Learning Together in the Learning Commons
Just months into its inaugural year, Centenary’s new Learning Commons is living out its mission to foster students’ personal and intellectual growth and facilitate access to academic resources, while making connections and building supportive networks across campus. Made possible by a transformational gift from an alum, the Learning Commons, located in the College’s Magale Library, is home to Centenary’s new Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of Disability Services, First-Year Mentoring and Advising, and the experiential learning curriculum, Trek.
Dr. Rachel Johnson ’08, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, sat down to reflect on the first few months in the Learning Commons and to shed some light on the burning question, What’s the deal with the mongooses??
What has been the most popular aspect of the Learning Commons so far with students?
When the Learning Commons staff met initially, one of the things that we talked about was that we wanted the space to be whimsical, yet professional. We wanted it to be exciting and inviting for students without losing our emphasis on academics. I think that is a hard balance to strike, but some of what we’ve done so far has worked.
Students really like that we have snacks and coffee. We’ve also tried to reset the space to look intentional in the way it is set up, and we have tools that signal collaboration and creativity. When I came in, I said that I wanted everything here to be mobile – to be able to be made and remade over and over again by whoever is using it, because I think that’s one of the things that makes students feel like the space is theirs. It’s not a space where they have to tiptoe around and use the space in the way that we have communicated that it should be used. It’s still a work in progress, but the goal is to make the Learning Commons a place where students can be creative and innovative and feel really comfortable and at home. They seem to have responded to those choices a lot.
They really like the vibe – the modern logo, the bouncy bungee chairs. It has the feeling of a modern workplace in some ways, where students can practice that persona of what it means to be your full, authentic, fun self, but also be collaborative and serious and work toward goals together. That, I feel, is a professionalization skill and can help students feel comfortable making the transition from student life to professional life.
“Students who visit the Commons can land an internship at an investment firm on their way to workshop a presentation for the campus research conference. They can sip coffee with a peer mentor while discussing the best ways to manage the transition to college life. They can practice their Spanish fluency skills as they plan for a semester abroad. They can laugh their way through a game of giant checkers while welcoming new students into the Centenary family.”
– Rachel Johnson
What are students coming in to do or participate in?
We have a series of different types of events that we’re doing. One thing that we put on this semester that I think students really responded to is the idea of “Life Hacks.” Students are busy people and they have a lot going on, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have questions, or topics they want to learn more about, or strategies they want to perfect. It’s just tough to fit it all into their schedule. More than half of our students are athletes, and if they’re not athletes they’re involved in theater or choir or other special student interests, so we wanted to make sure that we met our students’ desire to have something that extends their understanding or their self-reflection, but that didn’t get in their way. The Life Hacks sessions were 30 minutes and were focused on making life easier: taking something that can be tough to find the time to focus on, and giving them space to do that. Our time management events were focused on topics such as, what does it mean to have your own schedule? If you’re a student who’s used to a bell that tells you where to be and how to get there and someone giving you strict timeframes for doing things, how do you turn that into your own habits and your own balanced lifestyle? That’s something that I think you can talk about with students quickly and give them practical resources to accomplish. Some of our other programming is more about partnering with the different units in the space. Debbie Bury (Director of Career Services and Internships) and I did one about “gearing up for grad school” that was very popular. Students had a lot of questions for us, such as, what are the people reading your personal statement looking for? What kind of writing is this? It’s a really strange genre of writing that you don’t get a lot of training for. In your classes, you are often blending the personal and the academic, but not necessarily talking about yourself and your goals. So it was a genre of writing that people needed to ask questions about. Providing a space for that really helped, and the students have said that they want us to offer more of those types of sessions and provide spaces for them to get additional feedback. That positive response tells us that there is definitely a need for this kind of work on campus.
What kinds of students are utilizing the Learning Commons?
For our academic consultations with the peer learning community, we know (based on data from our appointment management system) that the largest group utilizing that service is freshmen. Upperclassmen have been more involved in some of the workshops.
We do have some students who I’ve never seen engaged in a formal appointment but who come here to study because they like the space. We have a student who comes every Friday after their class in the library basement and they just come straight up here, because they told me one time that if they left the library they would go and take a nap. Knowing that the space was up here and that it was a good place to study and get some things done encouraged them to take advantage of that time.
We’re in the library, which is great, and we are working really hard to get more spaces for students on the second floor and make students aware of the kinds of spaces up here for them to use. We’ve also been thinking about different ways to organize the collection upstairs. We want to maintain the collection and the purpose it serves for the campus but also create areas that students will want to use. We are trying to go for a cool, fun, coffee shop vibe. For some folks, that’s exactly where they want to be when they’re trying to get work done, so they wander in and use the space.
What exciting things are planned for next semester?
We’re theming all of our events around what is pertinent to students’ lives at the time, so we’ll be collaborating on a series of events that are “new year, new you,” a combination of social, academic, emotional, mental health-type programming. For me and for a lot of folks, the new year is that point where you think about what you want to achieve and what’s going to be different this time around. Sometimes we live up to that and sometimes we don’t, so I think having a system of accountability and support for those goals is cool. We’re going to focus on the same kinds of things we’ve done before with the “life hacks,” but be sure they are right for the moment and align with what students might be thinking or wondering about.
There is a great program that Integrated Advising does called Start Strong, so we are going to develop two other versions of that called “Stay Strong” and “Finish Strong.” In the spring, we have a lot of folks who are on the road to graduation so we’re going to offer a lot of programming around how you set yourself up for success in a variety of different ways: how do you take care of yourself, how do you think about what’s next in a way that doesn’t make you feel crazy, and how do you get all the things in place here on campus - all those little official boxes you have to tick - so that everything feels like it’s ready to go.
We are continuing to cultivate the space so that over time it will have more features and more technology. Right now we are finishing up a renovation of the multipurpose room so that it has a really great presentation setup, and we’ll continue to fill out our furniture over the spring and summer. One of the things we have been told is that we don’t have enough plugs! Something like a charging station is not something I had planned for us to have, but we need it.
What is something you wish that everyone knew about the Learning Commons?
The thing that I want everyone to know, especially students, is that you don’t have to have a “problem” to benefit from what we have to offer. Sometimes people hear “Academic Support” or “Academic Resources” and think that this is for somebody who isn’t doing well or isn’t prepared or is deficient in some way. The reality is that that’s not how things work: nobody is perfect and nobody is all-knowing, and having a space where you can openly ask questions (because that’s what happens in that space), where you can get accountability and support for your work (because that’s what you deserve), and find a group of people who are engaged in the same kind of pursuits you are (because everyone deserves a community) – that’s just how things should be. It shouldn’t take a problem for everyone to feel like they deserve that kind of space, so I just want people to know that this is theirs and they should take full advantage of that experience and that support while they are here.
We are working hard to build something that students know is always here. Not every student will need the Learning Commons all the time – for instance, maybe it’s not a place you really need to be when you have a semester that is going well, or when you’re not preparing for the job market yet, but you know it is there. When you do need it, it’s not hard to find and you know how it works. It just has to be woven into the fabric of the Centenary experience so that’s its really accessible.
Okay…what is the deal with the mongooses?
The mongooses are just fun! They all have names, we can pose them, and we can have them hang out with people. They are a symbol of our way of being: that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, that we enjoy silliness. The Learning Commons is a space where lots of things happen. You can be studying, making connections, planning for the future, being healthy…and hanging out with cool animals.