Faculty Learning Communities

Faculty Learning Communities

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) provide an opportunity for OHIO instructors to collaborate with their peers to explore a topic of interest related to teaching and learning.

Most FLCs include faculty from different disciplines, which helps to foster discussion that includes a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Learning communities typically meet for a semester or a year, and participants work toward completing goals related to the community topic.

The FLC facilitators work with participants to determine the meeting schedule and help set the group’s goals. Previous OHIO FLCs have focused on topics such as teaching challenges, Team-Based Learning strategies, and global perspectives in diverse classrooms.

FLCs generally comprise eight to 12 instructors. FLCs meet synchronously (face-to-face or online) a minimum of four sessions over a semester and engage in activities and topical conversations.

Full-time faculty (instructional, tenure-track and clinical), as well as staff dedicated to leading instructional support and with pedagogical expertise related to teaching, learning and/or assessment may serve as facilitators. Small stipends are available for facilitators and completing participants. To learn more, please contact ctla@ohio.edu.

Spring 2023 FLCs

ChatGPT and AI: Implications for Teaching and Learning

This "pop up" FLC is offered in direct response to faculty requests for opportunities to engage around the topic. The FLC brings together instructors interested in exploring in how ChatGPT and AI impact what happens in the classroom and other Ohio University learning contexts. The FLC will open in February. Indicate interest by filling out this form

Digital Games-based Learning for Experiential Education

This FLC seeks to assist faculty to incorporate videogames and digital game-based learning into their teaching practice. The goal is to engage participants in an exploration of why videogames are underrepresented in classroom practice while being one of the dominant media pasttimes of our students – second in time spent only to streaming video. Participants engage with videogames as both text in hands-on activities, as well as theoretically to understand videogames as a literacy. This FLC is at full capacity; participants will share out practices and findings in May 2023 through CTLA's digital teaching resources hub.

Past FLCs

Facilitating Student Career Development

This FLC helped faculty identify opportunities for enhancing confidence and skills in leading career-related conversations with students in any discipline. Participants identified strategies to engage students in career planning and career development discussions both in and out of the classroom. The FLC launched two separate cohorts in 2020.

Teaching with a Global Perspective

This interdisciplinary FLC focused on how to better create classroom environments and learning experiences that help students become global citizens. The group last met in spring 2019 to explore and address issues encountered when assessing and redeveloping a course from a global perspective.

Large-Enrollment Course FLC

This FLC is focused on supporting instructors who teach courses with high enrollment—either one or more sections of the same course with a total enrollment of 100 or more students in one term. The group will meet monthly in the spring and fall of 2018.

Reflective Practice FLC

A group of 10–12 professors from various disciplines gathered fall semester 2017 to reflect on their teaching and learning practices and scholarship. The major theme for this year explored the question “How do faculty create a more engaging classroom for today’s university students?”