{"id":13862,"date":"2013-03-29t10:29:53","date_gmt":"2013-03-29t15:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=13862"},"modified":"2013-03-29t18:49:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29t23:49:48","slug":"sotl-spotlight-public-performances-of-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2013\/03\/sotl-spotlight-public-performances-of-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"sotl spotlight: public performances of learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sotl<\/a><\/strong><\/em>by nancy chick, cft assistant director<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

nancy <\/a>is the\u00a0author<\/a><\/em> <\/em>of a variety of scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl) articles and book chapters, as well as\u00a0co-editor<\/a><\/em> <\/em>of two books on signature pedagogies and co-editor of <\/em>teaching & learning inquiry<\/a>, the official journal of\u00a0the international society for the scholarship<\/em> <\/em>of teaching and learning (issotl<\/a>).<\/em> “sotl spotlight” is her ongoing feature on the cft website.<\/em><\/p>\n

i\u2019m in savannah, georgia, for the sotl commons conference<\/a>.\u00a0 the weather is beautiful, the flowers are blooming, and the tourists are everywhere.<\/p>\n

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savannah's blooming<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

as often happens, the conference has my mind buzzing with ideas and projects.\u00a0 most notable so far is the conversation i just had over dinner with <\/span>peter felten<\/strong> (executive director of center for the advancement of teaching and learning at elon university) and <\/span>taylor binnix<\/strong> (a psychology major at elon university).\u00a0 taylor was telling us about her dance minor, and peter pointed out that students in dance (and the other performing arts) must publicly perform their learning in ways that most other students don\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cyes,\u201d taylor agreed, <\/span>\u201ci never have to say \u2018come read my psychology research paper\u2019 to anyone but the professor at the end of my other courses.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

in sotl, we talk about how students \u201cperform\u201d their learning in papers, exams, projects, presentations, labs, discussions, and the like. \u00a0these are the moments when we see and assess their learning.\u00a0 however, these performances are typically private, shared only with the professor and perhaps the rest of the class. fears of ferpa and irbs make many of us overprotective of our students\u2019 work, ensuring that we alone see what are arguably the best moments of university life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

lee shulman (educational psychologist and former president of the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching) has written about the private nature of teaching in an article entitled \u201cputting an end to pedagogical solitude<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

“we experience isolation in the classroom. we close the door and experience pedagogical solitude<\/strong>, whereas in our life as scholars, we are members of active communities of conversation and evaluation in which we gather with others\u2026to exchange our findings, our methods, and our excuses.” \u00a0(shulman 1993, p. 6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

he argues for us to share our teaching, just as we do our research\u2014to \u201ccelebrate those aspects of our lives and work that can become, as we say in california, \u2018community property<\/strong>.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 some embrace this notion through sotl by presenting or writing about what, how, and why we teach, and what, how, and why students learn (or don\u2019t) as a result.<\/p>\n

what about the solitude of learning?<\/strong> through sotl, we go public with our teaching and our students\u2019 learning\u2014but these are typically our <\/em>moments, our<\/em> conferences, our<\/em> publications.\u00a0 (true, there is an increasing effort to include students as partners in sotl [werner & otis, 2009], but this is not yet the norm.)\u00a0 how can we and the students<\/em> \u201ccelebrate\u201d their learning and make it \u201ccommunity property\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

it’s not a new question. randy bass (professor of english and executive director of the center for new designs in learning and scholarship at georgetown university) and heidi elmendorf (associate professor of biology at georgetown university) have been talking and writing about \u201csocial pedagogies<\/a><\/strong>\u201d for a few years.<\/p>\n

social pedagogies are \u201cdesign approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an \u2018authentic audience\u2019 (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge<\/em> for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge<\/em> in a course.\u201d (bass & elmendorf, 2012)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

their white paper outlines the benefits of such public representations, such as recognizing learning as both process and product, developing a sense of voice and a purpose beyond the classroom, getting feedback from a variety of perspectives, participating in a larger community, and cultivating an \u201cintegrated sense of personal and intellectual significance.\u201d<\/p>\n

cft director derek bruff<\/a> applies bass and elmendorf\u2019s notion of social pedagogies by encouraging us to consider the many ways social media can provide audiences for students\u2019 public performances.\u00a0 course blogs, social bookmarking, twitter back channeling, and collaborative writing on wikis are just a few examples. \u00a0(visit \u201ccourse blogs at vanderbilt,\u201d<\/a> a \u201cmotherblog of live feeds from various vanderbilt course blogs.\u201d)<\/p>\n

but taylor\u2019s dance performances are regular, expected in every course and integral elements of the discipline<\/em>.\u00a0 i\u2019m intrigued by this combination of public performances of learning that are a) for a real audience and, more importantly, b) authentic to the discipline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

peter described an activity from when he taught at vanderbilt:\u00a0 he brought colleagues with relevant areas of expertise to his class to help students as they were writing their research papers.\u00a0 these guest experts didn\u2019t read the papers; instead, the students in small groups briefly explained their work to the guest, who asked questions and gave formative feedback, which the students could then incorporate into their papers.\u00a0 the learning was still happening, so this activity seems like an appropriately low-stakes performance. (the students are still in the classroom, but the door is open.)\u00a0 significantly, though, the performance isn\u2019t unlike the work of historians who may share their ideas with trusted colleagues as they are developing them, opening themselves up to early peer review to improve their final products. this happens more formally at conferences but informally between colleagues as well.<\/p>\n

in my women\u2019s studies courses, i\u2019ve frequently ended the semester with a poster session in which students share their projects with the campus. announced campus-wide ahead of time, the session took place in a common area at lunchtime, and the students talked about their work with people from many disciplines. in contrast to peter\u2019s guest experts visiting class during the intermediate stages of learning, this performance was a final activity with a wide and largely unfamiliar audience (fitting for an interdisciplinary program like women\u2019s studies), positioning the students as relative experts.\u00a0 this activity\u2014on a small scale\u2014reflects the value women\u2019s studies places on taking action by encouraging others\u2019 critical consideration of gender issues and creating change. it also reflects the common scholarly activity of the poster presentation.<\/p>\n

what are other discipline-authentic ways in which our students can more publicly share their learning\u2014for formative or summative feedback, and even for celebration? \u00a0where is it happening on vanderbilt’s campus?<\/span><\/p>\n

references<\/strong><\/p>\n