Expanding the Teaching Commons: Making the Case for a New Perspective on SoTL

As a reflection on O’Meara, Terosky, and Neumann’s (2011) work on scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) faculty development, this essay describes the benefits of SoTL to individual faculty and university goals. In support and expansion of arguments advanced by O’Meara et al., this work calls for the use of SoTL faculty development to promote the shared teaching commons, active recruitment of new SoTL scholars, institutionalization of SoTL values, and integration of SoTL initiatives in both teaching centers and research-focused development offices.

A Student’s Experience and View on College Teaching and Learning

Through my college experience and my reflection on The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered, I have come to recognize several ideas that have greatly impacted me, my views on learning, and my actual learning. My overall experience in college has been beneficial because of the teachers who approached teaching with a more conscious effort and taught me to approach learning and my role as learner in the same way. This essay highlights many of the aspects of the chapter, “Teachers and Learning,” that have been beneficial for me throughout my educational career, and a few notes on changes that may have helped.

From Lessons Learned the Hard Way to Lessons Learned the Harder Way

My departure from traditional methods of teaching and assessment (i.e., lecture and close-ended exams) was prompted years ago by a “gut feeling” that has morphed into an explicit examination of my teaching practice and students’ reactions to it. The scholarly approach and empirical evidence in “Teachers and Learning” (Hutchings, Huber & Ciccone, 2011, Chapter 2) provided me with the scientific and social support I needed to publically challenge existing norms regarding teaching practices, reevaluate my data collection efforts, and advocate for change based on best practices, not on tradition, both inside my classroom and beyond.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Help for Academic Tour Guides

The presence of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), or its absence, has greatly impacted my undergraduate studies. While professors are experts in their subject matter, they do not always know how to reach students. SoTL provides resources to address such disconnects. Just-in-time teaching (JiTT) is one example of a SoTL-informed teaching assignment that can help students learn more effectively. Because SoTL helps professors understand how students learn, it can encourage excellence in the classroom.

Why Bother with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?

This paper argues that the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) matters on at least six interrelated levels. First, SoTL matters because learning matters, and SoTL can help students learn more effectively. Second, it offers professors the tools to more effectively share their disciplinary passions. Third, it offers faculty an avenue for continued intellectual growth. Fourth, SoTL can build strong cross-disciplinary communities that enliven the intellectual climate. Fifth, it can inform institutional policymaking. Finally, SoTL matters even when it does not directly transform institutional policy, because SoTL embodies a spirit of pedagogical innovation that enlivens the quest for learning and reminds us why it is worth pursuing.

Diverse Perspectives, Shared Goals

Challenging Multiple-Choice Questions to Engage Critical Thinking

This article examines a technique for engaging critical thinking on multiple-choice exams. University students were encouraged to “challenge” the validity of any exam question they believed to be unfair (e.g., more than one equally correct answer, ambiguous wording, etc.). The number of valid challenges a student wrote was a better predictor of exam scores than the number of invalid challenges or GPA. The technique also allows instructors to gain insight into the sources of students’ errors that may be useful in improving instruction.

Improving Secondary School Students’ Achievement and Retention in Biology Through Video-Based Multimedia Instruction

The study examined the effects of video-based multimedia instruction on secondary school students’ achievement and retention in biology. In Nigeria, 120 students (60 boys and 60 girls) were randomly selected from four secondary schools assigned either into one of three experimental groups: Animation + Narration; Animation + On-screen Text; Animation + Narration + On-screen Text or a control group. The pretest, posttest experimental, and control group design was adopted. A 50-item multiple-choice objective test termed Biology Achievement Test (BAT) was used for collecting data. The validated BAT was tested for reliability using Kuder Richardson (KR20), which yielded 0.89. T-test, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and Scheffe’s post-hoc analysis were used in determining the significant differences among the four groups. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference among the experimental groups. Generally, students under multimedia instruction performed better than their colleagues in the conventional teaching method. However, students in conventional teaching method had better retention than other groups.

A Multimodal Assignment That Enriches Literacy Learning The Problem

In education the linguistic is the mode most commonly assessed because it is important for students to write clear, complex pieces to show their understanding of content. However, in worlds outside of classrooms additional modes, such as visual, aural, and digital are often used to convey messages. This article demonstrates the value of multimodal learning (the use of more than one mode) as a means for student expression, specifically in responding to young adult literature. Here, I share how students had rich interpretations of a text through the use multiple modes.