Initiatives
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
On September 14 and 15, 2007, the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning sponsored the 2nd annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning showcase. The event encompassed twenty-two paper presentations, twelve roundtable conversations, nine poster presentations, one theater performance and two keynote speeches. Throughout the conference, we were able to participate in a New Learning project where the new knowledge discovered and created at the conference was captured for further study. Over 100 faculty, staff and students from seventeen institutions came to Raleigh to participate in the event.
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is a systematic study of teaching and learning that is documented in a public forum and is available for peer review. The goals of SoTL are to enhance student learning and to improve instructional practices in higher education. A focus on SoTL is emerging across the US and internationally as faculty and students consider how to create the best learning environments. The Carnegie Academy on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) selects scholars to share the ideas and techniques associated with SoTL to advance this important field of scholarship.
Brian Coppola, a CASTL scholar, started out the event with a description of the IDEA project he is a part of. His reflections on faculty partnerships with students set the tone for much of the rest of the conference. A group of fourteen undergraduate students attended from Barton College as a part of a collaboration with Jane Webster. Additionally, the Theater in Education group from Western Carolina University's performance displayed the products of their collaboration between students and faculty.
Friday morning started with the New Learning research group identifying some of the "a-ha" moments experienced by conference attendees. Some of the themes that emerged from the initial analysis were: discovering new strategies and approaches to SoTL research; considering power and evaluation of student work is important; there are connections between disciplines doing SoTL work; nuts and bolts of how to run a conference (the importance of coming to a conference with a goal in mind); faculty need to learn how to teach; the need for structural change within the academic community; and a shift in power within the classroom is taking place. We look forward to doing further analysis with the research team and sharing our new learning as well as this exciting SoTL methodology with the wider SoTL community!
Sally Berenson finished up our conference with a review of how one might do SoTL research using Naturalistic Inquiry. Her words not only spoke to the faculty at the conference, but also to the students who were in attendance. After Dr. Berenson's address, a small group of conference attendees went to the Friday Institute to discuss the themes that were emerging and the directions that the conference and SoTL scholarship might take in the future.
