Carnegie Cluster Leader Application

Title:  Dealing with the “Teaching Too Much” Dilemma: Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice around SoTL

Middlesex Community College, Bedford/Lowell, Massachusetts

As an active CASTL group since 1998, Middlesex Community College has created a unique community model that provides an introductory first-year experience for new members supported and guided by the continuing group involvement of senior members.  Recent research by Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) suggests that communities of practice move through five stages of development: potential, coalescing, maturing, stewardship, and transformation.  At the end of our fourth year as a community of practice, we are somewhere between the maturing and stewardship stages.  We are ready to move our work to a new level.

This model of ongoing involvement in a community of practice is well suited to colleges where the dilemma is not teaching vs. research but teaching too much.  In many higher education institutions across the country faculty are committed to teaching but due to large course loads have little time for the type of reflective practice (Brookfield, 1995;   Schon, 1995) that sustains and energizes daily work. The typical course load at community colleges is five courses; many other teaching colleges require four to five courses each semester. Professors who value teaching want to study their practice but often do not have the time or a community to support this action.  In addition, in academic settings with a focus on teaching, the culture of peer review is not as well established and often can seem burdensome instead of beneficial.  In our community of practice group we have tried to design strategies that will accommodate the “teaching too much” dilemma while creating a setting that supports inquiry and peer review.

Professors teaching several courses each semester are excellent candidates for implementing the scholarship of teaching and learning. The deliberate process of being public, open to critical review, and presenting ideas in a form others can build on sets the stage for more mindful approaches that can be adapted and revised in ongoing practice.  The focus on assessment of student learning that is central to SoTL can help faculty to appreciate assessment as an integral part of all courses and not view it as a mandate coming from external sources.  Such changes in individual faculty who teach multiple courses can have profound effects on the learning of many students.  Such changes in a large group of faculty can create an institution that is truly centered on student learning.

            In colleges that value teaching, research is not seen as superior and faculty do not have to struggle with the stress of a publish or perish culture.  However, they do have a different struggle of sustaining their enthusiasm while teaching the same introductory course for the thirtieth time to a group of often unprepared and unmotivated undergraduates.  Colleges typically have faculty development programs to help professors learn new approaches and stay current, but there are few settings where a group of faculty can join in a community to study their craft in a collaborative way over time.  Since the fall of 1998 we at Middlesex Community College have sustained an effective, evolving, cross-disciplinary community of practice in which participants have shared teaching and learning experiences in the context of relevant teaching and learning literature.  Participants have completed projects that exemplify the scholarship of teaching and learning, continue to use the SoTL lens in preparing and teaching their multiple courses, and persist in exploring unifying themes for group study and workable ways to implement peer review.  Participants have also had the opportunity to make their work public through presentations at local, state, and national conferences as well as through a joint publication.  This aspect of “going public” with results is critical for faculty to be a part of the larger higher education community, but it is often one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish when teaching loads are demanding.

What will the Cluster set out to do during the next three years?

As the community of practice research suggests, sustained communities can construct knowledge together and eventually be transformative for the entire culture. Our participants know the demands of large teaching loads but also recognize the value of placing their work in the context of the scholarship of teaching and learning initiative.  We would like to formalize the work we have begun over the last four years and demonstrate concrete ways to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning in settings where the dilemma is “teaching too much.” 

            We will use the developmental model of communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002) to frame our work and to deepen our own practices on campus.  By doing this we will be able to offer Core Members concrete structures and strategies for developing communities of practice on their own campuses. Specific objectives are:

• Develop a Summer Institute for SoTL:  This two-day institute would enable new members of our community of practice to gain an understanding of the basics of SoTL in more structured way.  We would like to open this program to interested faculty at other institutions.
• Formalize a peer review template for supporting the work of faculty.  Our group has experimented with ways to work collaboratively to support and provide feedback in the most effective ways for colleagues as they undertake SoTL projects.  Our plan would be to establish templates that could be adapted for different phases of SoTL work.
• Establish a thematic focus to provide a way to keep senior members engaged and to help all members connect ideas more systematically.  Seminars and discussion groups can emerge from the theme and create a way to involve the larger college community in the CASTL work.

