Enabling Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Activities Across a Curriculum Design Framework

2020 ◽  
pp. 347-364
Author(s):  
Deanna Meth ◽  
Holly R. Russell ◽  
Rachel Fitzgerald ◽  
Henk Huijser
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Design Studio ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Curriculum Framework

This chapter outlines the multiple ways in which Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) activities might be activated and/or realized through the processes of curriculum and learning design of a degree program. Key dual enablers for these activities are an underpinning curriculum framework, bringing a series of defined developmental steps each underpinned by SoTL, and the Curriculum Design Studio construct as a vehicle for collaborative ways of working between staff, including academics and curriculum designers and students. Drawing on evidence from the practices of four curriculum designers, examples are presented across a wide range of disciplinary areas. In many instances, SoTL not only brings an evidence base to the work, but also the potential for research outputs, thus becoming a useful lever for academic staff to engage in ongoing curriculum design discussions and evidence-informed practice. Such activities serve to mitigate against acknowledged challenges faced by academics such as lack of adequate time for such activities and the pressure to produce research outputs.

scholarly journals Time to say Farewell

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Online Publishing ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
Wide Range

<p>The Journal of Learning Design is about to close. Our last issue was Volume 10 (2) released in March 2017.</p><p>In closing and saying farewell, we would like to sincerely thank those who have written, reviewed, read and referenced the articles we have published in our 27 issues (10 volumes). Thanks must also go to the Queensland University of Technology for encouraging and supporting the journal, particularly since our move to an OJS platform.</p><p>The Journal has built a reputation for quality and diversity of approach – we have covered a wide range of disciplines and learning technologies in accessible ways. We have supported the cause of Open Access publishing and shown how being ‘open’ and ‘free’ need not compromise rigour. We have supported the cause of online publishing and shown it to be a viable alternative that does not take advantage of anyone or treat creative output as a commercial commodity.</p><p>Above all, we have collectively supported the promotion of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. We believe we have also filled an important role to support early career academics and emerging researchers. We have learnt a great deal as editors and are grateful for the opportunities the journal has presented to us both personally and professionally.</p><p>There is no sadness in closing the journal. It is simply time to say Goodbye with good grace and in the knowledge of a job well done. Thank you to all.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Margaret Lloyd</strong>, Queensland University of Technology, Australia<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Nan Bahr, </strong>Griffith University, Australia</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p class="JLDReferences"> </p>

scholarly journals THE STUDY OF UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC FOCUSED ON EDUCATION

2018 ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Josef Malach ◽  
Tatiana Havlásková
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
University Education ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Study Programs ◽  
Social Pedagogue

The paper presents an overview of study felds at universities in the Czech Republic, which are aimed at achieving the qualifcations required for the performance of educational professions, respectively educational roles. The fundamental differentiation criterion is their main focus on one of the aspects of complex education, specifcally education and upbringing. Professions of an educator, special and social pedagogue or a leisure time teacher are considered to be the professions predominantly focused on education. University education for the previously stated occupational subgroups implemented so far is built on study programs that have been created by teams of academic staff and accredited by the Accreditation Commission. They are usually based on the erudition and personal experience of their authors and assessors and without any professional standards. The amendment to the University Education Act has fundamentally changed both the procedures for the accreditation of study programs and the functioning of the newly established accreditation institution — the National Accreditation Ofce. The study introduces the legal standards applicable to accreditation procedures as well as the fundamental changes in functioning of universities due to these rules. Apart from that, the curriculum design includes current education and training practices with a number of national (both positive and negative) characteristics and oddities identifed on the basis of the (inter)national research, analysis, monitoring or good practice. Today´s educational reality is the result of the involvement of stakeholders who reflect it critically in terms of their expectations and needs. They provide feedback to universities necessary for the innovations of graduate profles, the aims and content of their studies and the future educators´ teaching and learning processes. With regard to the implementation of the national digital education strategy, the possibilities of universities to respond to its objectives by preparing new subjects for teacher education are mentioned.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Open Educational Practices through the Lens of Constructive Alignment

Open Praxis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Paskevicius
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
The Core ◽  
Learning Practices ◽  
Open Educational Practices

The act of instruction may be conceptualized as consisting of four elements: learning outcomes, learning resources, teaching and learning activities, and assessments and evaluation. For instructors in higher education, the way they manage the relationships between these elements is what could be considered the core of their instructional practice. For each of the elements, this paper seeks to identify open educational practices, their affordances, and evidence of their utility in supporting the work of teachers in shifting from existing teaching and learning practices to more open educational practices. The literature reviewed and model proposed may provide educational developers or proponents of open education a lens with which to discuss open educational practices with faculty specifically related to their teaching and learning design practices.

