Purpose
"[A Ph.D. candidate who plans
to be a teacher] must know his field and its relation
to the whole body of knowledge. It means too that he
must be in touch with the most recent and most successful
movements in undergraduate education, of which he now
learns officially little or nothing. How should he
learn about them? Not in my opinion by doing practice
teaching upon the helpless undergraduate. Rather he
should learn about them through seeing experiments
carried on in undergraduate work by the members of
the department in which he is studying for the degree."
- Robert Maynard Hutchins,
President, University of Chicago, 1928
|
SoTL at Western calls for a university-wide commitment and
collaboration among faculty, administration, staff and students
in initiating and igniting systematic reflection, research
and conversation about teaching and learning that is made
public, ending the tendency towards privatization in teaching,
and establishing the scholarship of teaching & learning as
legitimate research that is as institutionally valued as
traditional disciplinary scholarship.
With a coordinator, advisory committee and with the available
support of the  staff
and resources of the Coulter Faculty Center, SOTL at Western
seeks to involve as much and as many of the university community
as possible, based upon the premise that student learning
and faculty teaching take place within the community as a
whole, not only within formal courses and classrooms.
Believing that a successful initiative depends largely upon
identifying and asking the most significant questions, SoTL
at Western begins with the following purposive questions:
- What are the features of good student learning and how
can such learning be best encouraged, improved and evaluated?
- What are the characteristics of an academic community
that are conducive to student learning being central?
- What is the relation between the teaching of faculty
and the learning of students and how can they best be fully
connected and integrated?
- How can a scholarly focus upon teaching & learning improve
student learning?
- How can the inherent desire and talent of faculty to
acquire and create knowledge be directed to the central
mission of teaching and working with students?
- How can a holistic approach to student learning where
Student Affairs (and other units) collaborate with faculty
be best achieved?
- What vision, mission, structures, procedures, and support
can be developed at Western to deeply engage the administration,
staff and faculty (and students) in the idea, plans and
practices of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning so
that teaching and learning are the center of faculty conversation,
research, publication and system rewards?
In summary, the purpose of SoTL at Western is to improve
student learning, renew faculty teaching and professional
development, deepen collegiality among all sectors of the
university community and feature WesternÍs mission as the
epitome of academic life at the university, thereby enhancing
WesternÍs reputation for excellence in educational enthusiasm,
experience and outcomes.
|
