educational Futures for Students: Communities of Practice, FLCs and SoTL Strategies Transforming Curricular Development and Student Success

Faculty participating in long-term Communities of Practice and actively engaged in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning worked together to improve students’ educational experience at the edge of their economic ability to access higher education. This chapter describes the process used to support these faculty learning communities to achieve their collective goals. Within the context of a federally funded five-year project at a Technical/Community College, these goals included transforming the learning environment to increase the persistence, retention, and success of Transitional Studies students. This chapter documents the structure and mechanisms implemented to support faculty as they worked in teams to envision, design, and implement curricular changes that were built on a foundation of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning practices, data gathering, and evidence-based curricular decisions. An impressive range of activities generated data with qualitative and quantitative richness and pointed to effective and sustainable action pathways. The cultural transformation that resulted from this initiative was pervasive and effective, and the model and results were shared within and beyond the institutional boundaries.