The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) allows institutions to achieve the goals required for student learning and success. The purpose of this paper is to address recommendations for the implementation of SoTL that should have relevant input from students. These include, but are not limited to, better communication, evaluation, continuing education, and learning networks. With the proper implementation of these recommendations, professors can effectively teach the next generation of leaders.
Tag: Special Edition
Utopia University: A Faculty Member Reflects on Recommendations for the Future of SoTL
The Friction between Faculty Evaluations and Rewards: Reconsidering Teaching’s Rhetoric and Recognition
Educators know the reality and the inadequacies of current evaluation systems – there are gaps between what is defined as good teaching, how faculty members are assessed, and how they are rewarded (or not) for their work in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Student evaluations are ineffective tools to assess teachers. Educators must be given the opportunity to show their work and achievements and to develop a rich community of support, but they also must be evaluated in various formats to provide the best learning opportunities for students.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Transformation and Transgression
Chapter Five of The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered (2011) suggests that traditional research scholarship methodology can inform and reform the ways in which we value and evaluate teaching. The authors discuss applying research methodology as way to complete this process. This article suggests that using theoretical frames, often used in qualitative methodology, creates another way to transform perceptions of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Two theoretical frames, transformative learning and critical consciousness, are explored and applied to the author’s own teaching experiences and discipline mandates.
When Rubrics Collide: One Writing Tutor’s Experience Negotiating Faculty and Institutional Assessments
This article recounts one undergraduate writing tutor’s experience helping a fellow peer navigate an institutional assessment rubric that seemed to contrast the assessment criteria provided by the student’s instructor. This article presents a reflection on that experience, framed by Hutchings, Huber, and Ciccone’s (2011) work on institutional assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Institutional Assessment and the Intellectual Work of Teaching and Learning in First Year Composition
Institutional assessment initiatives can provide opportunities to make the intellectual work of teaching and learning in composition studies more visible. Reciprocally, the scholarship of teaching and learning’s situatedness within disciplinary norms and values can enhance institutional assessments, providing a check on the tendency to rely on singular, overly generalized mechanisms for capturing course- or program-level data. This article shares one example of the reciprocal relationship that can occur between disciplinary and institutional assessment initiatives.
Improving SoTL Programs: The Impact of a Student Sector
O’ Meara, Terosky, and Neumann (2011) revealed a need to integrate faculty teaching and learning centers with research development programs to further both individual professors’ goals of creating innovative pedagogical practices and institutional goals for faculty publication and effective decision making regarding funding allocation. This article suggests that universities implement a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) or teaching-learning enhancement center (TLEC) student sector within these integrated faculty development programs. This will foster more pedagogical ideas and a more democratic institution by giving students a voice in their education while enriching the knowledge of students, faculty, and administrators.
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.