Scholarship Forum

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Embedding Scholarship Sam Nolan & Megan Bruce “Developing a Community of Practice Amongst Teaching Fellows”

description

Talk about creation of development of Scholarship Activity at Durham University's Foundation Centre.

Transcript of Scholarship Forum

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Embedding Scholarship

Sam Nolan & Megan Bruce

“Developing a Community of Practice Amongst Teaching Fellows”

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Outline

• Foundation Centre & It’s Staff• Scholarship & Support Structures• In Practice• Successes• Challenges• Future Plans

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Foundation Centre Staff• 18 Academic Staff

across 2 sites• All Teaching Fellows

(Grades 7-9)• Mixture of Research

Experience & Academic Disciplines

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ScholarshipThe distinction between research and scholarship is

made in the following way:

a) research is original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding and is the mainstay of work submitted to the RAE;

b) scholarship is defined as the creation, development and maintenance of the intellectual infrastructure of subjects and disciplines…. And

c) the work we undertake in preparation for teaching, keeping up to date with developments in the subject area to ensure our teaching is 'research informed’

• 20% FTE for each TF

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What does that mean to us?1. Scholarship starts with supporting our

students

2. Scholarship encompasses discipline and subject specific work to enhance teaching

3. Scholarship can evolve into pedagogical research

4. Scholarship can be evaluating new teaching techniques and technologies

5. Scholarship involves students as partners

Add your own ….

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What is Scholarship• Constructively reading articles relating to your subject with the

purpose of updating your knowledge of it or your teaching skills in it.

• Attending a professional development course.• Giving a short seminar to colleagues to disseminate a digest of

what you have gained from your reading or course or engaging in constructive discussion about such a seminar.

• Running a workshop to demonstrate a skill, commenting on your experience with it.

• Being a member of a professional body and taking an active part in its proceedings.

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What is Scholarship• Supporting or mentoring a colleague’s professional

development.• Applying for a grant or funding to support your professional

development.• Writing a short review of a book for a professional journal.• Attending the seminars of a research group.• Undertaking a task to support the work of a research group. • Attending a conference.

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What is Scholarship• Preparing and supporting a poster for a conference.• Giving a seminar on your field of studies.• Study which leads to a further qualification and/or skills and/or

adds to knowledge in your field.• Reviewing a research article in your field for an academic

journal.• Submitting a paper to an academic journal.• Applying for research funding for a project.

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Examples of ScholarshipMany differing projects including:• Overcoming barriers to Laboratory Learning with Virtual

Experiments• Impact of punctuation programme on student language• Focus Project: A Corpus of Student Generated

Discipline Specific Language• What motivates Chinese students to come to the

Foundation Centre (JM)• Conceptual Understanding of Mechanics – The

International Angle • Student Sharing Resources via Pinterest in

Anthropology

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Scholarship Management Structure

Scholarship Forum

Ethics Committee

Scholarship Committee

• Ideas for Scholarship evolve through and with support from the Scholarship Forum

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Scholarship Management Structure

Ethics Committee

Scholarship Committee

Scholarship Forum

• Ideas for Scholarship evolve through and with support from the Scholarship Forum

• If they involve student participants, ethical approval is granted by the ethics committee

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Scholarship Management Structure

Scholarship Committee

Scholarship Forum

Ethics Committee

• Ideas for Scholarship evolve through and with support from the Scholarship Forum

• If they involve student participants, ethical approval is granted by the ethics committee

• If they involve the research office, they go to the Scholarship Committee

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Scholarship Management Structure

Scholarship Committee

Scholarship Forum

Ethics Committee

• Ideas for Scholarship evolve through and with support from the Scholarship Forum

• If they involve student participants, ethical approval is granted by the ethics committee

• If they involve the research office, they go to the Scholarship Committee

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The Role of the Scholarship Forum • The Scholarship Forum is coordinated by SN with

help from Prof. Doug Newton (Emeritus Professor from School of Education)

• Provide mentoring for staff in the development of Scholarly Activity, including:• Developing ideas, Writing Papers, Writing Talk/Grant

Proposals, Organising Conferences, Joining Learned Societies

• Provide a forum for the sharing of Scholarship Work• Lunchtime Talks• Yearly Conferences• National Networks

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Supporting Scholarship: In Practice• Staff tend to find working together in small groups on

common themes help ideas develop quicker, and with a spread of backgrounds this is often fortuitous.

• More experienced staff tend to mentor those starting out in Scholarship

• Scholarship also snowballs, for example in STEM from One Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Award in 2010, a whole series of projects have evolved.

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Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Award

2011

Screen Experiments

HEA Workshop

3 Collaborative Grant Bids

Paper(s)

12 Conference Presentations/ 2

Invited Talks

Membership of National Committee

Augmented Reality Project

Mechanics

Studies of Conceptual

Understanding

3 Conference Presentations

JM - Grant – Screencasting

High Impact Paper ?

Subject Specific Language

Many Conferences

eGlossary

SR + MB – Subject Specific Language

Focus Project – HEA + Durham

Funding

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Supporting Scholarship: The Scholarship Lunches• Every month during term time we have a catered

lunch with a talk from a staff member, this could be on:• Their own Scholarly Activity• A paper they’ve read• An idea they want to develop

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Successes• 12 staff publications in National Journals, 3 in

International Journals• £100K of funding secured in 3 years, including:

• 10 Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Awards• Funding from the HEA, HE STEM, SSI etc

• Staff sit on editorial boards of national journals• Staff elected to Higher Education Committees of

Learned Societies• Work presented at over 30 conferences• Lots of collaborative projects (Computer Science,

Physics, Chemistry, OU, Sheffield, Keele, …)

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Challenges

• Staff Ask:• Does it need to a big project?• How do I get experience?• I don’t know anybody else interested in… • Do I have to do this on my own?

• Staff who are engaged unsure of the role of Scholarship in promotion

• Hard to find time

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Future Plans

• Embedding the Personal Scholarship Plan into our ASR process to allow supportive mentoring

• Assessing the effect of Scholarship on the Student Learning Experience

• Continue supporting all staff to develop their national (and international) profiles

• E-Journal and Book in development

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Future Plans

• Embedding the Personal Scholarship Plan into our ASR process to allow supportive mentoring

• A Teaching Fellow Network• Assessing the effect of Scholarship on the Student

Learning Experience• Continue supporting all staff to develop their national

(and international) profiles• E-Journal and Book in development

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Final Summary

We’ve tried a very inclusive approach and found it enriches our teaching:

“Scholarship is for anyone who teaches – it can be very rewarding; it rejuvenates interest in what we do; it shows students our dedication to their learning; it develops our links to other departments; it is an essential part of academic life”