Report from the 12th Annual Teaching and Learning in History Conference, Oxford

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15 June 2010

Once again Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, UK, hosted the Annual Teaching and Learning in History Conference, the premier international conference merging specifically the disciplines of SOTL and History.  Held 23 – 25 March, the conference included dozens of international participants, national teaching fellows, and one of the semi-annual meetings of the HistorySOTL society.  Ran by the History Subject Centre under the guidance of Dr. Sarah Richardson with the assistance of her expert staff, the conference raised new directions for research and mixed content from both practical teaching tactics as well as teaching theory.  The twelve page report detailing speakers and sessions may be examined  here.

HistorySOTL Members to Conduct Workshop on “Failure” at International SOTL Conference in Liverpool, England

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9 June 2010

Members of the HistorySOTL Board of the Directors will conduct a workshop on failure at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) Conference to be held in Liverpool, United Kingdom, 19-22 October 2010.

Bringing together a team from Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, the workshop will explore the place of failure in teaching practice and administration.

From its early beginnings SOTL has been closely associated with recognition as the central strategy in elevating the importance of teaching within academia.

As advocates of SOTL attempted to further embed quality they looked to recognition and reward as the drivers of change.

This approach has had a lasting impact on how academics approach both SOTL and their own practice. While academics seeking recognition or writing a SOTL article discuss ‘problems,’ they rarely talk about failure when attempting to improve their teaching or make change.

In this workshop the facilitators — all well established scholars with numerous institutional and national teaching awards and several with discipline and/or institutional administrative experience — talk failure. Failure at the discipline and institutional level, failure at the curriculum level, failure and technology, and failure in aspects of classroom practice, will be amongst the discussion points.

The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to also share their ideas on failure and their practice before work-shopping some strategies (borrowed and adapted from fields as diverse as the military and business) that can be used to more effectively deal with failure as a tool for engaging best practice.

“We are very much looking forward to facilitating this workshop on an aspect of teaching practice that is rarely discussed” said the Workshops coordinator and HistorySOTL Australasian Director A/Professor Sean Brawley. “The workshop also shows the benefits of the Society as a clearinghouse for international collaboration” he noted.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview contact the Director responsible for Public Affairs (A/Professor Sean Brawley) on 61 2 9385 2342 or email.

HistorySOTL Chair and Vice Chair Invited to Share Ideas on Teaching and Learning with Scandinavian Historians

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9 June 2010

HistorySOTL Chair, Professor David Pace, and Vice-Chair, Professor Alan Booth have been invited to share their expertise on teaching and learning in History with Swedish Historians at an International Conference being hosted by the University of Uppsala.

The conference host is Dr David Ludvigsson of Uppsala’s “Historiska Institutionen”. Dr Ludvigsson met with members of the Society in Oxford in March 2010 at the Annual History in Higher Education Conference hosted by the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy History Subject Centre.

The conference provides a rare opportunity for Historians in the English-speaking world to share their approach to teaching and learning with Scandinavian historians. European historians continue to embrace the strong ‘didactic’ tradition while those of the English-speaking world have embraced the change brought by the new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL).

Professor Booth will introduce delegates to the scholarship of teaching and learning as it has developed in the last decade in the English speaking world. Professor Pace will discuss his ongoing research on the “bottlenecks” students encounter in their learning.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Professors Pace or Booth, contact the Director responsible for Public Affairs (A/Professor Sean Brawley) on 61 2 9385 2342 or email.

HistorySOTL Board Members Invited onto Expert Panel for Australian Standards

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26 April 2010

The Australian Government has moved to establish national standards for the tertiary education sector in that country. Through the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), discipline expert panels are being convened to prepare sets of standards.

For the Humanities and Social Sciences this is a vast undertaking. The ALTC in consultation with the Australasian Council of Dean of Arts and Social Sciences (DASSH) decided to trial the system using History and Geography as the first two disciplines.

The expert panels are made up of representatives from the discipline’s peak body, experts from the local discipline community, an international expert, and representatives from students and employers.

