National Learning Community Conference - November 2025

Successful learning communities rely on the relationships built among students, faculty, and staff. Subsequently, LCs can leverage those relationships to help students connect to the broader campus support ecology. This session describes two network-based reflection activities that can be used in learning communities to assess students’ campus connections, help meet students’ individual needs, and suggest program improvements to help students strengthen their support networks. One activity focuses on first-year students’ transition support networks, while the second examines the professional networks that advanced students are developing relative to their majors and careers. We will describe the network-based reflection activities, including a demonstration of a web-based network-based data collection tool, as well as describing “low-tech” means of doing network-based reflection. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of using individual and community-based network activities in various contexts and suggest activity modifications to suit attendees’ needs.