scholarly journals MegaSoTL: Supporting pedagogical research across multiple institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Nasrollahian Mojarad ◽  
Laura Cruz

MegaSoTL projects are SoTL projects that generate evidence of learning from multiple institutions. While being increasingly practiced, MegaSoTL projects and their potential contribution to improve higher education pedagogy remain understudied in higher education literature. In this paper, we introduce Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (TILT) and ManyClasses, as two MegaSoTL case studies and we describe their research goals, processes and administration. We then discuss the potentials and challenges of MegaSoTL projects for educational developers to promote the scholarship of teaching and learning at micro and mega levels. The paper concludes with recommendations to develop a collaborative infrastructure for supporting MegaSoTL projects.

Author(s):  
Geraldine Lefoe ◽  
Robyn Philip ◽  
Meg O'Reilly ◽  
Dominique Parrish

<span>The ALTC Exchange (formerly the Carrick Exchange), is a national repository and networking service for Australian higher education. The Exchange was designed to provide access to a repository of shared learning and teaching resources, work spaces for team members engaged in collaborative projects, and communication and networking services. The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) established the Exchange for those who teach, manage and lead learning and teaching in higher education. As part of the research conducted to inform the development of the Exchange, models for peer review of educational resources were evaluated. For this, a design based research approach was adopted. Findings from the literature and feedback from key practitioners and leaders within the sector are discussed in this paper. Finally, key recommendations for implementation are identified.</span>


Author(s):  
Kathryn Janet Meldrum ◽  
Kristi Giselsson

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been suggested as an ideal vehicle for engaging faculty with professional development for teaching in higher education. However, previous authors have identified that faculty find writing about SoTL difficult. The aim of this chapter is to support educational developers (EDs) to collaborate with faculty to support writing. Two theoretical frameworks to support collaboration are proposed: the first, the Knowledge Transforming Model of Writing, to assist with the process of writing; the second, an adaptation of Brigugilio's working in the third space framework to support collaboration. The authors utilise both frameworks to reflect on their own SoTL collaboration and subsequently pose questions to support faculty and EDs to do the same. Ultimately, it is proposed that collaboration not only enhances the practices of faculty and EDs but improves what should be an important priority for the wider academy: the learning outcomes of students.


1969 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Laura Servage

This article examines the strong interest in the scholarship of teaching that has developed since Ernest Boyer introduced the idea in 1990. Although there are many benefits to be realized from a greater emphasis on teaching in higher education, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) “movement” has been subjected to little critical scrutiny. This work, however, proposes that SoTL is inextricably tied to the entrenchment of neo-liberalization in higher education. Marshall’s (1996) notion of “busno-power,” an extension of Foucault’s thinking on governmentality, is used to demonstrate how SoTL may be viewed as a force that shapes both instructors and students into “entrepreneurial learners” who conceptualize education primarily for its use value. The article concludes with a consideration of how this eventuality may be guarded against by using Foucault’s methods to situate SoTL sociologically, and historically.  


Author(s):  
Johanna Tunon

Action Research in Teaching and Learning: A Practical Guide to Conducting Pedagogical Research in Universities by Lynn S. Norton provides a useful resource for those in higher education interested in using action research. Action research takes place when educational practitioners reflect on their approach to education and test pedagogical theories with research that is then presented for consideration within the institution and in the wider academic arena. After making a case for the use of action research as an important part of the scholarship of teaching and learning that should take place in higher education, the author discusses the steps for conducting action research— from identifying the problem to addressing quantitative and qualitative research approaches and publishing the results.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Deborah West ◽  
Helen Stephenson

