What is the MCC Carnegie group, and why is it important?
In many higher education institutions faculty are committed to teaching but due to large course loads, have little time for the reflective practice that sustains and energizes daily work (Brookfield, 1995; Schon, 1995). To answer this, MCC has created a unique community of practice that includes members who have been engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning since 1998 along with others who have joined in subsequent years. This model of ongoing involvement in a community of practice is well suited to colleges where the dilemma is not teaching vs. research but, rather, teaching too much.
Professors who value teaching and want to study their practice often do not have the time or support to do so. In addition, in academic settings that focus on teaching, the culture of peer review is not well established and can seem burdensome instead of beneficial. Through the support provided by the MCC Carnegie Group, faculty at MCC have designed strategies to accommodate the “teaching too much” dilemma while at the same time creating a setting supporting inquiry and peer review.
What is the commitment of faculty and staff members who join?
Professors and staff who join the MCC Carnegie group make a minimum two-year commitment and receive course releases in the spring semester of the first and second years of participation. Long-term members sustain the community of practice over time and help to create a safe space for sharing and exploring ongoing questions about improving student learning.
What are the benefits of SoTL work for participants, institutions and students?
Professors teaching several courses each semester are excellent candidates for implementing the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The deliberate process of being public, open to critical review, and presenting ideas in forms others can build upon 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.
What is the long term value of the Carnegie group at MCC?
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.
Middlesex Community College has 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.
In 2003 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in California invited applications for institutions to serve as National Leaders for clusters of colleges across the country engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Twelve clusters were created and MCC served as leader of a cluster called COPPER: Communities of Practice: Pooling Educational Resources to support the scholarship of teaching and learning from 2003 to 2006. In 2006, the Carnegie Foundation placed a new invitation for leadership sites to work together from 2006 to 2009. MCC was again chosen as a leadership site. The present COPPER group members include Salem State College, Northern Essex Community College, Pine Manor College, Glendale Community College (CA), and Minnesota State University at Mankato.
What are goals of the current COPPER group?
Building on the community of practice that has evolved from 2003-2006, the COPPER group focuses on three areas of collaboration, practice, and resources. We explore ways to expand and deepen collaborations across institutions through specific projects that provide multiple entry points for faculty involvement. The projects serve to support engaged SoTL practice on campuses as well as to inform larger audiences on campus about SoTL work. Through these efforts we hope to pool our educational resources in ways that will lead to improved student learning at our institutions.
March: A team from Middlesex Community College presented a workshop on SoTL for faculty and consulted with administrators at Glendale Community College.
April: The team leader from Minnesota State Mankato spent a week visiting the four COPPER colleges in Massachusetts to explore options for collaboration. A team from Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, and Minnesota State Mankato presented a workshop on COPPER at the Massachusetts Community College Conference on Teaching, Learning and Student Development.
May: Videoconference on developmental math at Salem State College presented by Glendale Community College faculty.
June: A COPPER meeting was held at Middlesex Community College on June 14 and on June 15 member colleges participated in the 2007 MCC Carnegie Summer Institute to share ideas on SoTL with participants from surrounding colleges.
October: A team from Northern Essex Community College and Middlesex Community College presented on COPPER at the Atlantic Center for Learning Communities Conference in New York.
November: Videoconference on critical thinking at Salem State College presented by Minnesota State University Mankato faculty.
December: COPPER Newsletter highlighting virtual worlds and upcoming meeting on Second Life.
2008
January: Winter retreat at Middlesex Community College exploring connections among SoTL projects in classrooms, institutional student learning outcomes and national studies on student success. Vanessa Smith Morest, coeditor of Defending the Community College Agenda, presented on national findings and joined in discussions. Members from Northern Essex Community College participated in the day’s activities.
February: Designing virtual world for COPPER meeting. Don Margulis, Matthew Olson and Dona Cady at Middlesex Community College designed an online setting for the COPPER meeting in March. Don served as consultant to COPPER members and provided resources and advice for participation in Second Life.
March: COPPER member avatars met at the International Society for Technology in Education in Second Life, shared impressions, and explored educational possibilities at other sites. The group then reflected on their experiences on the COPPER blog.
April: Judith Kamber of Northern Essex Community College discussed her college’s new work with the Achieving the Dream initiative during the April conference call and the group members echoed similar concerns about students at their own campuses. We began to brainstorm ideas for a possible collaborative project that could help us to pool our resources more effectively in dealing with issues of student engagement and success.
June and July: Mark Maier of Glendale Community College and Stewart Ross of Minnesota State College Mankato took the lead on setting up a summer list serve for COPPER members to share “gems” found on the MERLOT site.
August: Individual phone calls to explore the possibility of a collaborative project on student engagement that would occur in spring 2009 at all six member campuses.
September: Members discussed holding three faculty/student luncheon focus groups on their campuses in the spring and began to define topics and guidelines for the project.
October: COPPER members will meet on October 15th and will participate in the ISSOTL conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
2009
January through April: Collegial Conversations take place at different COPPER campuses.
March: Meeting of CASTL Institutional Leadership Program leaders at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on March 19-21, 2009.
How does the COPPER group connect to the other eleven Leadership Groups?
Members of the twelve Leadership Groups met in November 2006 and leaders of the twelve groups met in May 2007. The November meeting focused on introductions and ideas for framing the work for the next three years. The May meeting centered on finding ways to infuse SoTL into institutional cultures and to connect SoTL to other important agendas in higher education. The themes for the other eleven groups are listed below:
What is the scholarship of teaching and learning?
There are a variety of definitions for the scholarship of teaching and learning, also referred to as SoTL. Most of the definitions contain components from the descriptions provided by Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Lee Shulman suggests that for an activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least 3 key characteristics. It should be:
He notes that teaching, like other forms of scholarship, is an extended process that unfolds over time and embodies at least the following 5 elements:
Source: Shulman, L. S. (1999). Course anatomy: The dissection and analysis of knowledge through teaching. In P. Hutchings (Ed.), The course portfolio: How faculty can examine their teaching to advance practice and improve student learning. Washington, DC: AAHE.
What are resouces to learn more about SoTL?
Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings of the Carnegie Foundation have summarized key issues and questions about SoTL work in their book, The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons (2005). Kathleen McKinney's book, Enhancing Learning Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Challenges and Joys of Juggling (2007), provides guidelines for professors who are interested in engaging in SoTL projects.