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INTERNET RESOURCES: Navigating the Web of discourse on the scholarship of teaching and learning: An annotated Webliography

by Musa Abdul Hakim

We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old “teaching versus research ” debate and give the familiar and honorable term “scholarship” a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work. Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one’s investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one’s knowledge effectively to students.

—E. L. Boyer, 1990

In 1998, the Carnegie Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts launched a multiyear project called the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) to support the development of a scholarship of teaching and learning in academe. In the present academic environment, where teaching is still undervalued in favor of research, the initiative has begun to stimulate a change of academic culture that some feel is long overdue.

Due to the lack of a comprehensive index to the growing number of sites on the scholarship of teaching and learning, finding materials on this subject can be time consuming. This selective annotated Web guide or “Webliography” aims to facilitate access to

Web-based information on the burgeoning international CASTL project.

In this Webliography I have selected only sample sites that are either illustrative of the project’s objectives and achievements or sites with indexes and links to additional print and Internet resources.¹

Organizations and associations

• American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). AAHE is an individual member organization that promotes the changes higher education must make to ensure its effectiveness in a complex, interconnected world. AAHE equips individuals and institutions with the knowledge they need to bring these changes about. The “Teaching Initiatives” area of the site seeks to create a culture in which teaching and learning are the subject of serious discussion. Access: http:// www.aahe.org/.

• The AAHE CASTL Campus Program WebCenter. This official CASTL site offers connections to other people involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning and to helpful resources for your own work. The Campus Program involves faculty members at more than 200 colleges and universities. An important feature of this site is “Director’s Recommendations” of documents in the field. Access: http://aahe.ital.utexas.edu/index. cfm.

About the author

Musa Abdul Hakim is reference librarian atE.H. Butler Library, SUNY-Buffalo State, e-mail:hakimma@buffalostate.edu

• The Carnegie Academy for the Schol- arship of Teaching and Learning . A ma- jor initiative of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, this program builds on a conception of teaching as scholarly work proposed in the 1990 report, Scholarship Re- considered, by former Carnegie Foundation Presi- dent Ernest Boyer, and on the 1997 follow-up publication, Scholarship Assessed, by Charles Glassick, Maiy Taylor Huber, and Gene Maeroff. Access: http://www. carnegiefoundation.org/CASTL/docs/castl.htm.

• CASTLHigherEd. An official link to CASTL programs and resources that provides a facility for subscribing to the CASTL News mailing list. Access: http -J/www. carnegiefoundation. org/ CASTI/highered/docs/highered.htm.

• The Maricopa Institute for Learning. The Maricopa Institute for Learning provides a yearlong learning fellowship for highly innovative faculty and a place, time, and community to.- commit and engage in community college leadership; investigate, research, and develop learning and teaching scholarship; and manifest and promote deeper understanding and commitment to student learning. Access: http ://haka tai. mcli. dis t. maricopa. edu/ mil/brochure/scholarship.html.

• The Scholarship of Engagement (Online). The East/West Clearinghouses for the Scholarship of Engagement sponsor the National Review Board for the Scholarship of Engagement to provide external peer review and evaluation of faculty’s scholarship of engagement; provide consultation, training, and technical assistance to campuses seeking to develop systems in support of this scholarship; conduct forums, programs, and regional conferences; and provide a faculty mentoring program. Access: http://www. scholarshipofengagement.org/about/about_ us.phtml.

Programs

• Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). Based at Georgetown University, the CNDLS integrates teaching, learning, technology, and research. Access: http://cndls.georgetown.edu/index. htm.

• The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This page from Illinois State University contains links to internal support for SoTL work, links to other sites about SoTL, and materials or links to examples of SoTL work. Access: http://www.cat.ilstu.edu/sotl/ index, shtml.

• The Visible Knowledge Project. A five-year-old project of CNDLS, the Visible Knowledge Project is a aimed at improving the quality of college and university teaching through a focus on both student learning and faculty development in technology-enhanced environments. Access: http://crossroads. georgetown. edu/vkp/.

