News

COPPER and the Broader Impact of the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning
In 2003 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching invited applications for institutions to collaborate as clusters of colleges across the country engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Twelve clusters were created and Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Pine Manor College and Salem State College worked together in 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. The four institutions continued their work together and were joined by Glendale Community College (CA), and Minnesota State University at Mankato during the past 3 years.
Our COPPER group has local SoTL work on each campus, but it is also a part of the larger initiative of twelve leadership sites. In 2008, Tony Ciccone, the Senior Scholar and CASTL Director of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, began inquiring into how the CASTL collaborations have had a broader impact on the scholarship of teaching and learning. He proposed the following ten areas of impact:

The scholarship of teaching and learning
1. contributes to important agendas and initiatives in higher education: e.g., assessment and accountability, retention, educating for citizenship, service learning, undergraduate research, use of instructional (dissemination) technology, liberal and general education reform, first-year experience, civic engagement

2. changes how teachers teach and contributes to our knowledge of the factors that make change happen: e.g., changes in values, dispositions, beliefs; range of pedagogies, formative assessment, peer review.

3. changes how we understand and talk about learning: e.g., in a discipline, in a certain format (e.g., on line); as a source of interesting questions.

4. has direct and indirect effects on student learning and success: e.g., engagement in learning, retention, deeper understanding of subject matter.

5. contributes to our knowledge of the conditions that affect the exchange and improvement of pedagogy: e.g., the commons, communities of practice (networks, alliances and collaborative processes), multiple means of sharing scholarly knowledge about teaching.

6. strengthens development programs for higher education professionals: e.g., graduate students, instructional staff, faculty, administrators; preparation, continuing development, leadership development

7. informs changes in the policies and procedures of the institution: e.g., infrastructure, tenure and promotion policies, IRB policies, recognition of the importance of quality teaching and learning, allocation of resources and budgeting, inclusion of scholarship of teaching and learning in accreditation claims.

8. affects the culture of academic life: e.g., morale (of faculty, students and administrators), role and participation of students (leadership for learning, community building)

9. leads to changes in how we define and evaluate scholarship: e.g., dissemination and impact of scholarly work, acceptance of multiple modes of scholarship; documenting changes directly connected to the work; representation designed with impact in mind.

10. is growing and evolving as a movement: e.g., the intellectual richness of the work; scope and depth of questions asked, breadth of disciplines and institutions involved, number of individuals doing, supporting and using the work; new venues and outlets for the work; a growing teaching commons.

Our COPPER group collaborated to create a matrix demonstrating the various ways that our individual and joint work has addressed the ten areas of impact. The matrix is an effective summary of the broader impact of our work and can be viewed at COPPER Area of Impact.