University of Colorado
President's Teaching Scholars Program

PTSP Initiative - 1998

Center for Advanced Study of Teaching, Learning, and Assessment - Working Document

The basic idea of our proposed center is to turn the University of Colorado into its own laboratory school, combining research in cognitive psychology and educational philosophy with the experiences of teachers and students on all four campuses. The center would be an interface between knowledge and practice, focusing on what has been called "translational research," the kind of work that makes meaningful connections between abstract knowledge and practical application. Through empirical study, theory building, and self-reflection as teachers and learners, we hope to structure learning environments that are more effective, democratic, and responsive.

The single phrase that best describes our work is the "scholarship of teaching and learning," a concept developed by Ernest Boyer and Eugene Rice, and extended by the work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Association for Higher Education. As Lee Shulman has written "a scholarship of teaching will entail a public account of some or all of the full act of teaching - vision, design, enactment, outcomes, and analysis - in a manner susceptible to critical review by the teacher's professional peers."

Our present knowledge of how students learn is fragmentary. How else can we explain the regular "revolutions" in instructional techniques and curriculum that never seem to result in significant improvements or change in the way we teach? These trends inevitably lead to frustration, and the demand for still more change. But change for change's sake is pointless. While some teaching programs have remained essentially unchanged, relying on seminars and lectures similar to those used a century ago, others, especially professional programs, have experimented with experiential learning, problem solving curricula, apprenticeships, internships, and technology assisted learning. But we still do not have the understanding needed to decide which method is best for specific skills and learning styles.

Most schools of education are responsible for training K-12 teachers and their research rightly focuses on K-12 students. Ironically, most university teachers have no training in education, although they are called upon to be lecturers to large and small groups, mentors, evaluators, and information technologists. We must know how students learn best. We can improve a teacher's lecturing skills, for example, but what if the subject would be best taught another way? The hit-or-miss approach used to date is a poor use of everyone's time and effort.

While some research centers exist in this country with related interests, and while many universities have programs that directly improve and support their teachers, they are often separate enterprises. In the former, findings are usually made known in the form of technical reports and articles read mainly by other researchers. In the latter, research findings are used as tools to help faculty improve, but often not much original research is produced and faculty members are not necessarily encouraged to do research on teaching. The proposed center would not only bring under the same roof researchers and practitioners, it would involve each of these groups in the others' activities. The creation of the center has begun with conversations and meetings between teachers in all fields and those whose research focuses on learning, teaching, and evaluation. Through this process, the goal is to distill several urgent and central questions to which research could provide some answers; possible research questions are included in the next section.

The center will provide structures, networks, and resources whereby researchers and teachers can work together to find answers. Among the features of the center, we envision

• researching the varieties of relationships between engaging the learner and enacting a philosophy of teaching that includes active learning,
• fellowships for distinguished visiting scholars,
• internal workshops and mini-conferences devoted to center themes,
• rotating fellowships to provide CU teachers time and resources to do basic research on learning in their disciplines,
• an accessible web-based archive of material and resources related to center research,
• resources for team teaching and peer seminars across disciplinary and campus lines, and
• course offerings that enable faculty members and students to work together as learners and investigators.

We are not starting from scratch. Indeed, there are already many resources within the university that only need to be identified and focused on the goals of the center. The President's Teaching Scholars is a university-wide network of faculty members concerned with teaching issues that have been in existence for ten years. There are also three schools of education in the system whose basic research is relevant to the aims of the center. Furthermore, all four campuses have faculty teaching development programs. The center will embrace the work of these various programs, in order to create a widespread and genuine culture of teaching and learning for the university.

While the initial focus of the center is learning and teaching of university students, opportunities to work with the public schools will be explored. This arena makes sense because of the stated outreach mission of the university, because of the involvement of education faculty members with K-12 students, and because K-12 teachers ultimately face many of the same challenges.

The long-term goal is to create a highly autonomous center with a stable funding base, an external advisory board, and a minimal governance system. Such a center would be independent of any particular university campus or program, but would maintain useful ties to the university as a resource for the entire system.

The following open-ended questions represent the areas of research to which the center might be dedicated:

Learning

1. To what extent does any learning depend on prior learning and experience? How much do teachers need to know about the "baggage" students bring to class? How can they find out what that "baggage" is? Given a single teaching event, what is the range of student perception of it? What are the factors influencing that perception? Given that perception will vary, how broad a range of views can still be "right"?
2. Are different learning models (for example self-paced reading, small group discussions, larger lectures, problem-based learning, experiential learning, distance learning) equally effective for all disciplines and for all students? Are any models inherently superior? Will effective methods for learning anatomy be best for learning English literature?
3. How can the best learning styles for individual students be determined? Can curricula be tailored to these styles? Are there consistent patterns in identifiable groups — men, women, minorities, younger, older — that, if identified, could help shape more appropriate curricula and learning modalities?
4. What is the best way to allow students to learn to be creative? Can modern theory about creativity (templates, idea space) be applied to the education of college students? Are creative students more successful in college and in life?
5. What can be learned from a careful long-term longitudinal study of University of Colorado students that follows them from entry to graduation to careers? How do students' perceptions of the value of their education and the effectiveness of their instructors change in time?

Teaching

1. Do students come to the university for education or training? What do they expect? What do their parents expect? What do state legislators and boards of education expect? Are these expectations reasonable, or even rational? Are expectations different at different universities?
2. Given that many of our present curricula are not very different from those of the 1950s, can a 21st century curriculum be created by surveying the skills and knowledge currently required for success in society, business, and the professions?
3. What are the goals of a non-professional ("liberal") program? Can a radically-new curriculum be created from these goals that would be student-oriented, but not necessarily department oriented? Because graduates will never use their knowledge in a "departmental" context, should the departmental structure be retained for research and scholarly work, but removed from education? How can students learn to integrate what they are learning?
4. What is the best way to evaluate the adult learner? How well do test scores predict success in life? What are the predictors of success in life? Can the impact of a university education on a graduate's success and satisfaction in life be measured? If so, can different universities be compared in this regard, to identify those with better strategies?
5. Can a mechanism be devised for formative evaluation of individual student satisfaction (early enough, and frequently enough, to be able to make necessary adjustments in real time) with his or her global university experience— social as well as course learning?
6. What are the innovations, good ideas, radical departures, fundamental differences, that characterize higher education in other countries? Can they be adapted to our use? Do they point out deficiencies in our overall education strategy (K-16+) that need to be addressed?

PTSP Initiative
Citations from the Research Literature
Fall 2000

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August 2000