Valued Community of Practice: SoTL at SDSU
Abstract
This presentation will describe the journey of a departmental Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Community of Practice (SoTL CoP) group. This group, initially formed in 2005, met on a monthly basis, shared their perspectives, engaged in dialogue, and developed a culture of collaborative inquiry that served three purposes. First, it serves as a forum to dialogue, to re-energize, and to potentially generate collaboratively study of teaching and learning issues. Second, it is a place where faculty from initially two different departments who became one department formed a closer coherent identity. Finally, it supports faculty’s questions regarding teaching approaches, strategies, subjects, methodology, limitations, conclusions, and manuscript writing. This departmental SoTL CoP serves as a tool for ongoing professional development for other faculty members, without having to attend a conference or workshop as it spurred on a culture of collaborative inquiry. Others in the university have begun to see the value of this group, much like the Teaching Circles Approaches (Shaw D, Belcastro S, Thiessen D, 2002). The goals of this presentation will focus on (1) the history of the group formation, (2) the stages of journey of group development, (3) and faculty insights about ideas gained, as well as collaborative SoTL research embarked upon and how the SoTL CoP group supported that work. The presenters will end by proposing future directions and engage conference participants in a dialogue about potential, similar collaborations within their own environments.
Location
Room 1220 A
Recommended Citation
Cutler, Kay; Moeller, Mary R.; Browne, Mary; and Kim, Jeongmi, "Valued Community of Practice: SoTL at SDSU" (2015). SoTL Commons Conference. 1.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2015/1
Valued Community of Practice: SoTL at SDSU
Room 1220 A
This presentation will describe the journey of a departmental Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Community of Practice (SoTL CoP) group. This group, initially formed in 2005, met on a monthly basis, shared their perspectives, engaged in dialogue, and developed a culture of collaborative inquiry that served three purposes. First, it serves as a forum to dialogue, to re-energize, and to potentially generate collaboratively study of teaching and learning issues. Second, it is a place where faculty from initially two different departments who became one department formed a closer coherent identity. Finally, it supports faculty’s questions regarding teaching approaches, strategies, subjects, methodology, limitations, conclusions, and manuscript writing. This departmental SoTL CoP serves as a tool for ongoing professional development for other faculty members, without having to attend a conference or workshop as it spurred on a culture of collaborative inquiry. Others in the university have begun to see the value of this group, much like the Teaching Circles Approaches (Shaw D, Belcastro S, Thiessen D, 2002). The goals of this presentation will focus on (1) the history of the group formation, (2) the stages of journey of group development, (3) and faculty insights about ideas gained, as well as collaborative SoTL research embarked upon and how the SoTL CoP group supported that work. The presenters will end by proposing future directions and engage conference participants in a dialogue about potential, similar collaborations within their own environments.
