Foreword: 2019 International Collaborative Writing Groups (ICWGs)

Collaborative research and writing across disciplines and institutions happens frequently in discipline-based research. However, opportunities for cross-collaborative scholarship in teaching and learning is limited in comparison (Kahn et al., 2013; MacKenzie and Myers, 2012). Yet the value of larger scale, team-based approaches to scholarly writing is well recognised in building networks and in providing a deeper understanding of a topic as informed by multi-disciplinary and/or international perspectives (Marquis et al., 2014; 2015; Matthews et al., 2017). It is for these reasons that the International Collaborative Writing Groups (ICWG) program that crystallises around the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference is so valuable. ICWGs bring together academics, professional staff, and students to co-author learning and teaching articles on topics of shared interest. The aims are two-fold: 1) to build capacity of participants to work and write with international collaborators, and 2) to contribute meaningful and topical perspectives to the SoTL literature.&nbsp

Creative innovation takes a (team teaching) family

Team teaching can be a valuable means of enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration, interdisciplinary study, and pedagogical innovation, but the logistical and intellectual challenges can seem too daunting to overcome. In this essay, we share the story of how four faculty members from professional writing, communications, and computing sciences developed a team teaching “family” as we imagined, created, launched, and ran an innovative experiential learning program at our university. The Design Thinking Studio in Social Innovation is a semester-long program worth four full courses of credit which brought us together with 14 intrepid students from across the university to learn and apply design thinking, Scrum project management, and social innovation theories to a large-scale civic engagement project. Here we explore the faculty lived experience during the pilot semester and how our teach teaching family was crucial to our personal and professional success in this high-stress environment. We then offer tips for creating your own team teaching “family.

Creative Innovation Takes a (Team Teaching) Family

Team teaching can be a valuable means of enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration, interdisciplinary study, and pedagogical innovation, but the logistical and intellectual challenges can seem too daunting to overcome. In this essay, we share the story of how four faculty members from professional writing, communications, and computing sciences developed a team teaching “family” as we imagined, created, launched, and ran an innovative experiential learning program at our university. The Design Thinking Studio in Social Innovation is a semester-long program worth four full courses of credit which brought us together with 14 intrepid students from across the university to learn and apply design thinking, Scrum project management, and social innovation theories to a large-scale civic engagement project. Here we explore the faculty lived experience during the pilot semester and how our teach teaching family was crucial to our personal and professional success in this high-stress environment. We then offer tips for creating your own team teaching “family.

Survey of research approaches utilised in the scholarship of teaching and learning publications

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been described as the fastest growing academic development movement in higher education. As this field of inquiry matures, there is a need to understand how SoTL research is conducted. The purpose of our study was to inform this debate by investigating research approaches used in SoTL publications. We analysed 223 empirical research studies published from 2012 to 2014 in three explicitly focused SoTL journals. We classified the studies as either qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods using an analytical framework devised from existing literature on research methods. We found that the use of the three research designs was fairly evenly distributed across the papers examined: qualitative (37.2%), quantitative (29.6%), and mixed methods (33.2%). However, there was an over-reliance on data collection from a single source in 83.9% of papers analysed, and this source was primarily students. There was some, but limited, evidence of the use of triangulation through the use of multiple data collection instruments (e.g. survey, assessment tasks, grade databases). Similarly, only one-third of publications classified as mixed methods integrated the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative and quantitative data equally within the study. We conclude that current SoTL research is characterised by methodological pluralism but could be advanced through inclusion of more diverse approaches, such as close reading, and adoption of strategies known to enhance the quality of research, for example, triangulation and visual representation

Defining Immersive Learning

Immersive learning practices (ILPs) in higher education are multidisciplinary in nature and varied in levels of integration into the student learning process. They appear in a variety of higher education programs such as teacher education, social work, law, and health sciences, and in practices such as service-learning, study away, internships, and foreign-language instruction. Based on observations of teaching and data from an open-ended survey and semi-structured interviews with post-secondary educators from three different countries, this study theorizes that immersive learning practices are composed of six distinct underlying theoretical components that work in combination. These six components can be used to describe, define, compare, and design different types of structured ILPs. This study suggests that ILPs are pedagogically distinct from other forms of engaged and experiential learning. Read the corresponding ISSOTL blog post here

Technical Mastery in the Digital Arts

As an instructor of multimedia design, I am interested in the ways in which students value and prioritize their education. Do students view the aesthetic, the theoretical and the technical aspects of their learning equally? Do they understand that success in most digital media careers depends on being both an excellent designer in a creative and visual context but also in being appropriately adept at using the tools and technologies available to them? What does a technically sound digital media student look like? My proposal is to present research findings that I have gathered through an ongoing scholarship of teaching and learning project and to discuss the many points of view that others in this field hold. How technical learning is addressed in the classroom is clearly very important but so is having an understanding of what success looks like with this aspect of teaching and learning

Student Perceptions of Difficulty and Enjoyment

An unexpected finding of recent research into how students can best learn technology in design programs was that students often seem to confuse the concepts of difficulty with enjoyment. When asked what aspects of their courses they find the most difficult to learn—technical issues or aesthetic issues—students consistently reported that it was harder to learn the required technology and easier to learn the aesthetic material. From the perspective of the instructor, this response is confounding. Learning the appropriate technology is merely a matter of rote learning. There are ways to make learning software less tedious but the reality is that students must simply do the time. Developing a strong understanding of aesthetics on the other hand is not as straightforward or easy to master. This presentation will discuss how the management of student perceptions of the learning process is essential to quality learning

Perceptions of Email Usage in the Academic Environment

As academics, we often make the assumption that email has enriched student-teacher interactions. Students can now communicate with a teacher from any location at any time by simply clicking on the “send” button. Both students and teachers believe that email has extended normal office hours into virtual space and time allowing each party to interact each other as long as they are wired. This perception should be assessed in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Virtual meetings take place without physical interaction. There is the potential for a lack of any real engagement amongst the participants. Assessments need to me made as to how much virtual teacher-student interactions have supplanted traditional face-to-face meetings and what effect this has on the educational outcomes of students who engage in this new form of communication. Throughout this session, general perceptions on email usage in academia will be analyzed and shared

Methods of Reflection about Service Learning: Guided vs. Free, Dialogic vs. Expressive, and Public vs. Private

Reflection is a key component of service learning, but research shows that in order to maximize learning, the reflection must be of high quality. This paper compares the affordances of three different models of written reflection in engendering students’ higher-order thought processes. Student reflections were compared across axes of guided versus free response, dialogic versus expressive reflection, and public versus private reflection. Results indicate that guided reflection yields more response than free reflection does. Dialogic and guided reflections both yield more integration of knowledge from service learning activities within a larger context. Results for public reflection versus private were mixed. Ethical considerations for public reflection are also discussed

An introduction to visual theory and practice in the digital age

ix, 176 p. ; 22 cm