A/Professor Sean Brawley (UNSW), who is the Australasian Regional Director for HistorySOTL, was nominated as an expert by the Australian Historical Association. Dr Alan Booth (Nottingham) who is Vice-President of the Society was nominated as the international expert for the panel. Dr Booth comes to the job with extensive experience in formalizing the British Quality Assurance Agency’s discipline benchmark statements for History.

The panel commences its meeting schedule in May. A draft will be completed by September and the final version will be made available in December 2010.

With debates about standards continuing to capture public debate (especially in the United States) the Australian standards will be of wide interests to historians and academic administrators around the world.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with A/Professor Brawley or Dr. Booth contact the Director responsible for Public Affairs (A/Professor Sean Brawley) on 61 2 9385 2342 or email.

HistorySOTL Passes Interim Constitution

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First Board of Directors appointed

At its annual meeting in Oxford, the Steering Committee of HistorySOTL voted itself out of existence by accepting the new interim constitution. The Committee has been replaced by the Society’s first Board of Directors.
The Interim Constitution was placed before the Society’s membership for comment after the Steering Committee approved the draft at its meeting in Bloomington, Indiana in October 2009. Aimed at preparing the Society for transition to a fully functioning democratic structure, the new Constitution sets out:
1.  The objectives of the Society
2.  The membership categories
3.  Governance
4.  Constitutional arrangements

The First Board of Directors
The new constitution of the Society created a Board Structure.  The first Board was appointed by the Steering Committee and will hold office before the first elections for the Society.  These election will take place no later than 31 December 2012.
The new Board’s members are as follows:
(A) CHAIR OF THE BOARD/PRESIDENT   David Pace (Indiana)
(B) VICE-CHAIR/VICE-PRESIDENT  Alan Booth (Nottingham)
(C) SECRETARY Keith Erekson (Texas)
(D) TREASURER Leah Skopkow (Indiania) & Geoff Timmins (Central Lancashire)
(E) REGIONAL DIRECTOR — NORTH AMERICA Mills Kelly (George Mason)
(F) REGIONAL DIRECTOR — EUROPE Sarah Richardson (Warwick)
(G) REGIONAL DIRECTOR — AUSTRALASIA Sean Brawley (UNSW)
(H) DIRECTOR — PUBLICATIONS  Andrew Koke (Indiana)
(I) 2 X MEMBERS AT LARGE  Paul Hyland (Bath-Spa) and Arlene Diaz (Indiana)
President Pace sees the finalisation of the interim constitution as a major achievement for the Society (formed in 2006) and looks forward to the implementation of a number of initiatives agreed to by the Board at its Oxford meeting.
If you would like more information about this topic (including a copy of the approved constitution), or to schedule an interview with a member of the Board of Directors contact the Director responsible for Public Affairs (A/Professor Sean Brawley) on 61 2 9385 2342 or S [dot] Brawley [at] UNSW [dot] EDU [dot] AU” target=”_self”>email.

Teaching the English Language in Italy through Art History and Culture

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I’d like to invite any suggestions from educators and experts of Art History that might help structure CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) lessons in public schools in Italy.  We are currently experimenting with the methodology, but lack a strong syllabus from which to extract language AND content learning objectives. Please leave any helpful information in the comments below.

Call for Learning Objectives

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One of the problems frequently cited in the SoTL literature is learning objectives. I’ve recently begun requiring my students to link their presentation objectives to class LOs as noted in the syllabus. They are having a terrible time doing it.

They are not the only ones. Many of my colleagues, to judge by syllabi linked online, also have a hard time defining clear LOs. Here’s my challenge to you: list your learning objectives (or a link thereto) here, and let’s all start looking at them.

Here are mine for my World Civ class to 1500. I welcome comments, suggestions (oh please!!) and critiques.

1. Students will analyze various kinds of visual art for what that art can inform them about the specific society/culture that produced it. To do this effectively, students will analyze their readings in the assigned text(s) so that they can compare and contrast the values, structures and issues of the producing society with those exhibited in the art.

2. Students will synthesize and evaluate the art for its relevance to the study of the history of the producing society/culture.

3. The analyses, syntheses and evaluations will be manifested in various products that each student will be communicating in both written and oral forms.

The full syllabus is available here.

Marie
Oklahoma City University