Faculty Resources

1. Welcome and Thanks!
2. Freshman Academy Mission Statement and Learning Outcomes
3. Freshman Academy Definition and Design
4. Core Practices of Learning Communities
5. What's in it for me? Benefits of Teaching in a Freshman Academy Learning Community
6. The Things We Do in Freshman Academy Learning Communities (and what you can do too)

1. Welcome and Thanks!

Thank you for being a participating faculty member in Freshman Academy. Working together we can make the freshman experience at BYU both a challenging and positive one.

Freshman Academy is part of a dynamic national movement to improve the experience of first-year students, largely through the curricular and programmatic features of learning communities. At the most basic level, this means that a common cohort of students attends three or more classes together. However, since its inception at BYU in 1993, Freshman Academy has evolved into a multi-dimensional program which includes peer mentors, student development classes, co-curricular activities, and working partnerships with many departments and other stakeholders at BYU.

Still, it is mostly the willing participation of faculty members, like you, and your active engagement with students, that makes Freshman Academy work so well. We value your commitment to first-year students and appreciate all you do.

The Freshman Academy website provides comprehensive information about who we are and how we help students make connections with university resources, faculty members, and each other during their first year at school. The faculty section of the website is simply a brief overview of the things we do in Freshman Academy. Some of these things you already know because of your experience as a teacher, but there are a few new ideas and strategies we would like to share, as well as some policies and procedures you should know.

Again, thank you for your willingness to teach in a Freshman Academy learning community. If you have questions, please call or email us, or even better, drop by our office at 2014 JKB. We look forward to working with you.

Pat Esplin Fred Pinnegar

2. Freshman Academy's Mission and Learning Outcomes

The mission and learning outcomes of Freshman Academy closely parallel those of the First-Year Experience Office and the College of Undergraduate Education in general.

The mission of Freshman Academy is "to assist incoming students become fully integrated into university life by creating the best teaching and learning environment possible. Freshman Academy does this by connecting students to other students, to faculty, to academic majors, to university resources, and to The Aims of a BYU Education." As a result of these connections, we expect that Freshman Academy students will be able to show evidence of these learning outcomes:

Effective Communication—"Language abilities that enable students to listen, speak, read, and write well; to communicate effectively with a wide range of audiences in one's area of expertise as well as on general subjects" (The Aims of a BYU Education). Students will show evidence of these skills by completing writing assignments grounded in discipline specific knowledge and methodologies.

Sound Thinking—"Reasoning abilities that prepare students to understand and solve a wide variety of problems." (The Aims of a BYU Education) Their thinking will show evolving analytical skills and perspective. Students will show evidence of sound thinking by, among other things, working on situated problems.

Spiritual Development—Students will become familiar with the doctrine and increase their discipleship. Students' doctrinal knowledge can be easily tested. The increase in their discipleship is more difficult to show evidence of, but it can be seen in students' increased reflection, articulation, and participation.

Character Development—Students with character have behavior that flows from their ability to apply the gospel to the real world. Students will show evidence of this outcome through the use of "day-in-the-life" journals, through time-use studies, and through confronting and responding to real-world problems.

Community Engagement—Students will engage in respectful, wise ways within the classroom and in other communities. Students will show evidence of this outcome through group problem-solving activities, reporting of service-learning activities, group concept mapping, and leading learning activities in their communities.

OUR CHALLENGE TO YOU

Where and how do these stated outcomes of Freshman Academy overlap with the learning outcomes of your own department? How do you, or how can you, make these learning outcomes operational in your classroom, in the sense that there is as site (a time, place, and curriculum) for teaching them and a way of assessing the learning of them?

3. Freshman Academy: Definition and Design

How does Freshman Academy work? FA organizes students and faculty members into learning communities designed to help students fulfill University Core requirements or enter an academic major. Some also have a significant thematic focus, such as "The Pen and The Sword" community sponsored by the Honors Program.

Generally speaking, students enrolled in a fall semester Freshman Academy learning community will attend one small class, such as first-year writing, one medium-sized class, such as Book of Mormon, and one larger class, such as American Heritage.

In a priority registration process that starts in April, students select a learning community from among two dozen or more current options and register for an "envelope" or schedule of classes within that community based on their individual interests and needs. If students want or need more hours, they can add classes outside the envelope to build a full university recommended load of 12-14 hours. For a full and detailed explanation, see our website under "Learning Community Options."

The fall program also includes a significant residence-life component, with the learning community and envelope options linked to specific residence halls.

Of course, during winter semester and summer term, the Freshman Academy program is substantially smaller and suitably modified to meet the needs of students starting school at those times.

4. Core practices of Learning Communities

The pedagogical literature on learning communities identifies five core practices which make them successful: community, diversity, integration, active learning, and reflection / assessment (Smith and McGregor, et al, 2004). Freshman Academy incorporates all five practices in the things we do, or, more properly, in the things you do as a faculty member. We have found that most BYU faculty members are already familiar with many of these practices and use them in their classrooms, although the practice may be known to you by another name. For those practices with which you are not acquainted, we have offered definitions and suggested ways of incorporating them into your work with Freshman Academy students. We know that even with the best of intentions you can't do everything, but small changes in what you normally do can make a tremendous difference in the lives of individual first-year students.