Electronic journals

• AAHE Bulletin. The AAHE Bulletin is AAHE’s monthly newsletter, offering interviews, special reports, and practical how-to articles. It also is an important source of news about AAHE’s activities. Access: http:// www.aahe.org/bulletin.

• The Carnegie Chronicle. This is a special section of the National Teaching and Learning Forum online edition with sponsorship and support from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It contains supplemental materials, including research proposals and additional contact information to accompany the stories in this section. Access: http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/ carnegie/index.htm.

• inventio: a journal of creative thinking about learning and teaching, inventio is a project of the Department of Instructional Improvement and Instructional Technologies at George Mason University. It serves as a source of creative thinking about learning and teaching. Access: http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/ inventio/.

• The National Teaching & Learning Forum on-line edition (NTLF). Growing from the success of the print Forum, this online journal offers readers interactive access to information and discussion of teaching. Access: http://www.ntlf.com/.

• Research & Creative Activity-Office of Research and the University Graduate School, Indiana University. As an overview of the diverse and interesting programs of research, scholarship, and creative activities conducted at Indiana University, Research &Creative Activity offers its readers an opportunity to become familiar with the professional accomplishments of its distinguished faculty and graduate students. Access: http:// www. indiana.edu/~rcapub/v22n1/pO1. html.

Guidelines and reports

• The AAHE Teaching Initiatives: Publications.From the start of the Teaching Initiatives project in 1990, almost every line of inquiry has both built on and led to publications from AAHE and others. This is a selective list of these publications. Access: http:// www. aahe. org/ teaching/Publications. htm.

• Academic Librarianship and the Redefining Scholarship Project.At the July 1996 ALA Annual Conference, the ACRL Board of Directors appointed a task force to write a formal statement defining and describing the kind of scholarship performed by academic librarians. As a framework, they used the taxonomy developed by Eugene Rice and elaborated by Ernest Boyer in his 1990 book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. This is the task force report. Access: http:// www. ala. org/ acrl/ipfr. html.

• Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellowships.The CASTL faculty fellowship program’s primary purpose is to create a community of scholars who will contribute to the scholarship of teaching. Access: http:// www.apsanet.org/Ps/grants/castl. cfm.

• The Carnegie Teaching Academy Campus Program.For institutions in all sectors prepared to make a public commitment to new models of teaching as scholarly work to improve the quality of student learning and the status of teaching, this site has useful instructions. The site includes a two-part instruction sheet for “Campus Conversations.” Access: http://www.aahe.org/teaching/ Carnegie/ academy 1 .htm.

• The Peer Review of Teaching.The Peer Review of Teaching Project, an AAHE emphasis from 1994 to 1998, has contributed significantly to the current Carnegie Teaching Academy Campus Program. This site features current activities from the project along with background in history and documents. Access: http://www.aahe.org/teaching/Peer_ Review.htm.

• Position Statement On Defining Scholarship For The Discipline Of Nursing.This document of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing provides standards that clarify and describe a full range of scholarship within the discipline of nursing. Access: http://www.aacn. nche.edu/Publications/positions/scholar. htm.

• Reinventing Undergraduate Education: a Blueprint for America’s Research Universities.This report of the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University outlines “Ways to change undergraduate education.” The concept of integrated education requires restructuring both the pedagogical and the integrative aspects of the research university experience. Access: http ://naples. cc. sunysb. edu/Pres/ boyer.nsf/.

• The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Questions and Answers from the Field.(From the December 1999 AAHE Bulletin) Barbara Cambridge requests that you “Add your answers to these five interesting questions: Does scholarly teaching differ from the scholarship of teaching? Who does the scholarship of teaching? Is this scholarship disciplinaiy-specific or interdisciplinary? What role do students have in this work? How do campuses encourage the scholarship of teaching?” Access: http://www.aahe.org/bulletin/ dec99f2.htm.

• The Teaching Exchange-“Toward a Scholarship of Teaching.”This is the speech by Michael J. V. Woolcock, Ph. D., on the occasion of the dedication and 10th anniversary of the founding of the Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. Access: http ://sheridan-center. stg.brown, edu/ teachingExchange/jan98/TE_scholarship. shtml.

