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| The SoTL Scholars of DLSU - advancing scholarly research in engineering education! |
In my paper (Oreta 2015) that was published in the ASCE Journal of Professional
Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, I presented my concept of the "Evolution of an Engineering Educator" below.
The Level 3 teacher which I referred to as the "Scholarly Teacher" practices the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning or SoTL.
SoTL sees teaching as “intellectual work, as a process of inquiry, as research that employs
the same criteria as other forms of disciplinary research and an ongoing
investigation that is made public and shared with others, peer reviewed and
published” (McKinney 2007). The
ultimate objective of SoTL is to add to the literature on teaching and learning
so that the shared knowledge adds to the productivity of the faculty. Usually a
teacher engages in SoTL when he wants to understand how students learn in the
classroom and when he wants to discover “how
learning can be improved by improving teaching” (McKinney 2007). There is a range of possible research
strategies and methodologies that can be considered under SoTL. Among these
strategies include: (a) course portfolio and reflections, (b) interviews and
focus groups, (c) observational research, (d) questionnaires, (e) content
analysis, (f) secondary analysis, (g) experiments and quasi-experiments, (h)
case studies, and (i) multi-method studies.
The teaching faculty in engineering schools are
equipped with technical know-how but they may lack the skills and tools on
education research. To engage the faculty in scholarly writing about teaching
and learning, universities must encourage and support SoTL by organizing
seminars and must provide incentives for scholarly outputs on SoTL.
Hence last March 4, 2016, the Quality Assurance Office
of DLSU Gokongwei College of Engineering which I head as director organized
SoTL Seminar-Workshop for interested GCOE faculty members. I first presented the summary of my paper
on "Engineering Educators must evolve, too!" to help the faculty realize that continuous improvement in teaching is very important. I also
presented conferences on engineering education and journals where the faculty
can submit scholarly papers on SoTL. The resource person on SoTL was Dr.
Raymund Sison, CCS Professor and University Fellow who introduced the SoTL
framework which he proposes for DLSU and the fundamentals of SoTL. Actually it
was from Dr. Sison that I heard about SoTL when I was appointed as the college
representative in the SoTL committee organized by Dr. Sison. The ASCE paper was
actually written after attending several
SoTL sessions.
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| Prof. Raymund Sison (right) is presented with a Certificate of Appreciation for being the resource speaker in the GCOE SoTL Seminar-Workshop held last March 4, 2016 |
After the seminar, a workshop was conducted wherein each
participant shared his/her idea of a possible SoTL project or paper. Dr. Sison
gave comments on how to improve their proposals. Interesting proposals were
presented such as Innovative teaching of
Engineering Ethics and Laws the
use of virtual reality in ChE , simulating a CNC machine, pair-wise or
cooperative problem solving in Surveying and real-world problems in Structural
Analysis. The college is really rich with faculty members who are innovative in
their teaching and who can become scholarly teachers. The participants which are
named as GCOE SoTL Scholars hopefully will
champion SoTL in the college and their respective departments. May this activity serve as an impetus to revive the
Master of Engineering Education program at GCOE and offer a PhD on Engineering
Education in the future.
References:
> Oreta, Andres Winston C. (2015).
"Engineering Educators Must Evolve, Too!," Journal of Professional
Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, Online Publication Date: 30 Mar
2015 online edition, To appear in print on Sept 2015, ISSN (print): 1052-3928
and ISSN (online): 1943-5541, Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE)
>McKinney (2007). Enhancing Learning through Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning - The Challenges and Joys of Juggling, Anker
Publishing Company, Inc.
