The Scholarly Teacher

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. 

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.