NELIG Meeting - 9/07/2007

Association of College and Research Libraries - New England Chapter
New England Library Instruction Group
Mt. Wachusett Community College
Gardner, MA
Sept 7, 2007

NELIG Co-chairs Heidi McCann and Kari Mofford welcomed 33 attendees to the meeting.

Kari presented a summary of the NELIG survey response.

Heidi introduced our featured speaker Donna Killian Duffy http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/training/Bios/DuffyBio.html, professor of psychology and coordinator of the Carnegie Community of Practice at Middlesex Community College, Bedford and Lowell, Massachusetts. Donna presented a portion of a larger workshop program on "Collaborations Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" on faculty and librarians working together to examine in a systematic way how students learn and how we can engage them in the learning process.

She began her presentation by outlining definitions and purposes of scholarship, then applying that to studying teaching. She used a definition of scholarship from Lee Shulman as a starting point: For an activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least 3 key characteristics -- it should be: Public (seen by others); Susceptible to critical review and evaluation (assessable by others); Accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s scholarly community (usable by others). Research fits these categories, but teaching often does not. So, how do we investigate teaching and student learning, and use that data to improve teaching.

Then she introduced the concept of a "community of practice" -- a group of people who: share an interest in a topic (understand what the issues are and agree on common approaches); interact and build relationships (help each other solve problems and answer questions and network across teams and business units); accumulate and disseminate knowledge (share information, insights, and best practices and build tools and a knowledge base). So, how do we build a community of practice? NELIG itself is a good base, a community for sharing what we learn about the scholarship of teaching.

To embark on an effort to assess teaching practices, you need -- clear goals; adequate preparation; appropriate methods; significant results; effective presentation of results; and reflective critique. To clarify your research/assessment goals, you must: state the basis purpose of the work; define realistic and achievable objectives; identify questions that are important to the field.

After a presentation of some examples, Donna asked us to list some questions we have that we would like to figure out how to answer. Then we worked on ways to reframe the questions and concerns into a research action plan with clear goals.

Following the presentation and a question and answer session, there was a brief meeting for those who were interested in planning for this year's annual program, in which Kari and Heidi collected ideas and volunteers for the planning.

Respectfully submitted,
Kendall Hobbs
Acting NELIG secretary