Learning Communities as a Strategy for Success

This paper reports on the success of students in General Chemistry who were in a Learning Community that focused instruction on both the development of learning process skills and mastery of course content. A quasi-experimental research design was used in this study with an experimental group and two control groups. Students in the Learning Community (the experimental group) did better than those in the control groups on weekly assignments and quizzes. They also achieved higher scores on the examinations than predicted or expected at the beginning of the semester. Factors responsible for this success are identifi ed.