Programs

Committee Reports

College of Health & Human Sciences
College of Education
College of Arts & Sciences - Fine Arts/Communication and Humanities
Natural Sciences
J. Mack Robinson College of Business
Social Sciences

College of Health & Human Sciences

1. College of Health & Human Sciences, College of Law, and School of Policy Studies
• Beatrice Yorker, Professor of Nursing, 404 651-4085


2. Definition of "scholarship of teaching" your college accepted.
• The respondents overwhelmingly approved of the Carnegie proposed definition of the scholarship of teaching.


3. The structures, policies, and practices in your college that support the scholarship of teaching.
• Structures:
  
  • The College of Health and Human Sciences has been very receptive by providing opportunities for faculty to present teaching innovations at a brown bag luncheon immediately prior to faculty meetings.
  • The School of Nursing has had several external experts in scholarship of teaching conduct workshops for faculty.
  • The College of Law has a peer review process for all faculty. It provides at least two classroom observations of a faculty member with the opportunity for reflection on their classroom teaching.
  • The School of Policy studies has no formal structures for scholarship of teaching.
• Policies:
  
  • Most existing policies across the three areas focus on scholarship in the discipline rather than scholarship of teaching. In fact, the College of Health and Human Sciences specifically redirected faculty who engaged in the scholarship of teaching to change their focus to disciplinary research. The rationale for this was based on the GSU strategic plan which guided faculty toward activities that would move us up in the Carnegie rankings. Since federal funding for disciplinary research far exceeds funding in areas of scholarship of teaching, internal development efforts have primarily focused on obtaining external research funding.
• Practices:
  The implementation of cumulative review of faculty (pre-tenure and post-tenure review) this has provided an excellent opportunity for Deans, Directors, and Chairs to direct faculty with interest in scholarship of teaching to gain expertise in this area. Examples include sending tenured faculty who choose a teaching focus to AAHE conferences and then to enrich the rest of the faculty with innovations and reflective opportunities such as developing teaching portfolios.

  The most pervasive practice that influences faculty to not value scholarship of teaching activities prior to tenure, is the GSU, college, and unit criteria for promotion and tenure. In applied disciplines that dominate our three colleges, we all have a rich history of examining, and measuring learning outcomes. Bar exams, Nursing Board exams, and a variety of other credentialing benchmarks are applied to students in the areas we teach. The reality of GSU’s mission of obtaining external funding has required that faculty who teach professions that have established learning outcomes direct major attention to their disciplinary scholarship. The criteria for promotion and tenure reflect this mission by requiring evidence of publications and grants in disciplinary areas that will leverage funding and are only beginning to look at a variety of ways to evaluate teaching and learning.
  
  

4. The structures, policies, and practices in your college that inhibit the scholarship of teaching.
   • As mentioned above, the dominant emphasis on faculty performance evaluation prior to tenure, is based on fundable scholarship within the discipline.
   
   
5. The issue your college proposes to study and act on during Part Two of the Campus Conversations process, and your plan for that study.
• Analyze and distribute the results of a survey sent to all faculty in the three units regarding
• Responses to the Carnegie definition
• the disciplinary vehicles for publishing/scholarship in teaching
• the archive of articles published by faculty members in our three colleges on scholarship of teaching to date
• Engage in discussions regarding faculty responses to the questions regarding perceptions of the value of scholarship of teaching.
• The survey responses tended to show that faculty believe that they value scholarship of teaching more than their unit, their college, their discipline, and the university.
• Organize monthly scholarship of teaching pizza lunches for Law, Health and Human Sciences and Policy Studies to meet together and feature faculty exemplars of scholarship of teaching.
• Develop unit award(s) that recognize teaching.


6. Key words that point toward your supports, inhibitors, or Part Two work (such as faculty rewards, faculty development, assessment of student learning, team-teaching, problem-based learning, student portfolios, service-learning, etc.).
• Supports:
• Faculty rewards, both internal funding and annual evaluation merit pay raises
• Inviting (some units requiring) teaching portfolios
• Valuing and modeling service learning
• Inhibitors:
• Promotion and tenure criteria and focus
• Federal funding

College of Education

Report on Carnegie discussion of the Scholarship of Teaching from
The College of Education
Contact Person: Stephen Harmon

Definition of The Scholarship of Teaching:

