During the last two decades learning communities, which are felt to have benefits that extend beyond students to faculty and the institution, have expanded to include many different models. This digest reviews five major higher education learning community models currently in existence: (1) Linked courses, which link cohorts of students taking two courses in common with one course typically content-based and the other application-based. Faculty in each course may teach independently or together; (2) learning clusters where instead of linking two courses together, a student cohort is linked in three or four courses, which often serve as the students' entire course load; (3) freshmen interest groups (FIGs), which are linked around academic majors and include a peer-advising component that allows students to discuss course work and other college adjustment problems. Faculty play a lesser role in FIGs; (4) federated learning communities, the most complex of the models, in which a cohort of students takes three theme-based courses in addition to a three-credit seminar taught by a Master Learner a professor from a different discipline who takes the courses and fulfills all class requirements along with the students; and (5) coordinated studies, in which faculty and students participate in full-time active learning based on an interdisciplinary theme. (CH)