In the current higher education environment, providing high quality teaching and learning experiences to students has moved beyond desirable to essential. Quality improvement takes many forms, but one core aspect to ensure sustainable improvement is the development of a culture of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Developing such an institutional culture is surprisingly challenging yet essential to improving the status of teaching in higher education (HE), being successful in teaching and learning awards and grants, and, improving the student experience. The Australian Government’s Promoting Excellence Network initiative funds networks to foster collaboration between HE institutions to improve outcomes in national learning and teaching award and grant programs. Supported by this funding, the South Australian / Northern Territory Promoting Excellence Network (SANTPEN), a grouping of six institutions, formed. Bringing together a diverse network of institutions, similar only by virtue of geographic location is challenging. This paper describes the first three years of SANTPEN’s journey from the context of our own development with the concept of SoTL and how we applied this to build a culture of SoTL in and between our institutions. It also demonstrates how a modest budget can be put to effective use to benefit those immediately involved, institutional objectives and the aims of the national funding body. We provide evidence of this effectiveness and conclude with our collective aspirations for the future of SANTPEN and other likeminded and funded networks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-7
Author(s):  
Alisa Percy ◽  
◽  
Nona Press ◽  
Martin B Andrew ◽  
Vikk Pollard ◽  
...  

When the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice — JUTLP as we have come to know it — was established in 2004, it was to fill a perceived gap in publications related to teaching and learning practice in higher education, with practice being the operative word (Carter, 2004). While other higher education journals existed, they were mainly the purview of academic developers and the most prodigious of disciplinary academics researching their teaching. In contrast, JUTLP was to be built as open-access and its readership as ‘practitioners looking for good ideas based soundly on a body of accessible theory and research’ (McInnes, 2004, n.p.). JUTLP was established in the Australian context at a time when promoting excellence in teaching and learning was regarded as an important government agenda to improve the student experience, and not accidentally, coincided with the creation of the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (later the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and later again the Office for Learning and Teaching). The Carrick Institute supported national cross-institutional grants and fellowship schemes, and promoted national networks of educational research into practice to support the mission of the then Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) to ensure all ‘Australian higher education institutions provide high quality teaching and learning for all students’ (Carrick, 2009). How times have changed.


Author(s):  
Leticia Anderson ◽  
Lynette Riley

Abstract The shift to massified higher education has resulted in surges in the recruitment of staff and students from more diverse backgrounds, without ensuring the necessary concomitant changes in institutional and pedagogical cultures. Providing a genuinely inclusive and ‘safer’ higher education experience in this context requires a paradigm shift in our approaches to learning and teaching in higher education. Creating safer spaces in classrooms is a necessary building block in the transformation and decolonisation of higher education cultures and the development of cultural competency for all staff and graduates. This paper outlines an approach to crafting safer spaces within the classroom, focusing on a case study of strategies for teaching and learning about race, racism and intersectionality employed by the authors in an undergraduate Indigenous Studies unit at an urban Australian university.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-102
Author(s):  
Ruth Pickford

This article outlines an innovative and highly practical model that holistically and synoptically integrates the factors that underpin strategic approaches to developing teaching excellence within a course, an institution or more widely. It combines and articulates the various drivers towards excellence widely discussed currently, from the perspectives of students, institutions and those who teach them. Integral to the model are the elements of progression, satisfaction and graduate outcomes that align fully with current imperatives around teaching excellence. Drawing upon extant elements of Higher Education pedagogy, this article adopts a Boyerian approach to scholarship integrating original research that has been applied in diverse contexts in an innovative way (Boyer, 1990), to provide a route-map or blueprint for the design and delivery of curriculum, teaching and learning environments. The model will be of use to individuals, course directors, learning and teaching directorates, institutional leaders working in higher education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 414-418
Author(s):  
Nancy Chick ◽  
Katarina Martensson

A review of Mick Healey, Kelly E. Matthews, and Alison Cook-Sather’s Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Creating and Contributing to Scholarly Conversations across a Range of Genres 


Author(s):  
Peter Ling

In this chapter, understandings of the scholarship of teaching and learning and of education research are reviewed, exploring the boundaries of each and the possibilities for overlap. Distinguishing these concepts has practical value in defining the components of academic work, and the form of credit given for academic activities. The conclusion reached is that an academic activity may involve both scholarship of teaching and learning and education research, provided that, inter alia, it involves systematically investigating a contentious issue or a gap in current understandings of education, in a form sufficient to warrant conclusions that have the potential to contribute to current understandings of pedagogy or other aspects of education. A sample of current publications concerning scholarship of teaching and learning is reviewed to illustrate possible relationships between writing related to the scholarship of learning and teaching and education research.


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