This is a space where everyone is invited to provide information about a
book that has inspired, a website that has been an invaluable resource, a
popular publication that might lead us to an interesting discussion of SOTL.
Please put the name of the resource in the Subject Line, and provide the
full reference or link in the body of the message, along with an annotation
or explanation. This is yet another way for us to build understanding of
SOTL.
Elizabeth Wallace
Discussions started by Elizabeth Wallace
Welcome to the discussion. I look forward to working with you all.
To begin, let me comment on how frequently a new turn of phrase creeps into popular usage, and how quickly we start using it, without really thinking about what it means. Per se
So as we start our discussion about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, I?d like to invite you to share with us what that phrase means to you, and your practice. And can we agree to use SOTL as an acronym, to save hours of typing the full words?
Let me open by saying that, in the past decade or so, SOTL, has been increasingly applied to developments in Higher Education. I?d like to suggest that we follow that trend. Whereas there is a rich and varied body of research that considers teaching and learning in the K-12 institutions, and we can certainly draw on that literature for our discussion, I?d like to ask that we focus on the Post-Secondary and Adult Education panels. If there?s a big demand, I?m sure Sylvia will set up a separate K-12 forum later on. Hmmm?am I constraining our definition with that suggestion?
I mention Adult Education because it is near and dear to my heart. As a graduate of the doctoral program at OISE/University of Toronto, where ?self-directedness? was even applied to cleaning up after ourselves in the student kitchen, many of the principles that underpin SoTL have informed my work for years. Brookfield and Cross and Mezirow, some of the educators whose work has helped to promote SOTL, and whose writings I hope we will discuss during this seminar, are also highly regarded in Adult Education. It?s a pleasure for me to be discussing the theories and practices in these overlapping fields.
As we start, I?d like to mention three points, in particular. First, the duration of this forum is deliberately planned to coincide with the Educational Developers Caucus at the University of Victoria, in beautiful British Columbia. I?m introducing SCoPE to the participants in my presentation on Feb. 22, and, since the conference is focusing on SoTL, my hope is that the online discussion in this forum will contribute to the success of the event. SCoPE already has an international membership, and we welcome new members who will be joining us from Victoria in a few days.
Secondly, you?ll notice that I?ve started a thread on Annotated Bibliography and Favourite Resources, so that we can start building a repository of our most loved reading and sources. Please put the title of your recommendation in the Subject Line of your posting, and give us a little flavour of the book or website, along with details and links that can help us find the resource for ourselves.
And finally, let me go back to my opening comment about helping others to understand SoTL. Many of you are familiar with Wikipedia the remarkable online reference wiki that has been built by the contribution of dedicated people worldwide. When I searched for the term Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, I found that there was no such entry in W. So I added it, and you find it by clicking here! As we refine our definitions here, let?s contribute to Wikipedia so that people worldwide can refer to it. (Click on my name in SCoPE to send me a private message if you need private help on using Wikipedia).
And now it?s time to start the conversation. For those who need a place to start, let me direct you to CASTL. However, the question is, what does SOTL mean to you?
This is the first of 10 weekly updates, which will keep the SFU community informed of developments. Events in the past couple of months include:
- The decision to migrate from WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 to 6 was made, and planning has started.
- A test version of CE6 was set up on a Lotus server, and some of the early adopters and support personnel experimented with the functionality.
- On Jan. 18, the WebCT administrators announced the launch of a pilot CE6 server, accessible to everyone at SFU: http://webctpilot.sfu.ca . The experimental courses on Lotus were moved over (or discarded if no longer needed). Any SFU faculty member can ask for a container to build a course, effective immediately.
- A working group representing WebCT Admin staff, ACS, LIDC and CODE are meeting weekly to address migration issues.
- A Co-ordinating committee of units that have special needs, e.g. GDBA, MoT, Co-op, Library, CODE met with ACS and LIDC staff to address consistency across SFU.
- Training sessions are being co-ordinated by LIDC and announcements will be made about the first offerings in March.
Chris Groeneboer has drawn attention to an announcement made by Jill Grose in one of the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) networks.
Jill is announcing a comparison of LMS platforms which has been published on the website of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies (CTLET) at Brock University. It's actually a wiki in their WebCT Instructor Community site, so anyone can add to the information provided. How kind of the Brock folks to make this so easily accessible and to invite us to collaborate on enriching it. The document compares Angel, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Sakai and WebCT. That seems to cover everything!! Bravo Brock.