Effects of a learning community program on the first-year experience of engineering majors

Learning communities can potentially have a significant impact on the freshman student experience, particularly at large research institutions. Yet the implementation of learning communities at large universities poses many challenges. In Fall and Spring of 1995-96 the University of Wisconsin-Madison piloted the Freshmen Learning Community Program (FLCP), thus rising to meet these challenges. The Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation, and Dissemination (LEAD) Center, a third-party evaluation unit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted the evaluation of the FLCP. Evaluation findings indicated that the Fall 1995 Program was moderately successful for a small subset of the students in the FLCP. Based on the Fall evaluation findings several specific changes to the FLCP were implemented in the Spring 1996 program that resulted in more benefits experienced by a broader range of students. Evaluation findings indicate that the Spring Program was effective in addressing key problems faced by students at a large university. Most notably it functioned to "shrink the size" of the university in several ways. The program appeared to foster a sense of group identity, providing students with a sense of belonging at the University. It also had a significant impact on student learning processes primarily through fostering a more collaborative learning approach. This paper will explore the program development and the student experience in the Fall 1995 and Spring 1996 iterations of the program.