We began by introducing ourselves and briefly talking about our experiences with LCs and what brought us to the FIG. 

We talked a bit about practices that were considered “high-impact” 

• First Year Seminars and Experiences
• Common Intellectual Experiences
• Learning Communities
• Writing Intensive Courses
• Collaborative Assignments and Projects
• Undergraduate Research
• Diversity/Global Learning
• Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
• Internships
• Capstone Courses and Projects
• ePortfolios

As well as the features they shared that made them “high-impact (taken from the website of the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire):

While only ten practices have nationally been elevated as high-impact practices, Kuh and O’Donnell (2013) found that these practices share eight key elements:

• Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels
• Significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time
• Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters
• Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with people and circumstances that differ from those which students are familiar
• Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback
• Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning
• Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications
• Public demonstration of competence.

Kuh, George D. & O’Donnell, K. (2013). Ensuring quality & taking high-impact practices to scale. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities.

Various points were raised, including 

• LCs as a way for us to develop as instructors as well as a way to address isolation – ours and our students’. While some of us felt that remote teaching made it easier to collaborate with linking partners, others felt this mode of instruction challenged the community building necessary to learning communities. 
• Some examples of integrative assignments
• A discussion arose around particular challenges of doing online “groupwork” using breakout rooms, and there was some interest in a further discussion around this topic.
• A discussion around the benefits of utilizing asynchronous materials as a way of offering “flipped” classrooms at such time when instruction moves to being fully or partially in-person.

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