Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
A postsecondary Professional Learning Community (PLC) brings together a cross-functional group of educators (i.e., faculty student and academic affairs practitioners, administrators) to learn in community, imagine ways to improve practice, and implement change efforts. PASS PLCs seek to create spaces where educators can explore the concept of ecological validation and strategize ways to bolster support to at-promise students across three University of Nebraska campuses.
On this page, you’ll find resources for running PLCs in higher education settings and explore lessons learned through our collaboration with our practitioner partners.
Briefs & Articles
The goal of the PASS PLCs is to promote a shift in institutional culture that leads to improved academic and psychosocial outcomes for at-promise students through an approach called ecological validation. While approaches will vary by campus, each campus-based PLC will approach their work by engaging with components of five processes.
This brief provides an overview of how PLCs can be used in higher education. We discuss the origin of PLCs and compare them to other improvement processes in the higher education field. We then explain what a cross functional PLC is and why postsecondary institutions may benefit from using them. We end with some guiding questions to help campus stakeholders decide if this approach would be useful for your campus.
Ongoing challenges in higher education require innovative thinking, but we have few structures in place to support learning to address these challenges. While we have standing groups (e.g., committees and councils) and episodic groups (e.g., task forces), few groups focus on learning together to improve practice across the campus. One exception is faculty learning communities, which are becoming more common as a way for instructors to come together and read about a pedagogical strategy, such as active learning, and work collectively to alter their approach to teaching.
