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Marshall HS Students Collaborate with DCC Learning Community


MCC students in a CRJ-ENG learning community sat side-by-side students from John Marshall High School on Tuesday as part of a unique collaboration in which the instructor of a law seminar course at John Marshall is collaborating with MCC’s Bob Kennedy, law and criminal justice, and Bill Dunning, English, at Damon City Campus.

It’s proven that students can learn better in certain courses when those courses are grouped together and the students form a community. This cohort increases student involvement, motivation and intellectual development, resulting in improved academic achievement and retention.

Learning communities have burgeoned over the past couple decades at community colleges. And now, the “Language and the Law” community at MCC, which combines a juvenile procedures class with advanced writing, is broadening its community to encompass high school students.

“We’re looking forward to this new venture that we believe will be beneficial in many ways for both the high school and college students,” said Robert H. Kennedy, instructor in law and criminal justice, who designed the learning community with William Dunning, English instructor.

Data shows greater academic success among students participating in the learning communities at MCC’s Damon City Campus. Not only are grades higher but students routinely report a higher comfort level in speaking in class, find that peers are more helpful, and better value the courses they took.

Within “Language and the Law,” two dozen MCC students taking CRJ 204 (juvenile procedures) and ENG 200 (advanced writing) are required to write an argumentative paper on a chosen topic important to the juvenile judicial system. The paper must meet advanced writing standards and follow the American Psychological Association Style. The topics include a juvenile death penalty, gangs, curfew and trying juveniles as adults.

Students during their CRJ 204 class learn the tenets of judicial procedure and in writing learn the skills of grammar and prose. This combination is critical for the law enforcement and criminal justice fields that depend on effective communication.

Simultaneously, 11 12th graders in Marshall’s law seminar are writing papers as well. “This innovative program not only gives our high school students a chance to write at college level, but to learn from college peers,” said John R. Hurley, Esq., who teaches the dual credit law course.

Students from John Marshall will come back to MCC’s Damon City Campus on May 8 to help officiate a debate on the juvenile justice system.

According to the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., “Students involved in learning communities become more intellectually mature and responsible for their own learning and develop the capacity to care about the learning of their peers.”

Dianne E McConkey
College and Community Affairs
02/13/2008

John Marshall and MCC students in Bill Dunning's ENG 200 class at DCC.


John R. Hurley, Esq., instructor at John Marshall, talks with some of the high school students before the start of the English class.