Scholarship april2011

Scholarship of and for teaching and learning Workshop for proposers of scholarship projects, April 2011

Senate and Scholarship S/09/4/10, S/10/4/6
October 2009 Senate – range of types of scholarship should be valued/parity of esteem
All types should be reviewed/evaluated
Scholarship and its outcomes should be ‘closely aligned with the mission and supportive of the strategic objectives of the University’ – reflect the distinctiveness of the Open University
‘ While it is clear that not all discipline-based scholarship aligns with The objective of being a world leader in open and distance education, there is a major opportunity to use much of the OU’s Scholarship activity to contribute to realisation of that goal’

5 types of scholarship
Institutional scholarship
Scholarship of teaching
Scholarship for teaching
Scholarship for professional practice
Discipline-based
Strategy and operation of the OU Investigation of one’s own, or others’ teaching, pedagogy, assessment, learning design etc Critical development of content and related pedagogy contributing to development of modules, curricula, Inter-disciplinary/disciplinary teaching application of enquiry, data, innovations etc to develop areas of professional practice & learning outside the OU Discovery research, discipline-based

Broad criteria for scholarship of/for teaching
Externality – external representation & capable of recognition in a wider domain
Subject to peer review
Outcomes usable by others - cumulative
Makes a significant difference to the contribution of the Open University’s strategy & mission as a world leader in online, open and distance education – and its pedagogy
Evaluated – explicit methods of enquiry, data collection & analysis
Aligned – with CAU and L&T strategy
Viable – can be delivered & is coherent short and long term

Capable of use & elaboration by others
Need to review at the beginning how others develop and use the pedagogy or technology you’re interested in, so you know how your context relates/differs & what issues are widely relevant
Research/enquiry methods need to be explicit and detailed so others can judge the relevance of your findings
Teachers/users not part of your context need a lot of clear and understandable explanation of what was done and why in order to interpret your work and use it themselves – similar to reuse of OERs where teachers want explanation of how and why something was used as well as to access the open resource

Capable of use & elaboration by others (2)
What was the teaching & learning concern/issue addressed?
Why did you need to engage with it ?
What was the topic/discipline and level? How many students were involved and their characteristics?
What were your aims in the scholarship project? How do you define key terms you are using, where relevant (e.g. online community, formative assessment, e-assessment, interactive CMAs etc)
What evidence was collected and what is its significance?
What conclusions do you draw on the basis of the evidence?
What are the limitations of the work? What further scholarship is required?
Provision of drafts of data collection instruments used, if relevant.
(a list adapted from Kirkwood and Price (2011) Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology: A guide to evidence-based practice for academics (restricted draft currently)

At the design and planning stage e.g. via critical readers, advisory group, expert consultant, SIG etc
During the delivery stage e.g.via regular project reports to knowledgeable others
At end of project report e.g. delivery of the report to an advisory group or internal committee which minutes the discussion
At follow-up action stage e.g. through reporting back to CAU, advisory group or others
These opportunities for peer commenting and advice should be included In planning and reports. Minutes or notes of the results are evidence of Peer review carried out and its impact

Externality – external representation & recognition in a wider domain
Issues are framed in ways that others would recognise
Literature is engaged with
Repositories such as the Knowledge Network as well as ORO are accessible externally & can be used
Planning for publication in relevant journals is included where relevant and/or as part of longer term trajectory
Conference presentation(s) used as a stage in progressing from good reportage to publication in a recognised journal
Willingness to referee for a journal can help in shaping one’s own scholarship towards how an external readership would relate to it and engage
Making bids for funding are included where relevant

Engage with the literature Forums Computer mediated communication Computer-supported Collaborative Learning Learning theories Communities of practice Activity theory Social constructivism Distributed cognition Boundaries, systems Discussion/dialogue/ Publication models Knowledge construction Networked learning Forums in your discipline

