Transfer of Learning FLC to present at Pratt lunch event

One of the most rewarding things that I have been involved with professionally in the last year is also something that I haven’t yet had time to write about. It’s my beloved Faculty Learning Community (FLC), which was constituted just over a year ago. FLC’s are a nationwide movement in academia, and although their configuration and reason for being varies widely, they all provide faculty with the space to work collaboratively, thinking broadly and creatively about some topic of interest.

My home institution, Pratt Institute, decided to constitute five different FLC’s to explore five different realms of teaching and learning. Each of these FLC’s were tasked with a particular area to explore, and were sent away for an academic year to meet once a month over lunch and figure out how to approach their topic. Our FLC, originally composed of eight members but now down to only five, was tasked with looking at how art and design students transfer what they have learned in their first year classes (including the Foundation program) into their second year classes (including their entry into the majors). We quickly realized that we were also interested in transfer that occurs within courses and between courses that students are taking simultaneously, expanding slightly our area of investigation.

We spent the entire last year exploring. Last June we presented what we discovered so far at a conference sponsored by the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design, and now we are finally presenting those discoveries to our colleagues at Pratt. Please join us in the Faculty Dining Room on Monday, October 16th starting at 12:00 pm for a very visual overview of what our FLC has learned so far!