Scholarly Teaching and Scholarship

What do you value in art? Is it realism? impressionistic that you prefer? and does this align with your discipline? There is Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters and Picasso’s cubism. These topics flavored our lunchtime conversation before Laurie Richlin’s keynote presentation.

Laurie began by asking who is Charles Drew? He invented a system for saving blood plasma (blood bank) The Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, a teaching-based hospital and medical university, was named in his honor. In addition to her work at the university, Laurie is executive editor of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. She invites strong evidence-based articles about the scholarly approach to teaching and learning and the advancement of scholarship in this field. She mentioned the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching as another community of learning.



Some key points:

- learning outcomes (LOs) are "the center of all good"
- knowing “what is learning?” is a foundation for what we do
- scholarly teaching is not the same as scholarship of teaching and learning
- what are the answers to: What is evidence? Why don’t faculty use it? Why don’t faculty produce it? What are the qualities of evidence?

Teaching without learning is just talk. We may “teach” without anyone learning what we teach. Learning is a physical change; it establishes pathways and connections. In the past teachers talked too often about what they did and not what the students did. (Steadman and Svinicki provide a summary of how Angelo’s and Cross’s classroom assessment techniques, 1993, provide a “Gateway to Better Learning”).

The “scholarly approach” is the investigation of the literature which then directs evidence-based course design and teaching, while “scholarship” is the development of such evidence. Such scholarship requires a systematic evaluation, and ideally it will be placed into the context of the whole knowledge base (not just a pebble on the ground).

Keynote speaker: Laurie Richlin