MRU Institute for SoTL

Developing a SoTL Question

These video presentations from an October SoTL Exchange presentation at MRU have been waiting for a website redesign to find a permanent home, but in the meantime, you can also find them here!   In this series, 6 SoTL scholars talk about what got them interested in their question, their data sources and/or methodology, and their findings and impact, including how their inquiry informed their teaching.

Part 1:  Janice introduces the presenters and a brief description of the Taxonomy of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Questions.

 http://youtu.be/aCu8SnbPRKs

Part 2:  Glen Ryland, Assistant Professor, General Education discusses how he developed and analyzed his SoTL question about what sources and strategies students draw upon as they are developing as academic writers in general education.

Part 3: Margy MacMillan, Professor, Library discusses her project about student reading of scholarly articles, how she used a phenomenographic approach to analyze how students make connections between the text and their existing knowledge, and what she learned about their reading.
Part 4:  April McGrath, Assistant Professor, Psychology describes how she used an experimental design to see how a “learning check-in” (structured one-on-one appointment) could increase student engagement and success in a research methods class, and also how she uncovered useful information about the course topics that students were struggling with.
Part 5:  Melanie Rathburn, Associate Professor, Biology and General Education talks about how she investigated strategies to reduce student anxiety about science and math in her general education courses using surveys and reflective writing, and how she determined that making the content relevant to the students and giving them opportunities to reflect, were important strategies.
Part 6:  Janice Miller-Young, Director, Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, discusses her insights about how students visualize three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional textbook diagrams, which she gained through using a think-aloud interview protocol triangulated with data from students’ coursework.
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Special Issue: Doing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Measuring Systematic Changes to Teaching and Improvements in Learning

There is a new resource for SoTL that has just been published by New Directions for Teaching and Learning:

Special Issue: Doing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Measuring Systematic Changes to Teaching and Improvements in Learning

The book is written primarily by psychologists and, as you might expect from the title, they define SoTL as “an instructor asking questions about the impact of his/her teaching on students’ learning in an individual course”.  This is a narrow definition, however they clearly and thoroughly address research design considerations for these types of studies (there is, however, an absence of theory). The chapters on designing SoTL studies take an empirical and quantitative perspective, addressing issues such as construct and internal validity, different types of comparisons (between participants, within participants, pre-test/post-test) and different experimental and quasi-experimental research designs .  For any faculty member planning to do such a comparison study to assess a teaching intervention (or “treatment”, to use their language), Chapters 2, 3 & 4 are excellent resources to help you design your study.
Bartsch, R. A. (2013), Designing SoTL Studies—Part I: Validity. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2013: 17–33. doi: 10.1002/tl.20073

Bartsch, R. A. (2013), Designing SoTL Studies—Part II: Practicality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2013: 35–48. doi: 10.1002/tl.20074

Wilson-Doenges, G. (2013), Statistical Models for Analyzing Learning Data. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2013: 49–58. doi: 10.1002/tl.20075

*If you’re new to SoTL and are considering an experimental design for your project, you may also want to read Fallacies of SoTL: Rethinking How We Conduct Our Research, Chapter 8 in The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning In and Across the Disciplines (I have a copy in my office if you’d like to borrow it.)

Back to NDTL: There are also two very useful chapters on writing which are quite applicable to a range of disciplines:

Smith, R. A. (2013), Tell a Good Story Well: Writing Tips. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2013: 73–83. doi: 10.1002/tl.20077

Christopher, A. N. (2013), Navigating the Minefields of Publishing. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2013: 85–99. doi: 10.1002/tl.20078

The Chapter on “Navigating the IRB” (Institutional Review Board) is quite American and there are better resources available for our Canadian context (see my summary here).

There is also a Chapter on Faculty Development Centres and the Role of SoTL, and I was happy to note a shout-out to MRU’s Nexen Scholar’s Program!!

 

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Short- and long-term effects of cumulative finals on student learning

The following are excerpts from an interesting study which was recently highlighted in the Teaching Professor:

Khanna, M. M., Badura Brack, A. S., and Finken, L. L. (2013). Short- and long-term effects of cumulative finals on student learning. Teaching of Psychology, 40 (3), 175-182.

Mean scores on content exams versus a cumulative final were compared in introductory psych sections and upper-division psychology sections. The finding: “[C]lasses taking cumulative finals performed reliably better than classes who had noncumulative finals.” (p. 177)

Retention of course material was also measured using online content exams for courses taken one, two, and three semesters previously. “Regardless of type of course, students with cumulative finals did better on departmental content tests than students in courses with noncumulative exams. …” (p. 180)

“As a result of these findings, we believe using cumulative finals improves student learning, and we encourage instructors to utilize cumulative finals in their courses… [E]ven in our optimal study condition (immediate content exam administration in upper-division courses with cumulative finals) students only answered 82% of the content exam items correctly. In the worst condition (18 month time lag for introductory psychology courses with noncumulative finals), students retained just over half of the important information from introductory psychology.” (p. 180)

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