S[ring  2020 SOTL Faculty Learning Community

April 24 from 1-2:30 pm - 

This month we will be talking about how to create a SoTL Project from our new teaching online experience due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office of Teaching and Learning is writing a group IRB for this specific research topic. We will also be hosting a SOTL Poster Sesson in the Fall on the topic of comparing your teaching and student learning between a face-to-face course.

URL: https://udenver.zoom.us/j/489822842

CANCELLED - May 22 from 11 -1 pm  - Creating a Plan for the Summer to Start, Continue or Complete the SoTL Project 

We will continue our conversation about the Teaching Online via a Pandemic SoTL Projects. We will create goal oriented reading, researching and writing plan for your summer break.

URL: https://udenver.zoom.us/j/489822842

We will be using  the following two texts:

Chick, N.L. (2018). SoTL in action. Illuminating Critical Moments of Practice. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Bishop-Clark, C. & Dietz-Uhler, B. (2012). Engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning. A guide to the process, and how to develop a project from start to finish. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Please join us if you are new to this topic or have been involved for years. 

Sign up on the Office of Teaching and Learning events page https://otl-events.du.edu/

The purpose of the SoTL FLC is to provide support and structure to faculty interested in becoming active SoTL scholars.  Members of the learning community will engage in regular discussion about specific SoTL projects that they are developing.

The SoTL FLC will meet regularly throughout the academic year.  To get the most from the community, you should plan to attend as many meetings as you can.

What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?

Teaching can be categorized in three ways: good teaching scolarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Though good teaching has been defined and operationalized in many ways (e.g., student satisfaction ratings, peer observation judgments, self-reflective portfolios), good teaching is that which promotes student learning and other desired student outcomes. Good teaching will support department, college, and institutional missions and objectives. Decades of SoTL and other educational research provide us with a great deal of information on the practices that help promote learning (e.g., Astin, 1993; Chickering& Gamson, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991).

Scholarly teaching involves taking a scholarly approach to other teaching just as we would take a scholarship approach to other areas of knowledge and practice. Scholarly teachers view teaching as a profession and the knowledge base on teaching and learning as a second discipline in which to develop expertise. Thus, scholarly teachers do things such as reflect on their teaching, use classroom assessment techniques, discuss teaching issues with colleagues, try new things, and read and apply the literature on teaching and learning in their discipline and, perhaps, more generally. Scholarly teaching is closely linked to reflective practice (Brookfield, 1995; Schon, 1983). This conceptions of scholarship teaching is related to what Boyer (1990) labeled the scholarship of teaching.

The scholarship of teaching and learning goes beyond scholarly teaching and involves systematic study of teaching and/or learning and the public sharing and review of such work through presentations, publications or performances. “Study” broadly defined given disciplinary differences in epistemology and the need for interdisciplinary SoTL. SoTL, then, shares established criteria of scholarship in general, such as that it is made public, can be reviewed critically by members of the appropriate community, and can be built upon by others to advance the field (Shulman, 2001). SoTL focuses on teaching and learning at the college level, and is primarily classroom and disciplinary based. Ideally, SoTL also involves application and use. (McKinney, 2004, p. 8. Bold is mine)

 McKinney, K. (2004) Enhancing learning through the scholarship of teaching and learning. The challenges and joys of juggling. San Francisco: Anker Publishing.