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Faculty Resources for Community Learning

Community Learning fosters academic collaborations between Trinity students, staff, faculty, and partners in metropolitan Hartford. Faculty can find resources to help with new or existing Community Learning courses on this page. Trinity faculty offer more than twenty Community Learning courses each semester that incorporate experiential learning, collaborative partnership, reflection and perspective-taking, and place-based appreciation and civic agency.

For students specifically, Community Learning courses and CHER co-curricular programming aim to advance the following learning goals:

  1. Enhance achievement of broader College curricular and co-curricular learning objectives through community partnerships in Hartford that connect knowledge with practice. [Experiential learning]
  2. Develop skills and understandings that support mutually beneficial collaboration in diverse communities. [Collaborative partnership]
  3. Deepen understanding of the expertise and experiences of diverse communities in relation to one’s own identity and societal position. [Reflection and perspective-taking]
  4. Become attuned to local context as residents of Hartford, while exploring the role of individual and collective agency in social transformation. [Place-based appreciation and civic agency]

Community Learning Student Course Evaluations

To evaluate whether co-curricular and curricular community engagement is meeting the above learning goals, we have revised our course evaluation form and process based on the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification and other industry benchmarks with input from national experts, Community Learning faculty, the CHER community advisory board, and CHER’s Faculty Advisory Board. The revised form significantly reduces questionnaire length, while directly evaluating the learning goals, using validated standards, such as the CASQ (Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire “Big 6”) and Bonner Program Civic Learning Outcomes. The new form can be viewed here and, for comparison, the former form (revised 2017) can be found here.

Community Partner Feedback Form

When faculty members sign up for CL course funds, they will provide contact information for their course partner(s). At the end of the semester, the Director of Community Learning sends the community partner feedback form to partners. The form asks partners about the strengths and weaknesses of their interaction with Trinity and allows them to offer ideas for further collaboration. Feedback will be shared with the faculty member to allow them to plan for the future. CL leadership will use the information to identify areas where we can improve to better support faculty and collaborate with partners. To enable flexibility in the formation of partnerships, CL faculty may provide a reason to opt out of the form for a given class (e.g. a unique partnership that the form does not fit, an emergent partnership that does not yet warrant assessment).

Resources for designing a new course or adding a new assignment or partnership to an existing course:
  • Erica Crowley, Director of Community Learning, is available to meet one-on-one or in small groups with faculty to discuss preliminary ideas, designing assignments, choosing readings, or building partnerships.
  • Join Community Learning Faculty Fellows (CLiFF) by applying in early June each year. Learn more about Community Learning and workshop ideas in a group setting.
  • Visit the Community Learning Faculty Toolkit for readings and resources that can aid faculty in course planning and/or be incorporated into a class as student readings
  • View recent undergraduate community-engaged research projects in the CHER research archive
  • View digital storytelling resources and hardware available for check out from Community Learning here
  • Looking for a partner? View the CHER database of recent partners here.
Community Learning course assistance funds

Community Learning offers up to $500 in course assistance funds for approved Community Learning courses. See allowable expenses and how to apply here.

Scholarly resources
Community Learning Publications:
Models/Syllabi: