Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons^™

How To Drink From A Firehose: Systemic Supports For Polytechnic Chairs, Jocelyn R. Crocker

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is centred on the Problem of Practice of the inadequate institutional supports for academic Chairs at Prairie Polytechnic (a pseudonym), a large public higher education institution in Western Canada. Chairs are pivotal for higher education institutions because they impact student, departmental, and institutional outcomes; however, the leadership development needs of Chairs are overlooked, and the limited training available for Chairs is primarily ad hoc, episodic, short-term, and self-guided. The objective of this OIP is to determine how Prairie Polytechnic can provide more effective systemic supports for Chairs. Postmodernism is used to explore the relationships between …

Engaged Social Media In Higher Education While Avoiding The Label Of "Striving", Jessica Nerren

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

Striving has become a word laden with problematic meanings in the world of higher education. For instance, if a university is too aligned with business, or becomes overly selective, or deviates from original purpose or mission, then, at times, those actions are seen as striving (O’Meara, 2007). O’Meara (2007) defines striving as participation in efforts to improve status and prestige in line with the hierarchy. Allen (2021) echoes the problematic nature of this practice witnessed abroad, equating striving educational practices with neoliberalism, potentially overshadowing primary purposes of the institution, such as learning and teaching, or drowning out important parts of …

Authentic Assessment Framework May 2021 Version, Jen Harvey, Derek Dodd

Reusable Resources

The TU Dublin Authentic Assessment (AA) framework was designed to be used as a general guide.for staff undertaking assessment redesigns as part of a University Initiative under the IMPACT SATLE 1 funding call.

The Framework builds on the work of Gulikers et al, (2006) and Villerarroel et al (2020) and is structured across four dimensions: ‘Realism’, ‘Cognitive challenge’, ‘metacognition’, and ‘feedback processes’.

The resource provides a set of ideas that can be used to build the four dimensions into programme based Authentic Assessment strategies and practices.

Retention And The Sophomore Slump: Understanding Whether Campus Residency Predicts Retention Of Sophomore College Students, Raglena Salmans

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Retention in higher education is an ongoing challenge in America. Traditional research claims a multitude of reasons for freshman college students to stop out, drop out, or transfer colleges. The term sophomore slump was created many years ago as an all-encompassing phrase for the large amount of students who do not return to campus for their sophomore year or end up leaving during the sophomore year. Institutions of higher education are on a continuous journey to retain students and to understand what the cause of students leaving their university is. Campus housing has morphed through the years to provide programming …

The Journey To Antiracism: White Identity Development For White Faculty Members At Predominantly White Higher Education Institutions, Morgan Harthorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

Students of color experience feelings of isolation, exhaustion, and tokenization in predominantly white higher education spaces (Smith, Yosso, Solorzano, 2006). Specifically, students of color feel ostracized and tokenized in the classroom. This experience contributes to an overall culture of Whiteness within higher education and leads to the lack of engagement and belonging of students of color. It also supports the systems of racism and White supremacy within the academy. This field project analyzes the experiences of students of color and provides a series of seven workshops for White faculty to begin their journey toward antiracism in the classroom. This field …

The Impact Of Teacher Methodology Training For Higher Education Faculty Members, Nicole Baker

Ed.D. Dissertations

Many college programs are designed to graduate individuals who are experts in their field of study, but not necessarily individuals who are trained in how to teach. This quantitative, quasi-experiment study examined college faculty member’s level of training in the area of teaching practices and methodology. The relation to student satisfaction, current course performance, attendance, the belief in the need for training, and faculty member’s sense of efficacy in teaching was explored. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to organize the data using a one-way ANCOVA to analyze the impact the level of training had on …

The Impact Of Teacher Methodology Training For Higher Education Faculty Members, Nicole R. Baker

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Many college programs are designed to graduate individuals who are experts in their field of study, but not necessarily individuals who are trained in how to teach. This quantitative, quasi-experiment study examined college faculty member’s level of training in the area of teaching practices and methodology. The relation to student satisfaction, current course performance, attendance, the belief in the need for training, and faculty member’s sense of efficacy in teaching was explored. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to organize the data using a one-way ANCOVA to analyze the impact the level of training had on …

