This Online Concentration Allows Students to Design Their Educational Journey in an Intentional Learning Community
Antioch University Online and Extended Programs has launched a Transformative Learning Community (TLC) Concentration in the MA Individualized Studies in Social Sciences program. During the two-year program, students engage in their own process of self-authoring, within a community of colleagues and faculty mentors, and essentially in the design of their own Master’s Degree.
“This new concentration supports the higher purpose of what online learning could be,” said Dr. Terry Ratcliff, Provost for Distance and Extended Education. “Students can design their own educational path with a focus on learning, community, leadership, and social evolution.”
The TLC Concentration offers the opportunity for learning in community, acknowledging a tension between two learning paradigms: self-authored and nested in an intentional Transformative Learning community. Students experience inquiry-based learning within the power of conversation and connection with their mentors and community.
“The focus of the program is on the understanding that we have the capacity to author our own lives from a place of resourcefulness, creativity, and possibility,” said Laurel Tien, Director of the Transformative Learning Community Concentration. “We encourage them to explore their intellectual curiosity, their intuition, their imagination, their heart’s desire, and their calling and to find their way toward making all of that become their work in the world. We offer a rich wealth of faculty resources to support all of this.”
The first three semesters of the program offer a foundation of concepts and experiences. Classes include Transformative Learning Communities: Practice and Praxis, Natural Learning Relationships, Epistemologies of Learning, Research and Inquiry, Learning as a Living System, and Planning for Individualized Studies. The second three semesters hold space for exploring a student’s inquiry, which culminates in a capstone project or thesis.
“This program can be a pathway to discovering the contribution they are called to make—to themselves, to their community, to humanity, to the planet,” Tien added.
Students will begin the program in May 2020, with additional entry points in summer and winter. Antioch values students and their experiences; therefore no GMAT is required.
