Easing Entry into the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding the Disciplines” Approach

Abstract

Students' difficulty in mastering material can motivate faculty toward the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) if instructors' frustration can be framed as a researchable question, and they have practical models for assessing learning outcomes. The “decoding the disciplines” approach supports this shift from reflective teaching to SoTL. By focusing on narrowly defined bottlenecks to learning, faculty define researchable questions convincing to their disciplines. The specificity of these inquiries makes the assessment of learning much easier through the application of existing tools, such as those provided in Angelo and Cross's Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993). Example of specific assessments are provided.

Bibliographic data

Middendorf, J. and Pace, D. (2008), 4: Easing Entry into the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding the Disciplines” Approach. To Improve the Academy, 26: 53-67.

External source

https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2334-4822.2008.tb00500.x