Pocohontas Learning and Philosophy Lab: Learning things you never knew you never knew

Learning communities are not a new idea. They have clear roots in the 1920's and connections to the teach-ins of the 1950's and 1960's. They hope to bring about new depths of learning and unique experiences by having students actively and fully engage with each other. In a learning community the students are really supposed to own the classroom. This requires them to go beyond merely participating and to start taking intellectual risks. They become responsible not just for their own learning, but for contributing to and facilitating the learning of all community members, including the teacher's learning. It has a flattened hierarchy where the impotence for learning is not driven by the teacher.

After serving as a teaching assistant for an introductory philosophy course during the fall semester, I found I had several students who were interested in doing more philosophy. However, like most students, they did not come to college thinking that they would major in philosophy. They had other plans, other majors, other courses to take. It seemed to me, it would be a shame not to engage these students who were so captured by philosophy.

In order to engage them we (the students and myself) decided we would form a learning community, which they would take as a one-credit course with the philosophy department. I chose two initial learning outcomes for them: (1) recognize and practice the co-construction of knowledge, and (2) explore and become familiar with your identity as a learner. I chose these learning outcomes because I thought they would make them better philosophers, but also because it would make them better students more broadly.

They chose four additional learning outcomes themselves, after having read a chapter from L.D. Fink's book, Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. (1) Learn to formulate and receive constructive criticism; (2) display comprehension of new ideas presented in readings and media by being able to concisely summarize the author's philosophical arguments; (3) be able to construct and communicate strong arguments that are sensitive to evidence from multiple perspectives on an issue; (4) enjoy and appreciate collaborative philosophy that builds off of one another's ideas.

As the community met to discuss the collaboratively selected papers, a theme emerged. I have long loved the line from the Pocahontas song that says, "But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew." It was this theme of exploration and seeking unknown knowledge that continued for the semester.

Each one of the students grew both individually, as people and students, but also as a group, learning to trust and learn from and with each other. One of the most difficult assignments they tackled was designing and teaching a lesson to a 300 person lecture for an ethics course. The picture above is from right after they finished that lesson.

This coming fall we will be adding another community, and formalizing the structure of this community with the department. The Undergraduate Association of Philosphy (UGAP) has submitted a proposal for what they are calling Philosophy Labs. One-credit learning communities facilitated by a graduate student, where the participants pick the learning outcomes, assignments, and content of the lab.