Partnering with Students in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Event Date & Time

Event Description

Please note, this is an in-person event.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is an opportunity for faculty to reflect on their teaching, investigate the learner experience, implement evidence-based change, and communicate findings with an external audience. The principles of ‘good SoTL’ (Felten, 2013) are valuable guides when designing and conducting a teaching and learning research project. One of Felten’s principles is that SoTL be conducted in partnership with students.

In this session, McCollum will explore the practice of students as partners in SoTL through examples from his research including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research projects. He will present a series of pre-partnership questions (Acai et al., 2017) that are useful for identifying shared objectives, and the value of establishing a Research Learning Plan to support the success of all partners during the project. A model for describing the cycle of partnership with students will be shared (McCollum et al., 2021), along with important first-steps for navigating the known opportunities and challenges of partnership.

Presenter bio:

Brett McCollum is a Professor of Chemistry and the Board of Governor’s Teaching Chair for Educational Leadership at Mount Royal University. Dr. McCollum is a 3M National Teaching Fellow, a Nexen Scholar of Teaching and Learning, and the education columnist for the Chemical Institute of Canada. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL) and previously has served as the Chair of SoTL Canada.

McCollum has published on the scholarship of teaching and learning, chemistry education research, and muon spin spectroscopy. His passion for improving the student learning experience has been recognized through the MRU Undergraduate Research Supervision Award (2019) and the Student Association Open Education Champion Award (2020). This year, Dr. McCollum was recognized with the 2021 Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) Distinguished Teaching Award.