Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The role of autobiography – a “critical incident questionnaire” to document classroom dynamics during a class.

“Critically reflective teaching happens when we identify and scrutinize the assumptions that undergird how we work. The most effective way to become aware of these assumptions is to view our practice from different perspectives. Seeing how we think and work through different lenses is the core process of reflective practice.” -p. xii-xiii

Cann, A. J., & Badge, J. L. (2011). Reflective Social Portfolios for Feedback and Peer Mentoring.

Notes:

p.6: To facilitate construction of student-owned eportfolios, we initially selected two wiki sites (wetpaint.com, wikispaces.com) and a blogging tool (wordpress.com) as the choices promoted to students, although students were told that they were free to use whatever tools they wish to build their eportfolio as long as they discuss and justify their choice with a member of staff before embarking on the project. The outcome of the preceding evaluation project was to select these tools rather than commercially available e portfolio packages since these are free, and available to students for as long as they wish to use them. In the event, all the the students elected to use the wiki architecture, although they used the sites in different ways. To assist in the construction of eportfolios, students were give exemplars based on a fictional first year student. These were hosted on the Wetpaint/Wikispaces/Wordpress.com sites. Students were also given assessment criteria and a schedule of four assessment deadlines. The assessment criteria were based loosely on the reported e e portfolio assessment criteria from Penn State University (Penn State University, 2006). — Highlighted Jan 30, 2016

Wenger, E., Trayner, B., & De Laat, M. (2011, April 28). Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: a conceptual framework. Retrieved December 22, 2015, from…

Narrative as means of describing networks and communities, and in understanding their value for learning.

Narrative is not automatable. Or is it? How can narratives be generated algorithmically? (See Ship in KSR’s Aurora)

How can the narrative of a network or community be used to enhance learning? To enhance the effectiveness of the network/community? To transform it? To sustain it?

Lozano, L., García-Cueto, E., & Muñiz, J. (2008). Effect of the Number of Response Categories on the Reliability and Validity of Rating Scales. Methodology.

Notes:

p.6: Our results permit the conclusion that, considering criteria of reliability and validity, the minimum number of response categories for items with Likert-type format should be al least of four. As regards the ideal number, the data indicate that from seven categories onwards the gains are scarce from a psychometric point of view, suggesting the use of between four and seven. — Highlighted Dec 13, 2015

Thomas, D. & Seely-Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Self-published.p. 17: “Ironically, the relentless pace of change that is responsible for our disequilibrium is also our greatest hope. A growing digital, networked infrastructure is amplifying our ability to access and use nearly unlimited resources and incredible instruments while connecting with one another at the same time. However, the type of learning that is going on as a result looks so different from the kinds of learning described by most educational theorists that it is essentially invisible.” (tie to Connectivism as network-age learning theory?) (Toefler’s Future Shock)

Stewart, B. (2015, April 17). Scholarship in Abundance: Influence, Engagement, and Attention in Scholarly Networks. Retrieved November 2, 2015, from http://bonstewart.com/Scholarship_in_Abundance.pdf

Notes:

p.19: Overall, the first paper suggests that networks enact and circulate broad intersecting patterns in what counts as influence, and that these depart from the codified terms of rank and bibliometric indexing on which conventional academic influence is judged. At the same time, in spite of meaningful distinctions between participant perceptions of networks and — Highlighted Nov 7, 2015

Roxå, T., & Martensson, K. (2015). How Effects from Teacher-training of Academic Teachers Propogate into the Meso Level and Beyond. In Teacher Development in Higher Education Existing Programs, Program Impact, and Future Trends (pp. 1–36).

“…causal link between training and development of teaching is not straightforward.”

“These difficulties can manifest themselves as a lack of support and interest from colleagues or supervisors or as conservative attitudes on behalf of the students (Ginns, Kitay, and Prosser 2010).”

Xin, C. (2012). A Critique of the Community of Inquiry Framework. The Journal of Distance Education, 26(1). Retrieved from http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/755/1333

Thanks to Stephen Downes for pointing this paper out. I’m up to my eyeballs, processing data for my Community of Inquiry based MSc research, and could have missed this.

The Community of Inquiry model provides a framework for describing interactions within a community or classroom environment. It involves using textual analysis and coding of messages to interpret the type of interaction for each message – whether it involves social, teaching, or cognitive components. As I’ve been coding the data for my thesis, I’ve been adding as many types of “presences” as are appropriate – a message may include a number of things, indicating social, teaching and cognitive presences in a non-exclusive manner. I’m imagining each message having its own little Venn diagram for Social/Teaching/Cognitive component, as per the CoI model. It’s a simplification and abstraction, certainly, but looking at the coded output, I think it’s still got a fair bit of fidelity to describe the interactions at a high level. In my data, I’m also adding coding to describe the type of content (links, images, attachments, embedded media, etc…) as well as how involved the message is (is it a simple one-liner? a 2 paragraph response? a multi-page essay?) – and I’m thinking about how to include data on the timeline of the discussion (how rapid were the responses? staccato rapidfire conversation, or long drawn-out periods of silence?) I’m still thinking about how to represent that kind of data for an online discussion, but I think there’s something there, there.