Provide a clear and complete project description. Include the goals and objectives, and the plans and the procedures for achieving them.

We would like to develop a hybrid learning community here at South Mountain Community College. We plan to explore how content from three courses are related and develop that into a dynamic learning community that will allow students to earn 9 or 12 credits towards their AA degree. The courses are ENH295 Banned Books & Censorship, HUM205 Intro to Cinema, and an ENG101/102 Hybrid Freshman Composition. The ENG101 course will be offered online the first 8 weeks, and ENG102 will be offered online the second 8 weeks. Both the Cinema and literature courses are full 16 week face-to-face courses, but will be hybridized by implementing many web based tools that will require students to interact online as well as in the F2F setting. We are calling both courses hybrid even though we are meeting 100% in class.

We hope to show that these four courses are not isolated and do share a relationship through course themes and competencies. This learning community will be a great example of writing across the curriculum. Students will write essays and assignments for Cinema, Literature and the Freshman Composition courses that will all be one in the same yet meeting the required competencies for each discipline.

There are numerous benefits to students who will be involved in this learning community. This LC will have connected classes that meet AA degree requirements. Both the Literature and Cinema courses satisfy the Humanities (HU) requirement, and students are currently required to take two humanities courses. ENH295 also satisfies the Cultural (C) requirement needed by students, and both Freshman Composition courses are also required for the AA degree.  Students will be involved with creative faculty dedicated to student success, and they will have a chance to bond with fellow students and teachers. Students will experience more dynamic interactions in classes and online. We will provide coaching, support and encouragement. Students will build friendships and create study networks, and there will be an opportunity for peer mentoring and learning study skills.

This learning community will also provide opportunities for field trips and other activities. We hope to plan a field trip out to a movie theatre to see a foreign film, local film festival or district film festival event. In addition, we plan to sponsor a program for banned books week here on the SMCC campus next fall to help generate interest in the learning community. And as part of the learning community we will have our students plan future banned book weeks, other censorship events, and possibly help with planing our own film festival. There will be plenty of opportunities for our students to interact with our campus in positive ways through this community.

This is all still just an idea to us at the moment. We need help in making this a reality, so we are writing this proposal in hopes of gaining your approval and your support in bringing this exciting learning community to life. We would love the opportunity to sit down with each of you to discuss the possibilities of us being able to do this. If this is a possibility, we propose that we would begin our project this summer and have the courses ready for the Spring ’09 semester. That would give us all fall to recruit.

We would like to spend most of the summer doing research, blending the courses, writing assignments, and developing our online materials for the courses. This will take considerable time. Since we were unable to secure district funds to support all of our efforts, we would like to ask if there would be a way for our campus to support the development of this hybrid learning community. Julie has applied for a Summer Project to learn about developing a hybrid course which will help in creating the hybrid parts of this project. Alisa has applied for a Summer Project to learn about cinema which will help her to better understand the overall content of the learning community better. And with both our backgrounds in English, we feel we make up a great team. However, the bulk of this project will be developing the curriculum which we were unable to request assistance from district grants. Summer projects don’t allow for curriculum development.

Additional Information

Proposed Course Schedule:

ENH295 9:30-10:45am

HUM205 10:45-12:00pm (11-12:15pm)

Students must take both

Online Courses

ENG101 1^st 8 weeks

ENG102 2^nd 8 weeks

Students can take 1 or 2 or Both.

Banned Books Week: Usually around September 29-October 6^th (26 years)