What are the hindrances to the scholarship of teaching? One primary hindrance to the scholarship of teaching emerged in every discussion; GSU has not operationalized the concept of the scholarship of teaching, and how this concept relates directly to promotion, tenure, and general teaching duties. The traditional perspective on the tripartite university mission is prohibitive to the activities inherent in the definition of the scholarship of teaching. Professors are encouraged to take the time to be effective teachers, but at the same time the reward system sends different messages about what is valued for promotion, tenure, and merit adjustments. Quite simply, if GSU wants professors to be reflective, creative, and experimenting teacher-scholars, the university must be more explicit and consistent in promoting and rewarding those activities that lead to a scholarship of teaching on campus. The systematic attitude about teaching is that it is a part of the job, but is not as important as other parts are. This is manifested in university policy. For example, an associate professor may be promoted to full professor with only "adequate" teaching. . Presently, it appears that exceptionally bad teaching may draw unfavorable attention from administration, but all other degrees of expertness in teaching are blurred in regard to professional evaluation. The graduate faculty policy also devalues teaching by implying that if one doesn't make graduate faculty status then one is "punished" by being given more teaching responsibilities

Other hindrances that emerged less universally were:

• that the usage of innovative approaches to teaching such as on-line courses, etc. has not received the attention needed to equip the 21^st century scholar with the tools to be a true scholar of teaching.
• at the University level, the teaching facilities are poor. (Anyone who has ever taught in 4^th floor of Sparks can attest to this. Old uncomfortable desks, broken overheads, no chalk, blazingly hot or arctic ally cold.)
• scheduling is problematic. 7:15 pm classes are not especially conducive to teaching or learning.
• some participants felt that there was an overemphasis on technology in funding programs on improving teaching.

What are the supports to the scholarship of teaching? The single most important support for the scholarship of teaching is the university’s serious approach to this topic, and the design of the current forum to discuss it. However, the university is at a beginning stage of this process and currently support for the scholarship of teaching is much stronger at the departmental level than at the college or university level. Departments offer a range of supports including brown bag lunch discussions, annual evaluations, developmental course releases, faculty support systems, and hiring practices that include excellence in teaching as a major factor of employment. Other supports are funding for collaborative teaching from the Provost’s Office, Mentoring Grants, the promotion of interdisciplinary teaching, and the Center for Teaching and Learning. Overall though, supports for the scholarship of teaching do not appear to be intrinsic to the university system and vary widely by department.

College of Arts & Sciences - Fine Arts/Communication and Humanities

To: Harry L. Dangel

Date: Mon, Nov 22, 1999 1:29 PM

Subject: Committee Report on GSU Teaching

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Campus Conversations about Teaching at GSU
Reporting Outcomes of Part 1

As associates of GSU's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), over the past three months the seven members of our committee have been engaged in a dialogue about teaching and learning at Georgia State. We participated in a weekend workshop with dozens of other associates of the Center, examined a range of source materials, met four times as a whole committee, and consulted with colleagues in our respective academic departments. The following provides a summary of what we have learned about teaching and learning at GSU through our dialogues and discussions in these forums. We present the summary as material the co-directors of the CTL will be working with as they continue to prepare a proposal to be submitted to the Carnegie Teaching Academy during the spring 2000 semester. Our understanding is that our summary is one of six such documents being submitted to the Center's co-directors this week.

Synopsis of Major Points

The illustrations of SOT provided seem limited. We would like them to be more inclusive, to include many other options.

Documentation and the forms it might take concern us. In particular, the purposes of teaching documentation concern faculty.

Faculty may lose interest in participating in such efforts without the perception that something of practical value will come out of it.

The Term "Scholarship of Teaching"

Whatever term eventually is decided upon, SOT encompasses all of the ways in which individual faculty share what they have learned about teaching with colleagues. We believe an environment in which faculty are able to share insights about teaching with one another leads to personal investment in acts of teaching and contributes to continuing improvements in teaching. As a general comment, our goal should not be how to evaluate teachers but to explore ways to help each other become even more effective educators. Sharing of information seems to be the most appropriate and beneficial way of doing this--not through evaluation.

Illustrations of Faculty Efforts in This Area: Alternatives and Options

Teaching Portfolios

Reciprocal Observation

Mentoring

Departmental Workshops

Multiple Section Discussions

Teaching Committees

Non-Traditional Means

GTA Training

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Closing Remarks:

Definition #1:

-- the Carnegie Teaching Academy's working definition

"The scholarship of teaching is problem posing . . ."
Use of the phrase "problem posing" suggests something along the lines of the initial stages of an action research study (e.g., a classroom-centered research investigation) of teaching and teaching effectiveness. While that is one alternative, we would like to expand the options available to include many other ways of engaging in exploration of teaching. We suggest leaving plenty of room for diversity in approaches (see some of the options listed above).