scholarly journals Partnerships and Pedagogy: Transforming the BA Online

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Lloyd ◽  
Annika Herb ◽  
Michael Kilmister ◽  
Catharine Coleborne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Learning Objects ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
Learning Platform ◽  
Innovative Learning ◽  
The University

There has been much written recently round the “digital revolution” of universities (Nascimento Cunha et al., 2020). Indeed, in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for universities to adapt and adopt new technological tools for teaching and learning, as both the global world we live in changed, and as students adapted to the continually evolving digital landscape. The BA Online is a new interdisciplinary online presence for the humanities and social sciences, and includes a focus on constructive alignment, innovative learning objects, and social learning. The semester-long courses were built as a supported social learning experience that is purposefully constructed with a narrative. This article reveals how the BA Online project was realised through the use of partnerships, particularly that of the university learning designers who worked very closely with both the online learning platform FutureLearn and academic staff in curriculum design and course transformation.

scholarly journals An Interview-Based Study of Pioneering Experiences in Teaching and Learning Complex Systems in Higher Education

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph T. Lizier ◽  
Michael S. Harré ◽  
Melanie Mitchell ◽  
Simon DeDeo ◽  
Conor Finn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Assessment Task ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
University Level ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of complex systems as a field, students studying complex systems at university level have diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This brings challenges (e.g., wide range of computer programming skills) but also opportunities (e.g., facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and projects) for the classroom. However, little has been published regarding how these challenges and opportunities are handled in teaching and learning complex systems as an explicit subject in higher education and how this differs in comparison to other subject areas. We seek to explore these particular challenges and opportunities via an interview-based study of pioneering teachers and learners (conducted amongst the authors) regarding their experiences. We compare and contrast those experiences and analyze them with respect to the educational literature. Our discussions explored approaches to curriculum design, how theories/models/frameworks of teaching and learning informed decisions and experience, how diversity in student backgrounds was addressed, and assessment task design. We found a striking level of commonality in the issues expressed as well as the strategies handling them, for example, a significant focus on problem-based learning and the use of major student-led creative projects for both achieving and assessing learning outcomes.

Remixing Creativity in Learning and Learning of Creativity: A Case Study of Audio Remix Practice with Undergraduate Students

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Order ◽  
Leo Murray ◽  
Jon Prince ◽  
Julia Hobson ◽  
Sara de Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Diverse Context ◽  
Survey Responses

Testing creativity in tertiary learning activities is a young field of research, and current assessment methods are difficult to apply within the diverse context of media production education, where disciplines range from journalism through to video game production. However, the concept of remix is common across this wide range of media, and offers practitioners ‘endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique and the like’ (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008, p. 22). The conceptual commonality of remix indicates that the study conclusions will have useful implications across a range of media production disciplines. This study aims to consider new methods for testing creativity in media production learning activities and to provide better assessments for learning design. This study focused upon a learner cohort of music technology students that were undertaking a work-integrated learning programme with a record label. To make the students more work-ready and inspire greater creativity, they remixed tracks recorded by professional music artists as part of a unit assessment. Subsequent self-report surveys ( N = 29) found that the process of creating a ‘remix’ enhanced their creativity and provided suggested improvements to the design of the learning experience. Importantly, we found no relationship between the survey responses and objective assessments, indicating that the self-reported improvements in creativity were not simply a measure of how well the students performed the formally assessed tasks. Although more research is needed to establish effective measures of creativity, these findings demonstrate that self-report survey tools can be a powerful tool for measuring creativity and supporting improved iterative learning design.

Involving Public Health Graduate Students and Trainees in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-87
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Reisinger Walker ◽  
Delia L. Lang ◽  
Rebecca C. Woodruff
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Depth Information ◽  
Student Voices ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Level Of Training

As the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research expands in schools of public health to inform pedagogic and curricular approaches, it is crucial to consider how student voices are included in this work. Based on our experience with course-level and curriculum-level evaluations, we describe the process, benefits, and challenges of engaging students and pre- and postdoctoral trainees in SoTL. The degree of student and trainee involvement can vary based on interest, availability, and level of training. Graduate student roles can range from research support to full collaboration. Due to their advanced training, pre- and postdoctoral trainees can take a lead role in SoTL projects. Engaging students and trainees provides multiple benefits. First, the students and trainees gain experience on a research team; second, faculty have support to feasibly conduct SoTL; and third, programs can evolve by gaining in-depth information about courses and curricula. Challenges include student and trainee availability, turnover as students graduate, and availability of resources. Additional factors to consider are how students and trainees are chosen to participate and power differentials between students and faculty. Involving graduate students and trainees in SoTL facilitates the evaluation of pedagogical approaches and has the potential to contribute to the development of a strong evidence base for effective teaching models in public health education.

