Living Learning Communities and Their Impact on First Year Engineering College Students

Traditionally, first-year college students do not have a community of like-minded peers with whom they are able to learn. Living Learning Communities (LLC) can offer a platform for postsecondary institutions to increase recruitment, engagement, and sense of belonging for students who live in an LLC. The Engineering and Innovation Residential College (EIRC) LLC can be described as a Community of Practice (CoP) where a group of individuals have a shared vision, mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint enterprise. The Value Creation Framework, constructed by Wenger, Trayner, and de Laat focuses on assigning value which can be produced through social learning. This theoretical framework is described in this poster and can be used as an analytical tool to evaluate the value created within the Community of Practice, such as the students living in the EIRC. This poster also discusses relevant published work on 1) What impacts do LLCs have for all students who live in an LLC; 2) What are the impacts on first-year engineering college students living in an LLC, and 3) What other theoretical frameworks are used in literature when examining the impacts an LLC has on first-year engineering college students