". . . about an issue of teaching or learning . . ., "
An "issue" could be nothing more than something about teaching that puzzles a teacher (e.g., Why are students in this course section less responsive to my whole-class discussion prompts? How can I use the blackboard, or WebCT, more efficiently?). All faculty encounter puzzling events at times. As such "issues" are identified, they might serve as logical starting points for developing constructive discussions about teaching between colleagues. .

". . . study of the problem through methods appropriate to disciplinary epistemologies, application of results to practice, communication of results, self-reflection, and peer review. . . "
These stages seem to be framing the discussion in terms of classroom-centered research. We include such efforts as examples of the kinds of things a teacher might do, but the broader picture is finding many different ways for teachers to engage in explorations of teaching. Some, but not all, of these ways might culminate in written documentation. Other ways might involve more personal, one-on-one connections between teachers who are engaged in reciprocal, and reciprocally supportive, activities.

Definition #2:

--Lee S. Shulman, The Course Portfolio (1999, AAHE)

". . . A scholarship of teaching . . ."
Same issues as already discussed above.

". . . will entail a public account . . ."
However, such efforts may not begin with a public account in mind. In some viable options, two or more teachers collaborate in reciprocally supportive ways to learn more about each other's ways of teaching. We do not think that all efforts will necessarily culminate in a public account.

". . . of some or all of the full act of teaching --- vision, design, enactment, outcomes, and analysis ---"
These can be examined through reciprocal observation, and some of the other options we have discussed, as well.

". . . in a manner susceptible to critical review by the teacher's professional peers, . . ."
The phrase "critical review" concerns us. It suggests that such efforts are pointed in the direction of evaluation and assessment above other concerns. We are more interested in setting up mechanisms for lower key, mutually supportive, reciprocal and collegial explorations of teaching. On the other hand, some faculty may be ready to pursue projects culminating in written documentation that would be available for critical review. That is an ambitious level of engagement in explorations of teaching. We would like to include it as an option worth pursuing but caution against setting it a standard all faculty are expected to live up to.

". . . and amenable to productive employment in future work by members of that same community. . . ."
Again, this phrasing seems to suggest that the products of SOT need to culminate in written accounts. We believe there are many other options, as well.

Natural Sciences

Draft Commentary from the Natural Sciences

The process of engaging the faculty
This draft has been constructed from the comments of faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, and Computer Science. The departments of Geology and Mathematics had no reports. Issues related to the Scholarship of Teaching were raised in a number of forums: Departmental faculty meetings, at a brown-bag lunch, and individual meetings with selected faculty. Written faculty input was solicited but only a small number responded across departments. Individual discussions were held with the chairperson in two of the departments. One department engages new instructors in discussions of teaching and shares courses materials and instructional notes, the best methods and talks about what appear most effective.

Defining the Scholarship of Teaching
There is little enthusiasm across the participating departments for the term Scholarship of Teaching. Some viewed the term "Scholarship" as troublesome, and there is a perception among some in the scientific community that scholarship related to science education is less intellectually demanding than research in the discipline itself.

Several faculty expressed concern that they really don’t know how to weight published papers on scholarship of teaching in terms of tenure and promotion and they felt that those making decisions on tenure and promotion would not give them much weight.

Factors that Support the Scholarship of Teaching
The administration, especially at the upper levels, is supportive of an increased role and a higher status for the scholarship of teaching. The Center for Teaching and Learning is active. Nationwide the science community has established a growing resource network of innovative teaching ideas and tools for their evaluation. Grant support for the Scholarship of Teaching is increasingly available.

At least one department encourages the scholarship of teaching as a component of a professional effort with junior and senior faculty members who are actively engaged in some aspect of the improvement of instruction. An active program to develop the teaching skills of our graduate students is in place. This department would consider filling a new tenure-track position with a candidate whose research was in the "teaching and learning" of the subject. This research is seen as making the elite academic community more sensitive and responsive to its student customers.

In contrast, in another department no one has published anything about teaching pedagogy or assessment of learning or even suggested anything that helps scholarship of teaching. In a third department faculty express the opinion that the University has a commitment to strive for better quality in our teaching and that this work could get passed on through discussions with other faculty, teaching workshops, or published in the discipline specific teaching journals.