1. Community

The word "community" describes a sense of belonging and connectedness, safety and empowerment, which makes education possible. Community also means collaboration and interdependence among students, as well as among faculty members who teach in the learning community. The ideal is the construction each semester of a "highly collaborative" community of interaction among and between both students and faculty and extending outward to make connection with university resources and the campus centers of intellectual, spiritual, and cultural discourse.

2. Diversity

"diversity . . . relates to how different people learn, who participates (students and faculty), what the curriculum is, and how the formal and informal teaching and learning environments are structured" (Smith, 107). Diversity is not just about serving special student groups. It also means that the classroom environment is hospitable, that teachers use "inclusive pedagogies" which match a wide variety of learning styles, and that the course content takes into account the pluralistic nature of human society.

3. Integration

An integrated curriculum "provides learners with a unified view of knowledge," and an integrative curriculum motivates and develops learners' powers to perceive and create new relationships for themselves. Freshman Academy learning communities bring together courses from several different disciplines, and students are asked to make and see connections between them. Faculty members are asked to help students see the connections by overlapping assignments and applying skills learned in one discipline to another.

4. Active Learning

"Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in class listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves" (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). This kind of teaching places new demands and roles on both students and faculty members, requiring you to create meaningful contexts and questions for learning.

5. Reflection and Assessment

"In learning communities, the ongoing work of reflection and assessment should create (for students and teachers alike) a kind of connective tissue among disciplines and ideas, the skills and content of the coursework, and the teachers' goals and actual student learning" (Smith, 123). The learning community itself and what happens in it can also become a focus for study.

5. What's in it for me? The Benefits of Teaching in a Freshman Academy Learning Community

Freshman Academy could not exist without dedicated faculty members, and more than 130 men and women labor to make the students' first year memorable and productive. Faculty members who teach courses in Freshman Academy learning communities report the following opportunities and benefits:

Working with faculty members from other disciplines
Teaching smaller classes
Interacting more closely with students and developing a better understanding of how they learn
Working with Freshman Academy peer mentors who track student progress, make what interventions they can, and arrange for activities outside of class that support learning
Experimenting with new teaching methods and approaches
Participating in meals and other informal activities with students outside of class.
Doing research on teaching and learning in your discipline.
Being part of a highly successful university and national movement of learning communities
Finding increased professional satisfaction through working with the most vulnerable population, the first-year students.

6. The Things We Do In Freshman Academy Learning Communities (and what you can do too)

Here is a list of things we do in Freshman Academy keyed to core learning community practices. You are probably already doing many of these things. We know that even with the best of intentions you can't do everything, but small changes in what you normally do can make a tremendous difference in the lives of individual first-year students.

1. Community

Send an email message to your new students to introduce yourself and your course. Welcoming students to your class in this way is a very low cost but high yield strategy for connecting with your students. Contact information for your students, as well as demographic information about your FA class as a whole, can be found on the Freshman Academy website under "Faculty > Faculty Login > Summer 2007." Use your standard login.
Read the student autobiographies and get to know your students and their capabilities. Again, the FA website faculty pages provides an abundance of information about your students, including their individual learning autobiographies, collective ACT and high school GPA scores, and gender, housing, and major distributions. With this information in hand, you can build on student knowledge and experience.
Come to the Opening Community Meeting for your group during the first week of school. This is an opportunity to get acquainted with your students, with the other faculty members, and with the peer mentors. The peer mentors do most of the work here, organizing the meeting, making sure everyone is invited, and conducting business. This year we are presenting "An Evening of Etiquette" to showcase the behavior expected of students in the classroom, the residence halls, public events, and electronic exchanges, as well as with faculty and staff members in their offices and elsewhere on campus. The meeting lasts about an hour and a half.
Help students connect with campus resources. You keep office hours, of course, to give individual assistance, but demand may sometimes exceed the time and energy you have to give. There are many places on campus where students can find additional information and guidance, and you can help them connect with these resources before they are in distress. For example, Kimball Benson's library TAs can help your students develop the skills necessary to do a better job on the research projects you assign. The writing and math labs provide individual attention, and most departments have weekly help sessions. Students don't do "optional," so if it is important, require it.
Extend learning and mentoring beyond the classroom. The meals program is just one way that you can extend the learning experience beyond the classroom. Some faculty members like to invite students into their home for informal conversation, dinner, barbecue, etc. Others meet small groups of students in their office or elsewhere on campus for brown bag lunches. The point is that you show you care about students by taking an interest in their lives, while at the same time keeping the conversation focused on substantive issues, such as spiritual development, sound thinking, ideas discussed in class, or academic and career plans, etc.
Participate in campus community activities to create a bond of common experience and topics of preliminary conversation with students. These activities take many forms:
          Academic events (Forum or other academic learning opportunities),
          Campus events (cultural events, athletic competitions and rallies),
          Learning community events (meetings or sponsored activities),
          Spiritual events (Devotionals, CES and ward firesides or meetings, etc).
          Community-Wide Events (city council, concerts in the Provo Tabernacle, etc).
Be a part of the extra-curricular activities, especially service projects that integrate student learning with community needs. These activities are more distantly related to educational purposes but they provide students with a needed break and opportunities for socialization and recreation. Many groups also organize a service project during the semester which may or may not relate directly to course content. Faculty members are typically invited to participate in these extra-curricular activities.

