Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education La societe pour I'avancement de la pedagogie dans I'enseignement superieur Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Number 36 November 2003 More Members Than Ever Stand Up To Be Counted Gary Poole, STLHE President his fall, STLHEheldan unprecedentednumberof elections- sixfornewregionalrepresentativesonthe Steering Committee, and one for President-Elect. There was a time when we had to work hard just to T find a committed person willing to serve as a regional representative on the Steering Committee. Clearly, we have moved well beyond those days. This time around, in Alberta alone, there were seven people nominated to be their regional rep. In all, twenty-four people were nominated from the six regions. Over two hundred members took part in the vote to ratify the nomination for President-Elect. What do these numbers mean? To me, they mean that the strategic planning work in which the Steering Committee is engaged is more pressing than ever. In this issue of our newsletter, we provide another update on that work. We also provide formal introduction of our latest cohort of 3M Teaching Fellows. Those of you who were able to attend STLHE 2003 in Vancouver will have met this great group. They join a group of Teaching Fellows that now has a Council and a series of excellent projects in its sights. Expect great things. Through all of this, the landscape of teaching and learning in higher education is ever-shifting. In some quarters, universities with strong teaching reputations are trying to re-position themselves by emphasizing their research prowess, perhaps because they perceive this to be the position that will attract the most financial support. The result could be a decline in support for undergraduate education. At the same time, we have unprecedented engagement in the Society's activities. Could this signal a disconnection between institutional strategizing and faculty will regarding the balance between teaching and .I research? We can't be certain. However, we can know that I there is a critical mass_ofpeople working in higher education I who care about their teaching and the work of the Society. g... ~ g ... -~ ~~_J 2 STLHE/SAPES FroIn Bach to Tupac Using an electronic course portfolio to analyze a curricular transfonnation By Elizabeth F Barkley Thefollowing article is reprinted bypermission from the June, 2001 AAHE Bulletin, published by the American Association for Higher Education. In September of thisyear, a number of STLHE members visited our AAHE colleagues in Washington,DC to explore ways in which we could collaborate and learnfrom each other. The meeting was very productive, and so it seemsfitting that we would present an article by one of AAHE s scholars in our newsletter. There are other reasonsfor including this article. One is that itfocuses on at least two ofSTLHEs Strategic Goals: the scholarship of teaching and learning, and inclusivity. Also, Professor Barkley provides an excellent example of how technology can be used to capture teaching and learning processes. ,,Sometimes I feel like a partner As a Carnegie Scholar, I was they could be used and built on by in an unholy alliance," challenged to design, implement, and others. Thus, course portfolios commented a colleague. "I report on a research project that would provided me with an almost ready- pretend to teach, and my students contribute to the scholarship of made template for delving into this pretend to learn." Recalling my own teaching and learning in my discipline new (for me) territory called "the early experience teaching a general- of music. Like many of my Carnegie scholarship of teaching and learning." education course in music history, I Scholar colleagues, I anguished over smiled at his understatement: In my what to do. Suspicious of educational . Course portfolios seemed to allow course, the handful of students sitting jargon, I was skeptical that I could for the messy complexity that I knew in front of me weren't even pretending design a research project that would characterized teaching and learning. I to learn! They stared at me with tell me anything I really did not hoped that a course portfolio might bored, apathetic faces as I struggled to already know. Or, if it did reveal help me capture the subtle but engage them in a lively discussion on something new and significant, I important aspects of teaching and the structural nuances of a Beethoven worried that the methodology would learning that crisper methodologies symphony. Beethoven? Their music not withstand scholarly scrutiny. might miss. heroes were Tupac and Nine Inch Nails. After considering various project . Because I knew, deep in my heart, ideas and conversing with other that over that period of five years and This curricular crisis was the catalyst Carnegie Scholars who were also before any conscious concern about for a five-year transformation out of struggling with documenting teaching the scholarship of teaching and which I created an entirely new and learning, I decided to construct a learning, I had used my intuitive sense course, Music of Multicultural course portfolio in which I analyzed and natural talent as a teacher to and documented the transformation of America. My efforts paid off. Annual transform that music course in very enrollment increased from 45 to 782, that general-education music course. deep and meaningful ways. A filling my course with enthusiastic portfolio offered the fullest and most students who had enrolled on the Why a Course Portfolio? nuanced way to share this advice of friends. Students testified transformation with other teachers, not only to how much they loved the Course portfolios are a mechanism to disciplines, and institutions. course but also to how much they had help faculty investigate and document learned. what they know and do as teachers in Once I decided to construct a course ways that contribute to more powerful portfolio, it did not take long to move This transformation created student learning. I decided on a course to the next step of making it an considerable attention, and it was on portfolio for three reasons. electronic course portfolio. Electronic an exhilarating wave of success that I course portfolios offered several was selected by the Carnegie .Course portfolios seemed to advantages over their paper Foundation for the Advancement of manifest the essential characteristics counterparts. Much of my own and Teaching as a Carnegie Scholar. (For of scholarship: They could be made my students' work was already in more, visit public, they were susceptible to electronic format, an electronic www.carnegiefoundation.org.) critical review and evaluation, and portfolio could be easily accessed and Number 36, November 2003 3 disseminated, it could be layered to interviews, and participation in online students were at highest risk for not include multiple points of entry and academic forums. completing the course (only a 46 ways to navigate through the percent success rate, whereas the information, it could incorporate Multimedia Instruction (Including collegewide success rate for black multimedia, and it had the potential Online). The baseline course had been students was 76 percent). for integrating interactivity. taught in the traditional lecture face- to-face format. The transformed I surmised that a contributing factor What Did I Learn From the course uses blended delivery in which was probably the discomfort and Analysis? students select, on an ongoing and resentment black students might feel flexible basis, where they want to be at hearing a white woman discuss The foundation of my course portfolio on a continuum from traditional face- black history, music, and social was the analysis of the course to-face learning activities to entirely experience. As a solution, I engaged transformation, an extremely Web-based activities. as a teaching partner a black professor instructive analysis. Why was Music who specializes in African-American of Multicultural America so popular? Authentic Assessment. The baseline music and the historical context in Self-reflection combined with analysis course had used traditional, objective, which that music developed. I am of students' comments revealed four and subjective in-class testing. The going to track this trend to see curricular themes: transformed course uses a point whether it will make a difference. accrual system in which, within Content. The earlier version of this clearly articulated guidelines for both What Did I Learn From the L course was based on European quantity and quality, students earn Creation of the Course classical music. Although this their final grades by submitting Portfolio? curriculum remains the standard for multiple and varied artifacts higher education, it simply does not demonstrating their learning. The greatest challenge for me was engage a large percentage of figuring out how best to organize and I investigated these themes using both contemporary students who listen to present the information. Ultimately quantitative and qualitative research popular music and have grown up in (and after many different drafts), I methodologies. Quantitative data an increasingly diverse multicultural decided to organize the portfolio into included enrollment trends, society. The transformed course uses four major sections. "The Project" ethnicity as a central organizing demographic characteristics, and students' success and retention rates provides an overview and contains principle to trace the development of answers to the questions who, what, over six years. To generate qualitative popular musics such as blues, jazz, where, why, when, and how of the country, Tejano, Cajun, and so on data, I conducted surveys, used various classroom assessment course portfolio. "The Data" consists from their roots in the ethnic of a series oflinked PDFs so that traditions of a specific immigrant techniques, and enlisted 15 "student readers can access and download investigators" selected through a group to their development into a information such as syllabi, tests, uniquely American music.