Factors that Inhibit the Scholarship of Teaching
Local resources don’t match the verbal support. In particular, funding for tenure-track positions dedicated to the Scholarship of Teaching are not generally available within the science departments. Likewise, the view taken by promotion and tenure committees toward the scholarship of teaching is in a state of flux. A junior faculty member may be better advised to maximize more traditional research publications. Small departments with graduate programs need to fill faculty positions with an eye toward a candidate’s potential as a research mentor. Competition for tenure-track positions is fierce, and a candidate with more "education" publications and fewer "scientific" publications is at a disadvantage.

Traditional research is often rewarded by "released" time from teaching duties. Interest in teaching and learning issues, in contrast, is often rewarded by more teaching and a diminished potential for scholarship in teaching. In one department, faculty all agreed that because tenure and promotion is based on accomplishing research goals, the emphasis on traditional research and the money that supports it is the main thing hindering scholarship of teaching. A departmental associate chair noted that the faculty are hired for their research skills and not for teaching and that someone hired in science education should be expected to publish scholarship of teaching and that type of publication would be given much weight for them.

J. Mack Robinson College of Business

CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING (CTL)
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
THE CARNEGIE TEACHING ACADEMY CAMPUS PROGRAM
CAMPUS CONVERSATION PROGRAM – PART I for the
J. MACK ROBINSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS (RCB)

The RCB Associates to the CTL completed the actions identified in its plan for Part I of the Campus Conversation Program. This preliminary plan for Part I is by reference made an attachment to this report.

Preliminary Report on the Data from the Survey of the RCB Faculty

In general, the faculty believes that the RCB requires and supports high quality instruction. The principal factors are the need to show good student evaluations for consideration in all personnel evaluations, and the work of the Faculty Development Committee in providing workshops and seminars on teaching oriented topics.

The major inhibitors for the scholarship of teaching movement as identified by the faculty are:

1. an over emphasis on traditional research (scholarship of discovery) by the faculty in general and various promotion and tenure committees;
2. lack of explicitly expressed support by administration from the Department Chairs through the Deans to the Provost and the President; and
3. lack of resources to support faculty interested in this area (to be explored in phase II).

Preliminary Report on the Opinions of the Deans of the RCB

Preliminary Report on the Personal Interviews with the Faculty Development
Committee (FDC) of the RCB

Members of the FDC believe that the college supports high quality teaching and teaching effectiveness as evidenced by its mission statement. This view is further supported by the role teaching performance plays in faculty evaluation, and by the existence and activities of the FDC, including its workshops and its ongoing instructional innovation grant program.

The primary inhibitor to the scholarship of teaching is a reward structure favoring discipline specific research accomplishment over teaching accomplishment. The appropriateness of such favoritism is the focus of some disagreement.

Plan for Part II of the Campus Conversation Program

1. The data obtained from the open ended questions in the survey in Part I will be assembled and analyzed in detail to discover dominant themes and strong relationships.
2. The personal interviews with influential groups will continue with interviews of the:

1. Chairs and Directors of the Departments, Institutes and Schools in the RCB ( Executive Committee of the RCB)
2. Influential faculty members representing each department, institute and school on an advisory committee to the Dean (Faculty Affairs Committee of the RCB.
3. Promotion and Tenure Committee of the RCB.
4. Recipients of the RCB Teaching Award for approximately the last ten years.

1. Refinement of a definition of the scholarship of teaching and learning for use in the RCB based on the results of all previous data.
2. Construction of a Lickert scale based survey instrument about the scholarship of teaching and learning, the teaching vs. learning paradigm, the support structure for scholarship of teaching and learning, the inhibitors of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and other major issues identified in the open-ended questions. This survey should lead to the discovery of statistically significant relationships.
3. Completion of all aspects of the data gathering and analysis. Construction of a report on the results of Part II of the Campus Conversation Program.

Social Sciences

The Carnegie Teaching Academy Campus Program
Fall 1999
Reporting Outcomes of Part 1

An introduction with some methodological commentary:

The data collected for this report reflects the work of the associates to the Center for Teaching and Learning for the departments of Anthropology and Geography, History, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. All associates interviewed their department chairs and held interviews with faculty in their departments, four held faculty meetings and the fifth will do so later. Three associates utilized the Carnegie Foundation film. All considered the work productive and their departments cooperative although to varying degrees. An example of participation is the Political Science department that had 100 % participation in a conversation that can be characterized as the most involved discussion about teaching in the 29 years I have been at Georgia State. In addition, eleven of the nineteen faculty members in the department sent detailed email responses delineating their thoughts on the subject.