2. Diversity

"Diversity . . . relates to how different people learn, who participates (students and faculty), what the curriculum is, and how the formal and informal teaching and learning environments are structured" (Smith, 107). Diversity is not just about serving special student groups. It also means that the classroom environment is hospitable, that teachers use "inclusive pedagogies" which match a wide variety of learning styles, and that the course content takes into account the pluralistic nature of human society.

What you can do:

Work with the peer mentor and the students in your learning community to actively promote academic, spiritual, and social growth during the semester. Freshman Academy is designed neither as a remediation program for underprepared students, nor is it a program exclusively for high achievers. Rather, it is open to all students and beneficial to all because it mediates their transition to the university by creating a mentored environment. Peer mentors are friends, but not buddies; guides, but not managers; and coaches, but not therapists. These distinctions are important. Mostly, peer mentors model what it means to be a disciple-scholar at Brigham Young University.
Construct a student-centered classroom. Easier said than done in some cases, but we advocate the exploration of new approaches in every discipline to make instruction more appealing to students or more inclusive. The emphasis is on learning, rather than teaching. Be an advocate for innovation and clarity in teaching and fairness in grading.
Show yourself to students in teaching contexts which transcend the formal classroom and your discipline, such as NSO and "Habits of the Mind."

3. Integration

Meet with the other faculty members in your learning community before school starts to create a highly collaborative teaching atmosphere. This is an opportunity to get acquainted and to consider ways of coordinating your efforts during the semester.
Take opportunities to discuss the relationships among and between various aspects of the university curriculum, such as how your discipline relates to the University Core requirements (GE + religion). Comment on the importance of the basic skills of the educated person and how they are easily transferable from one domain to another.
Share your syllabus with the peer mentor assigned to your Freshman Academy course. Knowing your expectations, assignments, and due dates, the peer mentors can help students draw connections and develop habits of success in school, such as deep learning and time management.
Engage students in conversation about what they are learning in their other classes and how that knowledge relates to your class.
Re-explore the relationship of the Restored Gospel to your discipline and ask your students to speculate on that relationship from their fresh perspective. Find new insights, new ways of talking about your core spiritual values and why they matter in your field. Why is it important that there be strong LDS scholars or practitioners in your field? Who are they, and what have they accomplished? Help students become aware of the community of LDS scholars and professionals out there and what they are doing.
Call attention to your course learning outcomes and how they relate to the Aims of a BYU Education.

4. Active Learning

"Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in class listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves" (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). This kind of teaching places new demands and roles on both students and faculty members, requiring you to create meaningful contexts and questions for learning.

What you can do:

Do what you already do as a BYU professor to make your classroom a place of active and collaborative learning. These strategies will differ from discipline to discipline, with some classes lending themselves more readily to active learning than others.
Let your students do more of the talking. Ask questions, rather than lecturing, and use strategies to evoke participation from everyone.
Help with co-curricular activities. These are out-of-class activities which contribute directly to the learning that takes place in the classroom. For example, students in the music learning community attend concerts together. Faculty members often help plan these events and give them their full support. In other cases the planning is all done by the students and faculty member are invited to attend. Peer mentors can arrange to use university resources for these events.
Be involved in faculty development opportunities sponsored by Freshman Academy, such as our brown bag lunches. These are largely opportunities for faculty members to discuss pedagogical issues related to active learning and to share innovative teaching strategies with each other.

5. Reflection and Assessment

Have a meeting with the other faculty members in your learning community early enough in the semester to do some good (before midterm) and reflect on the progress of your students. This is probably one of the most important things you can do as a faculty member teaching in a Freshman Academy learning community. It is an opportunity for you to sit down with the other faculty members and exchange information and ideas, discuss progress toward learning outcomes, reflect on the implementation of core practices for learning communities, and consider what can be done to help all students in the learning community develop as disciple-scholars, be deep learners, and respond with enthusiasm to your instruction. The peer mentors can help schedule this meeting and participate in the discussion, offering their insight on individual students who may need more attention.
Join students for meals and use the time to reflect on broader issues. Among both faculty members and students, the Meals Program is one of the most popular aspects of Freshman Academy. Sitting down with your students for a meal is a great opportunity for interaction outside of class and a way to facilitate casual conversation concerning your discipline, the Aims of a BYU education, and the transition to university life. Your Freshman Academy meal card can be used at the Wilkinson Student Center or the residence hall cafeterias. The peer mentors typically handle most of the logistical issues.
Participate in the scholarship of first-year teaching and learning in your discipline. Talk about your learning community experiences with others and make your classroom a laboratory for research; write about your discoveries for professional publication; partner with us to gather and analyze data concerning the needs of first-year students and the learning community experience.

Freshman Academy