UB’s First-Year Learning Communities: Fostering Student Achievement through the Power of Connection
Learning is a collective activity where knowledge is constructed through relationships with peers, professors, and communities, pooling together diverse voices and interdisciplinary perspectives.
At UB’s recent Faculty Development Day, Dr. Elizabeth Haas, Dr. Andrew Merecicky, and Dr. Randy Laist explained how UB embodies this principle through its implementation of first-year learning communities.
UB’s First-Year Learning Community (FYLC) program groups incoming first-year students together into paired sections of First-Year Writing (ENGL 100 or 101) and First-Year Seminar (FYS 101). By structuring schedules so students see the same peers four times a week, Learning Communities provide a supportive environment that eases the transition to college and provides a foundation for a peer network of academic support (Schreiber & Valle, 2013). This immediate peer integration helps students quickly adapt to the university culture, establishing a baseline of early success that research links to greater end-of-year stability, stronger identity development, and more effective study habits (Tao et al., 2000).
Beyond scheduling logistics, learning communities enhance the classroom as both an academic and social space for active, interdisciplinary study. Each community integrates course content, coordinated assignments, and co-curricular activities through aligned syllabi and direct collaboration between English and First-Year Seminar instructors. While each course maintains its own specific learning outcomes, the FYLC program emphasizes pedagogical objectives achieved collectively through the community itself, creating an integrated learning experience greater than the sum of its individual parts.
While 91% of higher education institutions nationwide offer some form of learning community experience (Barefoot, Griffin, & Koch, 2012), broader research on their long-term effectiveness remains mixed (Azzam, Bates, & Fairris, 2020; Rocconi, 2011). Scholars attribute these disparate outcomes to variances in program execution, emphasizing that institutional context and iterative design dictate overall success.
UB’s FYLC model addresses this challenge by aligning its core curriculum with the university's mission of promoting “academic excellence, personal responsibility, and commitment to service.”
Recent localized assessment data validate this approach. In Fall 2024, students in FYLC courses passed their first-year writing course at a 41% higher rate than non-participating peers. Following intentional adjustments to the model, Fall 2025 FYLC cohorts passed at a 200% higher rate than their non-FYLC peers, demonstrating how intentionally designed learning communities directly elevate foundational academic performance.
At the Faculty Development Day presentation, Drs. Haas, Merecicky, and Laist had the opportunity to talk about their vision for the FYLC program with their colleagues from the UB community, inviting them to be a part of the exciting work that UB faculty and students are doing to build robust communities of inquiry and discourse.
Reflecting on the presentation, Dr. Laist says, “The FYLC program is designed to promote community, but I have been surprised to discover that it creates more communities than just the ones we had originally intended to create. Not only does the program enhance community among the Learning Community cohorts, but it also fosters dialogue and connectivity among the incoming first-year class in general, among the faculty who teach in the FYLC program, and among the wider institutional culture. The spirited conversation we had about learning communities during our Faculty Development Day presentation was a great example of that phenomenon.”
References
Azzam, T., Bates, M.D., Fairris, D. (2022). Do learning communities increase first year college retention? Evidence from a randomized control trial, Economics of Education Review, Volume 89, 102279, ISSN 0272-7757, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2022.102279.
Barefoot, B. O., Griffin, B. Q., & Koch, A. K. (2012). Enhancing student success and retention throughout undergraduate education: A national survey. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.
Roccini, L.M. (2011) The Impact of Learning Communities on First Year Students’ Growth and Development in College. Research in Higher Education, 52, 178-193.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9190-3
Schreiber, L. M., & Valle, B. E. (2013). Social Constructivist Teaching Strategies in the Small Group Classroom. Small Group Research, 44(4), 395-411. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496413488422
Tao, S., Dong, Q., Pratt, M. W., Hunsberger, B., & Pancer, S. M. (2000). Social support: Relations to coping and adjustment during the transition to university in the People's Republic of China. Journal of Adolescent Research, 15(1), 123–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558400151007
Comments