The Success in the Classroom conference is a mark of UNM’s leadership in research on teaching and learning, said Janice Denton, professor of chemistry, University of Cincinnati, Raymond Walters College. Denton gave the keynote address, “Let’s Talk Publicly About Scholarly Teaching.”
“Many of us in academe who are interested in teaching and learning bemoan the fact that we have very few opportunities to get together and talk about our work. But you have created here… a fabulous opportunity for the rich exchange of ideas,” she said.
At the annual conference, organized by the Office of Support for Effective Teaching with the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine, faculty share insights into improving teaching practices and student engagement. This year’s conference focused on student success, assessment and teaching with technology.
Denton chaired the University of Cincinnati’s academic assessment committee for more than 20 years. She summed up assessment as identifying, measuring and analyzing important learning outcomes.
“Despite the fact that we the faculty have always assessed student learning, I have a number of colleagues who still wonder what it is,” she said. “It is presented as some new age, out there concept instead of what it is, and that is classroom action research, an investigation of student learning. When it’s presented in this light, we can all relate to it, because we are all equally committed to helping our students learn.”
Denton said research on teaching and learning falls into a continuum from reflection to “controlled, traditional educational research.” In the middle of that continuum is classroom action research, or CAR.
“This is where you and I systematically inquire into some aspect of student learning, and we use data to answer practical questions about teaching and learning in our courses. CAR is more data-based and systematic than reflection, but it’s less formal and controlled than traditional educational research,” she said.
Denton said it’s important to acknowledge CAR as scholarship, particularly given the demands of attaining tenure. “It seems to me that to fail to recognize all the great teaching and learning that goes on within classrooms does a disservice to faculty scholars and ignores the teaching mission of the university.”
Denton and a colleague developed a program at the University of Cincinnati that places CAR on a level with other scholarly research. Faculty wrote a series of articles on course planning, teaching strategies and a CAR project, which were then peer reviewed according to the standards of scholarly research and shared with colleagues.
“This has proved to be a model that works well, mainly because it considers teaching to be a serious intellectual process associated with scholarly work, rather than a technique or a presentational method,” Denton said.
The Office of Support for Effective Teaching is gathering inquiries from faculty interested in pursuing a similar project at UNM. OSET offers workshops and other teacher support year-round. Call (505) 277-2229 or visit OSET.
Listen to Denton’s lecture at: Let’s Talk Publicly About Scholarly Teaching.