Rethinking the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for a Digital Age

Rethinking the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for a Digital Age 

Poh-Sun Goh

(reproduced from / first posted on blogpost ⏯https://medicaleducationelearning.blogspot.com/2019/05/sotl-and-rime-workshop-cenmed-wednesday.html

see more on follow-up blogpost
⏯https://medicaleducationelearning.blogspot.com/2020/05/eportfolios-as-visible-and-tangible.html)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a set of unifying ideas centred around proposals put forward in a series of scholarly articles by Boyer, Glassick, Hutchings and Shulman, and embraced by the scholarly community (Boyer 1990; Glassick 2000; Hutchings & Schulman 1999). The aim of this Short Communication is to expand upon each category of scholarship proposed by Boyer, by adding the scholarship of Creation, Curation with attribution, Transfer to practice, and Workplace/Lifelong learning; add to Glassick’s six standards the Digital standards of Openness and Visibility, and expand on Hutchings and Shulman’s three minimum requirements of scholarship by incorporating ideas from networked learning and connectivism by George Siemens (Siemens 2005). We hope that this article contributes to move forward thinking on the SoTL, for a Digital Age.

The Scholarship of Creation is well accepted in the Arts, and has analogies to the creative process when a medical educator creates educational materials. A strong argument can be made, and has been made that this is similar to the recognition that artists receive, particularly when their work is presented for public review, critique and commentary (Boyer 1990; Hutchings & Schulman 1999). The creation of digital materials for medical education and training, is hard work, often inspirited by the same creative impulse that drives artistic endeavours, particularly when imbued with an intentional, informed, reflective, scholarly approach; and is similar to the scholarship of discovery. Awareness of this should be raised in both the medical education community, and amongst our administrative peers, to recognise and reward medical education scholars during appointments, promotion and the tenure process.

Similarly, the act of artistic curation, and the professional work of curators in the Arts, has similarities to the work of medical educators, when we assemble educational and training materials. A strong argument again can be made that this has similarities to the Scholarship of Integration (Boyer 1990), and should be given academic and professional recognition and reward, similar to the Scholarship of Creation. Digital platforms and processes makes the Scholarship of Curation open, accessible and visible.

Taking this argument further, the act, or Scholarship of Transfer to Practice, has an analogy with the Scholarship of Application. Digital practice makes this again particularly open, and visible to peers, assessors and evaluators, and when a scholarly approach as proposed by Glassick (2000) is applied to this Scholarship of Practice, appropriate academic recognition can be again accorded to this effort. 

The focus of outcomes of learning and teaching guides both the Scholarship of Teaching, and our focus in Workplace and Lifelong learning. Technology enhanced learning (TEL), makes the educational and learning process, as well as performance outcomes of this process open and visible, through a digital analytics process (Goh 2017). 

As we examine the categories of scholarship proposed by Boyer, the affordances of digital teaching and learning, and draw analogies and inspiration from practices in the Arts; an argument can be made that awareness, and recognition of the efforts of medical educators in Creation, Curation, Transfer to Practice and Workplace and Lifelong learning can and should given.

References:

Boyer EL. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Glassick CE. 2000. Boyer's expanded definitions of scholarship, the standards for assessing scholarship, and the elusiveness of the scholarship of teaching. Acad

Med. Sep;75(9):877-80.

Goh, P.S. Learning Analytics in Medical Education. MedEdPublish. 2017 Apr; 6(2), Paper No:5. Epub 2017 Apr 4. https://doi.org/10.15694/mep.2017.000067
https://www.mededpublish.org/manuscripts/944

Siemens G. 2005. Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.

Hutchings P, Shulman LS. 1999. The Scholarship of Teaching: New Elaborations, New Developments, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 31:5, 10-15, DOI: 10.1080/00091389909604218

Three takeaways:

1) The scholarship categories proposed by Boyer (Discovery, Integration, Application and Teaching) can be each expanded to include Creation (Digital content and online repositories), Curation with attribution, Transfer to practice and Work place/Life long learning. 

2) That we add to Glassick's six standards (Clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective presentation and reflective critique) with Digital standards of openness (with focus on making the learning process, and data to inform - demonstrate outcomes of learning visible and accessible openly online).

3) That we expand on Schulman's three minimum requirements of scholarship (public, in form suitable for critical review and evaluation, accessible for exchange with, and to be build upon by other members of the scholarly community) for the digital age, incorporating the ideas from George Siemens (connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age) combined with classical educational pedagogy of relevant, contextual, collaborative, active learning with feedback.

https://medicaleducationelearning.blogspot.com/2018/09/digital-scholarship.html

Weller, M. (2011) The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849666275
see Chapter 1: Digital, Networked and Open
and Chapter 4: The Nature of Scholarship

and Chapter 11: Reward and Tenure

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxdaH3onLL0/

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Connectivism

Digital Scholarship in Medical Education from Poh-Sun Goh