In what ways will the Cluster determine that it is moving toward its goals?

Since each of our objectives has an observable product we can assess how effectively each item accomplishes its intended purposes.  For example, we will establish pre- and post-tests to assess changes in participants at the Summer Institute, and we will create assessment instruments for daily presentations.  The peer review template will be used as we review the ongoing projects of our community of practice group; we will have multiple opportunities to measure how useful they are in a variety of disciplines and in different types of SoTL endeavors.  We used a unifying theme of intrinsic motivation with our group for a couple of years and developed some strategies such as a common book for sharing our ideas with the larger college community.  For our new thematic focus we will adapt earlier approaches and create a guidebook that demonstrates ways for integrating the theme across the campus.  We will assess more specifically how the thematic approach influences work in the group and how effectively it serves as a way to connect our community of practice work with others in the college.

How will the Cluster share what it learns with others interested in its work?

Our community of practice group has been invited to present strategies for translating the scholarship of teaching and learning into courses at several other colleges since 1998 and will be presenting at two other institutions this year.  A consistent comment from these past presentations has been an appreciation that the presenters were professors teaching many courses and aware of the demands of that situation.  We can address the “teaching too much” dilemma in realistic ways that resonate with others facing similar struggles and can suggest strategies that are workable in such settings.  At one of the presentations last year we discussed the possibility of having joint seminars for the CASTL groups at both institutions; being a Cluster Leader organization may help in implementing this possibility.

            We will plan to invite others to the Summer Institute and to share the peer review template and the guidebook for integrating themes.  We have presented our work consistently at AAHE conferences as well as other state and local conferences and will continue with these initiatives. 

Who will be the Core Members needed to accomplish the objectives?  What will they do during the next three years?

Ideally, we would like to have the Summer Institute be a source of connections to other institutions so that we can have a cohort of interested colleagues for ongoing collaboration.  Following the Institute we could set up electronic communication for participants so that professors at different institutions can continue their conversations and share strategies from different settings.  We have tried to confront the “teaching too much” dilemma in our particular college environment; it will be valuable to see whether our model and materials can be adapted successfully in other colleges.  Although we are at a community college and have much to offer others in community colleges, we also think that our approach can be applied in other types of institutions.  We have had a colleague from a nearby state college join our community of practice during the past two years.  She has both contributed to and profited from the group and provides a concrete link to a nearby institution.  We have discussed expanding our collaboration with her college at various times; the Cluster Leader role would help to legitimize our efforts.

The local Core Members could participate in community of practice projects as our colleague has done; more distant members could connect electronically, at conferences, or at joint seminars during the year. Faculty teaching multiple courses have marked limitations in the amount of time they can be away from classes so one of our objectives in working with other Core Members will be to design practical ways to keep participants involved. 

What financial and human resources will the campus or group set aside for this work on the scholarship of teaching and learning? 

            Middlesex Community College has set aside substantial financial and human resources to support the CASTL work since 1998.  The coordinators have had course release times each semester and the new members receive a course release for each semester of their first year as members of the community of practice. The original members of the community of practice group that began in 1998 now have considerable background knowledge about many facets of SoTL and they have been exploring various ways to expand their stewardship role. The college’s designation as a Cluster Leader would provide an ideal vehicle for them to serve as stewards both within and outside of our college community.  The group has suggested that funds from the Summer Institute or from publications may be ways to provide additional funding for the expansion of the community of practice work.

Which senior administrator is signing on, on behalf of the institution’s commitment to three years of leadership?

            Mary Jane McCarthy, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, will sign on to support Middlesex’s commitment to three years of leadership.  She participated in our CASTL work at the 2002 Summer Academy and has been in close contact with evolving developments in our group.

Who is appointed to organize and coordinate the Cluster for the next three years?

Why is this person a strong candidate for the Cluster’s focus area?

            Donna Killian Duffy began the CASTL work in 1998 and has been a member of the MCC Community of Practice group since then.  She was a member of the 1998-1999 Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars and has continued work in the scholarship of teaching and learning in her own classes and with various groups at the American Psychological Association.