Learning Community Participation and Sense of Community

Abstract

To perform well and persist at universities, students need to feel socially and academically integrated. Many universities have instituted learning communities to promote both types of involvement. I explore whether participants in learning communities develop a greater sense of community in the classroom and the university than non-participants. My sample consists of 273 first year students in 31 small seminar classes in a variety of disciplines. My comparison group is 73 first-year students taking introductory sociology courses. I also control for the effects of race, gender, family income, residence type and course subject. This study represents one of the many ways that sociology can contribute to the understanding of college student behavior