Narratives Of Creativity Among Social Care Educators In Irish Higher Education, Louisa Goss

Theses

Research on creativity in the delivery of social care highlights growing evidence of its importance for the wellbeing and quality of life of those in receipt of care, as well as benefits for the workforce. However, what is less well understood and overlooked in the literature is how creativity is conceptualised and operationalised in practice and education. This thesis attends to this gap in research from the perspective of social care educators. With the aim of deepening understanding of higher education teachers’ construction of creativity, the study explores small stories about creativity from six educators teaching into an undergraduate degree …

Beyond Greening: The Challenges To Adopting Sustainability In Higher Education., Catherine Hooey, Alicia Mason, James Triplett

Faculty Submissions

It is common for colleges and universities to include sustainability in their mission statements and strategic plans. On many campuses, however, sustainability is associated with green practices only, rather than the comprehensive integration of social equity, economic, and environmental principles on which the concept was founded. Here, Hooey et al examine the obstacles to the comprehensive adoption of sustainability in institutions of higher education, in general, and to suggest a conceptual framework of a sustainability culture as one most appropriate for the more effective incorporation of comprehensive practices.

Community-Based Learning: A Primer, Zeinab Bedri, Ruairí De Fréin, Geraldine Dowling

Practitioner Research Projects

Employers are increasingly demanding graduates with industry-ready communication, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership, emotional intelligence and social ethics skills. Community-based learning (CBL) has been identified as a pedagogical approach which has tremendous potential to produce graduates with these attributes; its prominent role in the future of Ireland's third level landscape is outlined in the Irish National Strategy for Higher Education (Hunt, 2011). However, for many early-career lecturers, distilling the insights from the teaching and learning literature, and then producing a well-designed CBL module, can be an intimidating task. What is missing is a primer which presents the core ideas of CBL in …

Strategies For Enhancing The Mature Student Experience In Higher Education, John O'Carroll, Cathy Ennis, Keith Loscher, Deirdre Ryan, Niall Dixon

Practitioner Research Projects

A principle of the Irish Education system is its endorsement of equity of access to higher education for all Irish citizens. This principle has been enacted through successive government policies including the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-2019 (HEA, 2015). The aim of this policy is to “ensure that the student body entering, participating in and completing higher education at all levels reflects the diversity and social mix of Ireland’s population” (p.8). Data from this plan shows that participation in higher education by the adult population has increased and that there is a potential for increasing …

Blended Learning - What Practitioners Can Learn From Moocs, Aine Whelan, Aimee Byrne, Keith Colton, Patrick Crean, Conor Mcgarrigle

Practitioner Research Projects

The rapid increase in the use of information technologies in third level education is changing the way courses are provided. Online multimedia have helped reduce the difficulties teachers face with a diversity of student profiles and a large number of students in a classroom. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) present an extreme with regard to student groups in relation to size and diversity and, therefore, many techniques and methods of overcoming the difficulties that this can present have been developed. Much of these methods can apply to online courses generally and to blended teaching environments. This study identifies four key …

Methods For Deriving Individual Marks From Group Work, Miriam Delaney, Lucy Bowe, Breiffni Fitzgerald, Peter Maccann, Christina Ryan

Practitioner Research Projects

Group assessment is a valuable teaching and learning method (Springer et al., 1999). This has been comprehensively demonstrated in the teaching and learning literature both in general (Johnson et al., 1991) and in specific contexts. This assessment practice promotes questioning, discussion and debate and encourages students to become active team players (DIT, 2013). However, when using this form of assessment, it is important to recognise that it is "individuals who graduate and gain qualifications" (Gibbs, 2009, p.4). The problem of freeloading has been identified and one of the suggested methods of reducing this is to incorporate individual assessment into the …

Authentic Assessment, Sinead Freeman, James Fox, Vanessa Murphy, Nicola Hughes

Practitioner Research Projects

No abstract provided.