• The Teaching Initiatives: Projects and Lines of Work The Peer Review of Teaching.This is an excerpt from Making Teaching Community Property: A Menu for Peer Collaboration and Peer Review. This volume is from a 12-university project, entitled From Idea to Prototype: The Peer Review of Teaching. The author, Pat Hutchins, believes that teaching, like other forms of scholarly activity, is substantially intellectual work. Access: http://www. aahe. org/pubs/making. htm.

Tutorials and additional resources

• An Annotated Bibliography of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. This frequently cited bibliography from 1999 aimed to establish a baseline against which progress in the higher education arena could be gauged. Access- http://www .carnegiefoundation.org/CASTL/ highered/bibliography.htm.

• A (Growing) Bibliography on the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching. This is a rich and well-organized index with links to some of the most important resources on SoTL and its components, e.g., bibliography, assessment, definitions of the field, classroom action research, new learning paradigms, and other Internet resources. Access- http://www.byui.edu/ricks/employee/ HUN S AKERS/SOLTBibliography. htm.

• Carnegie Foundation eLibrary. An access point to important discourse around the scholarship of learning theme and related resources. Access: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ eLibrary/docs/elibrary.htm.

• Carnegie Teaching Academy Definition of the Scholarship of Teaching. This interactive site at University of Michigan- Dearborn allows users to comment on the Carnegie and UM-Dearborn definitions that appear in frames on the page when users mouse over highlighted phrases. Access: http:// curie.umd.umich.edu/Camegie/TLTRtestl.htm.

• Documenting (Evaluating) the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with Technology. After participating in this tutorial slide session created by Jeanne Enders of Portland State University you will have: defined scholarship, scholarship of teaching, and scholarship of teaching and learning with technology; identified the difference between scholarship of teaching/learning with technology and teaching excellence (scholarly teaching); identified ways to evaluate each (on a promotion and tenure committee). Access: http://www.oaa.pdx.edu/cae/presenta- tions/AAHEFRR/sldOOl .htm.

• Scholarly Communication: A Resource Guide for PSU Faculty. This page provides access to resources related to trends and issues in scholarly communication, as well as resources for faculty wishing to publish in the disciplines or in the scholarship of teaching and/or community service. Access: http://www.lib.pdx.edu/services/ scholarcomm.html#scholarship.

• Scholarship in Medical Education. To address the need to evaluate the scholarship of faculty in the medical sciences, the Central Group on Educational Affairs of the Association of American Medical Colleges undertook a project on educational scholarship in an effort to develop, disseminate, and facilitate implementation of a renewed concept of scholarship as it relates to medical education. Access: http://www.medlib.iupui.edu/cgea/ geasclrpro.html.

• The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This tutorial slide presentation gives examples of the scholarship of teaching. Access: http://ntmain.utb.edu/rrodrigues/.

• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Discussion Forum. Participate in an American Association for Higher Education Web conference. Access: http://aahe.ital. utexas.edu:8080/%7Esotl/.

• SOTL Indiana. One of the best tutorials I’ve seen, this is a good place to begin making sense of the field. The tutorial provides a primer on SOTL and is well enough indexed to also serve encyclopedically for those who seek information about specific SOTL-related topics. Access http://www.indiana.edu/~sotl/.

• Teaching As Scholarship Exercise. The AAHE Peer Review Project has emphasized teaching as a form of scholarship. Much of that emphasis is reflected in the following exercise, originally developed by Shulman and Hutchings, and modified here by Ken Bain at Northwestern University Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. Access: http://president. scfte. nwu. edu/Scholars. htm#Boyer.

See the Web version of this article, athttp://www.ala.org/acrl/resjuly02.html, for links to specific articles on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Notes

1. The first edition of this annotated Internet guide, “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Annotated Guide to Web Resources,” was published a few years ago as part of The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Strengthening Education Through Research and Collaboration (http://www. buffalostate.edu/pdf/scholarship.pdf). This guide is revised, expanded and updated to June 2002. ■