The scholarship of teaching is not merely teaching our scholarship. Nor is it simply teaching well .... The scholarship of teaching means that we invest in our teaching the intellectual powers we practice in our research.

Bender & Gray (1999), http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v22n1/p03.html

Efforts to improve teaching and learning have prompted a wide range of challenging questions. How does active learning in large classes influence students’ comprehension of the lecture? Does online discussion improve students’ understanding of reading materials? What do writing assignments contribute to student learning in a course?

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning addresses questions such as these by systematically examining student learning. What has been discovered by others who have addressed this question? How can I identify answers to this question through my own teaching? How can answers that emerge contribute to the work of a broader community of scholars?

From this perspective, teaching can be approached as a form of scholarly work, providing a setting in which:

"… faculty frame and systematically investigate questions related to student learning – the conditions under which it occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth – and do so with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it."

Pat Hutchings & Lee Shulman, The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: New Elaborations, New Developments. Change, 31(5), p. 13, emphasis added.

Once you have a question about student learning in mind, the next step is to determine how to address this question systematically through your teaching:

Design

• What have others done to address similar questions in their teaching?
• What assignments, activities, or other features of your course can help address your question?

Evidence

• What indicators of student learning will be relevant for addressing your question? How can you systematically examine these learning indicators?
• How will you make sense of the student learning that you observe? How have others examined similar evidence of student learning?

Making It Public

• Who can provide an informed review or critique of your observations? How can you make your work available for others to adapt or extend?

Options for making work public include developing course portfolios for others to review, presenting on campus or at conferences, and writing for publication.

To help you review studies of teaching and learning in your discipline, CIDR and UW Libraries have compiled a list of periodicals which publish articles on teaching. UW Librarians have also developed a web site to help you identify scholarly articles on teaching and learning in your discipline. To access these resources, see

http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/journals.html

It is important to acknowledge and respond to students’ feedback, but responding does not mean simply fulfilling student requests. Rather, being responsive means considering student input and finding ways to help align student expectations with your teaching and course goals.

For example, you might choose to make a change recommended by students, but you might also address student perceptions by helping them see the value or purpose of something that they identified as unhelpful.

How can CIDR help?

CIDR can assist by consulting on:

• Formulation of learning goals, research questions, and plans for collecting evidence in a course.
• Development of documentation procedures, consent forms, or other supporting materials.
• Interpretation of data and implications for your teaching.
• Identifying others who might want to collaborate with you and extend your work beyond your particular course.

For more information and additional resources, see http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/consulting/sotl.html

To arrange a meeting with a CIDR consultant, call 206-543-6588, or send a message to cidr@u.washington.edu