Get an overview and be selective
Barab,S., Makinster, J., Moore, J., Cunningham, D. (2001) Designing and Building an Online Community: The Struggle to Support Sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum, Educational Technology, Research and Development, 49(4): 71-96
Baym, N. (1998) The Emergence of Online Community, CyberSociety 2.0, in Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community , S.G. Jones, Thousand Oaks, London Sage: 35-68
Bradshaw, P., Powell, S. and Terrell, I. (2005) Developing engagement in Ultralab’s online communities of enquiry, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 42(3), pp205-215
Brown, J.S., Collins, A. and Duguid, P. (1989) Situated cognition and the culture of learning, Educational Researcher , 18, (1) 32-42
Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. (1991) Organizational learning and communities of practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovating, Organization Science, 2(1), 40-57
Brown, R. (2001) The process of Community-Building in Distance Learning Classes, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2) http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_brown.asp
Carmichael, P., Fox, A., McCormick, R., Procter, Honour, L. (2006) ‘Teachers' Professional Networks in and out of School.’ Research Papers in Education (forthcoming).
Fox, A., Carmichael, P., McCormick, R. & Procter, R. (2006) ‘Teachers' Learning through networks.’ Paper to be presented to AERA, San Francisco, April.
Garrison,D.R., Anderson, T. and Archer, W. (2001) Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education, The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol 15 NO 1 pp7-23
Goodfellow, R. (2005) Virtuality and the Shaping of Educational Communities, Communities, Education, Communication and Information, 5(2): 113-129
Granovetter, M.S. (1973) The Strength of Weak Ties, The American Journal of Sociology , Vol 78 (6), 1360-1380
Gudzial and Carroll (2002) Explaining the lack of dialogue in computer-supported collaborative learning, Conference paper in Proceedings of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning: foundations for a CSCL community, conference (online) http://newmedia.colorado.edu/cscl/18.html (accessed 5 October 2005)
Hakkarainen, K., Palonen, T., Paavola, S. & Lehtinen, E. (2004). Communities of Networked Expertise: professional and educational perspectives . Amsterdam: Elsevier.
From Thorpe, et al (2007) Talk in virtual contexts: reflecting on participation and online learning models. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 15(3) 349-366

Evaluation
Scholarship may itself be a form of evaluation e.g. one evaluates the CMC delivery in your own department or institution, using a literature review to refine research questions and set one’s own findings within that literature – this is the scholarship not the CMC being evaluated
If your proposal is to develop something or to introduce a new technology, the scholarship needs to be a project developed to evaluate this and relate it to peers and the literature – the peer review and externality criteria
Be aware of the limitations of your own scholarship and its boundaries with related areas – enables you to ‘place’ your own work
Learn from peer review and change/develop your scholarship as a result

Alignment
CAU and Nation leadership will select projects for inclusion
Shaping your aims and objectives needs direct answer to the question ‘how does your scholarship contribute to your unit’s priorities & strategy?’
Ensure also you relate directly to ‘how does your scholarship make a significant contribution to the OU’s leading role in open, online and distance education?’

Viability
Much research/action research errs on the side of data collection rather than analysis, report and dissemination. Most data is never reported
Planning needs to be realistic in terms of the time required to meet criteria for externality and peer review
Money is difficult to spend (!) so be realistic in terms of the scale of activity
Realistic expectations about the time that others can contribute should also be evident
Take the long term view – build up good scholarship by starting from good foundations where impact builds up over time and on the basis of sound procedures at each stage

Research into the scholarship of teaching: an ascending scale of conceptions of scholarship of teaching
Knowing the literature on teaching by collecting and reading it
Improving teaching by applying the literature on teaching in an attempt to improve one’s own teaching
Improving student learning by investigating one’s own students’ learning and own teaching
Improving student learning by relating the literature on teaching and learning to discipline-specific literature
Improving student learning within the discipline generally by collecting & communicating results of one’s own work on teaching and learning within the discipline
Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin and Prosser (2000) Higher Education Research & Development, 19(2) pp155-168

Model of scholarship of T with 4 dimensions
Uses informal theories
General literature on teaching & learning
Engages both T&L and discipline literature
Conducts action research, enquiry
Effectively none/unfocused reflection
Reflection in action
Reflection on own teaching & context – what do I need to know and how?
None
Informal only
Local & national conferences
Publishes in scholarly journals
Sees teaching in a teacher-focused way
Sees teaching in a student-focused way
knowledge base reflection dimension communication dimension conceptual dimension

Developing a culture of scholarship of/for teaching: knowledge base, reflection, communication, conception
Externality – external representation & capable of recognition in a wider domain. Relates to the literature
Outcomes usable by others – explicit, cumulative, communicated
Makes a significant difference to the contribution of the Open University’s strategy & mission as a world leader in online, open and distance education – and its pedagogy
Evaluated – explicit methods of enquiry, data collection & analysis
Aligned – with CAU and L&T strategy
Viable – can be delivered & is coherent short and long term

Scholarship april2011

by marysthorpe

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 41

Statistics

Scholarship april2011 Presentation Transcript