scholarly journals Legitimating Reflective Writing in SoTL: “Dysfunctional Illusions of Rigor” Revisited

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Cook-Sather ◽  
Sophia Abbot ◽  
Peter Felten
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Reflective Writing ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Scholarly Writing ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Parallel Argument ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Accessible Form ◽  
Pedagogical Approaches ◽  
Representation Of Knowledge

In a classic 2010 article, Craig Nelson critiques his own previously held “Dysfunctional Illusions of Rigor” that for years had constrained his teaching. He demonstrates that certain “rigorous” pedagogical practices disadvantage rather than support learners, and he argues for an expansion of what counts as legitimate pedagogical approaches. We evoke Nelson’s assertions to make a parallel argument regarding the traditional conventions of academic discourse. While formal scholarly writing may be well suited to capturing some of the outcomes of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), these genres can also be exclusive; inadequate to the task of conveying the complex, incomplete, and messy aspects of the work; and neither interesting nor accessible to those who are not required to produce or to read SoTL publications. We propose that reflective writing be legitimated as a form of writing for SoTL, and we use examples from a growing body of reflective writing about pedagogical partnership to illustrate our points. Echoing Nelson, our four reasons for this expansion of legitimacy are: (1) the process of reflection is an essential component of learning; (2) reflective writing captures the complexity of learning; (3) reflection is an accessible form of writing for both new and experienced SoTL authors; and (4) reflective writing is accessible to a wide range of readers. We conclude by emphasizing the potential of including reflective writing among those modes of analysis valued in SoTL to expand what counts as rigor in the construction and representation of knowledge about teaching and learning.

scholarly journals Engaging knowledge and the knower: Design considerations for emerging modes of academic staff development

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (SI) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Gachago ◽  
◽  
Barbara Jones ◽  
Emmanuel Ekale Esambe ◽  
Sonwabo Jongile ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Staff Development ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Code Theory ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Design Considerations ◽  
Academic Staff Development ◽  
Legitimation Code Theory

Curriculum design is a complex undertaking that requires both epistemological and ontological work. While there is an increased need for academics to develop and strengthen their capacity to design curricula, particularly in the context of Universities of Technology, which have gone through an intense period of identity finding and re-curriculation, there is little support for academics involved in this kind of work. This paper reflects on four iterations of an academic staff development intervention aimed at supporting academics engaged in curriculum design and renewal, with a particular focus on designing flexible curricula. Using a learning design model along with eleven design considerations developed by Gachago, et al. (2020) for online academic staff development and Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory – in particular the dimension Specialization - we show how curriculum work and learning design is iterative, contextual and messy. Most importantly, it is relational and involves collective sense-making. We recommend that each context needs to be carefully considered when designing courses, both face-to-face and online, and design considerations (such as motivation, facilitation, structuredness, level of collaboration) impact strongly on participants’ engagement and consequently experiences.

Using IMS Learning Design in Educational Situations

2011 ◽  
pp. 282-294
Author(s):  
Paul Hazlewood ◽  
Amanda Oddie ◽  
Mark Barrett-Baxendale
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Learning Systems ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
E Learning

IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) is a specification for describing a range of pedagogic approaches. It allows the linking of pedagogical structure, content, and services, whilst keeping the three separate, thus providing the potential for reuse as well as forming the basis for interoperability between learning activities and services. As such, this specification promises unprecedented opportunities to build effective tutor support and presence into e-learning systems. The tools that implement the specification have primarily been used for research purposes and have not been targeted at teaching practitioners or learners working in teaching and learning situations. There is a perception amongst practitioners and tool developers that the specification and tools are too technical or difficult for practitioner use. This chapter examines practitioner use of current tools for creating IMS LD and the use of IMS LD units of learning (UoLs) with learners through projects being undertaken at Liverpool Hope University (LHU). It presents some of the experiences and findings gained from these projects. The chapter also examines current technologies and tools for creating and running IMS LD UoLs, and finally discusses the potential and future for IMS LD.

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