It is clear that in the Social and Behavioral Sciences the Campus Conversations on "the scholarship of teaching" are in progress.

The general consensus of these conversations is that all faculty are extremely interested in teaching effectiveness and excellence in teaching. However, no junior faculty member has the time to commit to a "scholarship of teaching." Some senior faculty were more predisposed toward the endeavor. One viewpoint expressed repeatedly is that this should be a "scholarship of teaching and learning," not just a scholarship of teaching.

1. College and Contact Person:

College of Arts and Sciences; William R. Thomas, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science; Associate to the Center for Teaching and Learning

2. The definition of scholarship of teaching your college accepts:

The suggested definition of "scholarship of teaching" was questioned by two of the five departments. Their general critique was that the definition was too broad and general in its inclusion of both research and non-research activities under scholarship on teaching. The following alternative definitions were put forward:

• A more formal process of experimenting and evaluating specific teaching styles and methods and disseminating the results to other scholars/teachers for evaluation and review; peer exploration and evaluation of pedagogical methods; emphasis is on research and publication to be distinguished from excellent teaching; and
• Problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through scientific methods, presentation of results for peer review, and integration and communication of those results.

A majority of the behavioral and social sciences accepts the default definition that "the scholarship of teaching is problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to disciplinary epistemologies, application of results to practice, communications of results, self-reflection and peer review."

3. The structures, policies, and practices in the College of Arts and Sciences that support the scholarship of teaching:

The recent change in the College Promotion and Tenure Manual that states that "...a recommendation for tenure and promotion to associate requires that the candidate be judged at least excellent in either instruction or professional development..." Thus, teaching is now ranked as important as professional development.

Beginning this year, Arts and Sciences requires a teaching portfolio through which faculty may symbolize the quality of their teaching.

Arts and Sciences also has a teaching track which senior faculty with strong teaching records can choose to follow for merit pay purposes.

The college of Arts and Sciences also participate in faculty development awards and instructional improvement grants.

4. The structures, policies, and practices in the College of Arts and Sciences that inhibit the scholarship of teaching:

New faculty to the university have research agendas in particular areas of specialization as these relate to their discipline. Active, professional research on teaching has never been a desirable criterion for faculty recruited by the College of Arts and Sciences.

There is more of an emphasis on and reward for a productive research agenda on a highly specialized area of inquiry and not on broad research and development agenda. There is more support and reward of specialists then of generalists (a great teacher must be both a generalist and be grounded in the so-called "real world"). Likewise there is preference and reward for basic research in the Arts and Sciences rather than on applied research, the category in which scholarship of teaching probably best fits.

Currently there are no real rewards for junior faculty to pursue "the scholarship of teaching." In fact, because of the time pressures of the professional development necessary to obtain promotion and tenure, junior faculty cannot think of this as an alternative.

5. What issue does the department propose that the College of Arts and Sciences study and act on during part two of the campus conversations process and what does the department propose as the plan for that study?

This elicited many excellent responses. The more frequently mentioned are rank ordered below. A consensus advocated that a first step is to provide professors with research and other resources and information about how they might do things differently in the classroom. The following topics of interest were mentioned the most frequently:

1. how can available technologies be incorporated into the learning process;
2. how can portfolios lead to more effective teaching;
3. how to facilitate students becoming less passive and more active as learners;
4. how to construct effective and fair examinations;
5. how to facilitate classroom discussions;
6. how to utilize effective group work in large classes;
7. what types of projects are conducive to service learning;
8. how can group projects reinforce class concepts; and
9. what types of innovations are other social science teachers trying.

A beginning example from the Political Science Department is to have a faculty member research PS, the journal for teaching Political Science, for articles especially relevant for the classroom that would serve as a focal point for faculty conversation about teaching. This could be supplemented by other resources and eventually lead to a resource bank on teaching. This would help create a community of scholars conversing over teaching within the discipline.

6. Key words:

• equitable teaching loads;
• service learning;
• teaching effectiveness, teaching evaluations and assessment of teaching;
• teaching excellence;
• teaching standards;
• portfolio;
• technological innovation;
• new pedagogical approaches;
• peer review;
• strategies for improving teaching;
• strategies for symbolizing teaching; and
• faculty professional development in pedagogy.

7. Supportive administrators:

Lauren Adamson, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences