Do Learning Communities Enhance the Quality of Students' Learning Motivation in STEM?.

The role of motivation and collaboration in STEM learning and performance is paramount. A learning community represents an educational approach that can engage students in learning in a motivated, thoughtful, active, and collaborative wav. The focus of this article is on the nature of students' interest, attitudes, learning experiences and motivation in STEM as a result of participating in linked classes as part of the Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement (LCSAA) initiative at two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate a positive influence of learning communities on students' attitudes, learning experiences and intrinsic motivation in STEM. "We felt more confident At least we tried and worked it through with others. If you're wrong, you're all wrong together. " (Undergraduate science major enrolled in organic chemistry course taught by LCSAA faculty fellow.) The comments above exemplify the positive roles of both motivation and collaboration in the learning process. Motivation in education involves students' appraisals of their competence, expectancies for success, goals; values, and learning strategies (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008). Collaborative learning in the classroom involves the active exchange of ideas and shared responsibility for learning among students and promotes interest in the subject matter, critical thinking, and increased retention of material and higher levels of achievement (Gokhale, 1995: Harris, Bransford, & Brophy, 2002). At the heart of learning communities is collaboration among students and faculty toward shared construction of knowledge and attainment of academic goals. The student in the above quote is commentine on his experiences working with a small group of his peers to solve organic chemistry problems as part of the Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement (LCSAA) initiative. He describes the importance of confidence, effort and persistence in learning, and how a learning community facilitated his feelings of competence in the learning process. The student's remarks suggest that the collaborative learning experience fostered a level of comfort, confidence and motivation among the students that they might not have experienced when working alone. When students grapple with material and tasks in collaboration with their peers they are pushed to consider alternate ideas and perspectives, be responsible to others, and engage in critical and divergent thinking and, therefore, be intellectually enriched. Furthermore, active engagement in the learning process allows students to create, discover, and deeply understand material in a way that is hard to attain when students are exposed only to traditional, passive lectures. These principles are the basis of the theory of social constructivism (Cross, 1998; Palinscar, 1989), which is the major paradigm underlying the collaborative pedagogy of learning communities. The most recent scholarship on scientific teaching suggests that collaborative pedagogy provides the exact type of learning experiences necessary for deep conceptual mastery of science content; that is, active, inquiry-based learning, and innovative and diverse pedagogies that can reach diverse learners (Handelsman et al., 2004). Furthermore, students who have typically underperformed in science, such as African Americans, may benefit the most from these types of innovative pedagogies, which promote interpersonal interaction, collaborative learning, as well as the sharing of information (Dodge & Kendall, 2004; Smith, MacGregor, Matthews, & Gabelnick, 2004). The focus of the present article is on the nature and level of students' interest, attitudes, learning experiences and motivation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as a result of participating in linked classes at two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as part of the Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement (LCSAA) initiative. …