My latest episode of 60-Second SoTL focuses on instructors’ emotions associated with giving feedback, with particular attention to dialogic feed-forward.
Reflections on Scholarly Activity Towards a Distinguished Scholar Award
Earlier this month, I was recognized with Elon University’s 2020-2021 Distinguished Scholar Award. Thank you to the Elon colleagues who nominated me, the Elon and disciplinary colleagues who wrote letters of support, and the review committee. Elon has many exceptional scholars, so I feel honored to be recognized and to join the ranks ofthese outstanding, previous honorees.
When I interviewed at Elon in 2004, the campus culture seemed almost too good to be true. Was this really a campus that centered engaged learning? Where faculty could pursue scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) alongside other forms of scholarship — and have its value recognized in annual reviews, tenure, and promotion?
I won’t pretend that the journey has been entirely rosy, but I appreciate that Elon steadfastly celebrates not only engaged learning, but also the study of engaged learning — and that SoTL informs my and colleagues’ scholarly teaching. I believe that my selection for the Distinguished Scholar Award reaffirms that commitment.
As I reflect on my scholarly activity and think about how junior colleagues might read the quantification of that activity, though, I also want to be transparent about the ebbs and flows in my productivity. As the chart below illustrates, I’ve had gaps in my publication record, and the genres I’ve prioritized have changed over time. To reflect the range of genres I write, I included a few examples (e.g., white papers, published reports, a post for an organization’s edited blog) that I don’t include in counts of my peer-reviewed scholarship, but that have been cited by others (sometimes quite frequently, as with the Elon Statements) or that serve as records of other professional activity.
Any visual representation of scholarly productivity will have limitations. For instance, this representation equally weights all publication types, even though some (e.g., edited collections) reflect much more time and sustained effort than others, so keep in mind that my annual reviews and applications for promotion always have included descriptive narratives about my scholarship.
This representation also doesn’t include the many multimedia texts I’ve composed for the Center for Engaged Learning or my work as a series editor for two book series — texts that contribute both to research on and teaching in support of engaged learning.
Yet the chart highlights:
- 2 gaps in my publications — 1 pre-tenure and 1 post-tenure. Although I always had something in progress, I couldn’t control production/publication schedules. I’ve had some publications linger in post-acceptance production schedules for up to 2 years. In addition, I’ve had a few projects wither away without being published — for a variety of reasons. I’d be happy to share my “flops,” but my main point in sharing that they exist is to acknowledge that a steady and consistent research agenda often isn’t comprehensively represented by publication outputs.
- White papers that previewed peer-reviewed publications. This strategy isn’t without controversy and challenges, but the Revisualizing Composition white paper and the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer offer two examples of collaborative teams sharing snapshots of findings — resulting in citations — before our finer-grained articles or chapters made it through peer review and production for publication. The Elon Statement on Writing Transfer, for instance, was first released in 2013, with a modest update published to the Center for Engaged Learning’s website in 2015. The edited collections featuring research that informed that statement weren’t published until 2016 and 2017.
- An increase in scholarly production over time. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to collaborate on annotated bibliographies for the Journal of Second Language Writing, which helped me develop habits for reading current scholarship and writing regularly. Yet it still took me a while when I transitioned to a full-time faculty position with an increased teaching load and service expectations to find a new rhythm for research and writing.
What the chart doesn’t illustrate is that:
- My research agenda often is tightly woven with my teaching and service. Serving on my campus’s service-learning advisory committee, teaching a service-learning class, and conducting a SoTL inquiry about the associated learning outcomes were mutually informing and beneficial activities, reflected in two of my publications. Similarly, I’ve tried to build opportunities for “going public” into all of CEL’s multi-institutional SoTL projects, and I look for the potential for scholarly activity in many of my service commitments. As a result, I’m not trying to “find” (as much) time for my research because it’s embedded in much of my other work activity (though I admittedly still have to preserve time for writing).
- Many of my publications are co-authored. I’ve had the pleasure of working with several research teams, and when everyone is committed to both the project and the team, members can take turns moving projects forward. In some collaborations, that teamwork and sense of community also has led to more publications as different members have been able to take the lead on different swaths of data concurrently.
I hope that sharing my reflection on my scholarly activity might offer others some adaptable strategies for their own scholarship journeys. While I’m honored by the Distinguished Scholar designation, I’d be remiss not to thank my many collaborators and my writing group. I’m grateful to have worked with so many other exceptional scholars and look forward to continued collaborations.
Is College Worth It?
Here’s my latest post on the Center for Engaged Learning blog:
Is College Worth It? Alumni Say High-Impact Experiences Make College Worthwhile
New Books on Global Learning and Partnership
If you’re looking for something to read while we practice social distancing, here are three recent books in the series I edit with Peter Felten.
Global Learning
In the Stylus Publishing/Center for Engaged Learning series on Engaged Learning and Teaching, Mind the Gap: Global Learning at Home and Abroad now is available.
Access the book website here and order directly from Stylus.
Partnership
In the Center for Engaged Learning Open Access Book Series, we recently published two new books, available to download by the chapter or in their entirety for free.
Open access PDF: https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa1
ISBN: 978-1-951414-00-9
December 2019
2.2 MB
Open access PDF: https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa2
ISBN: 978-1-951414-02-3
January 2020
11 MB
It’s been a joy working with these authors, editors, and their contributors, and I’m thrilled we were able to support them in going public with their scholarship. If you have an idea for a book for either series, please be in touch.
ePortfolio Musings and Strategies
I initially developed the following material for a guest visit to an undergraduate Honors course at Elon University.
As George Kuh writes in the foreword to High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning by Bret Eynon and Laura M. Gambino, the ePortfolio:
serves as a portable, expandable, and updatable vehicle for accumulating and presenting evidence of authentic student accomplishment including the curation of specific proficiencies and dispositions at given points in time… The ePortfolio is much more than a just-in-time twenty-first-century electronic record keeping system. It is an intentionally designed instructional approach that, among other advantages, prompts students to periodically reflect on and deepen what they are learning and helps them connect and make sense of their various experiences inside and outside the classroom that – taken together – add up to more than the sum of their parts. (2017, p. ix)
Beyond the pedagogical value of ePortfolios, they also offer a venue for professionals to develop an online identity, showcasing their expertise with concrete examples.
An ePortfolio is more than a website… As Eynon and Gambino write, “ePortfolio practice done well supports reflection, integration, and deep learning” (2017, p. 9). ePortfolios also prompt inquiry about our current identities – “Who am I? Who am I becoming?” – and our future dreams – “Who do I dare to be?” (Eynon & Gambino, 2017, p. 11).
Room for Play in ePortfolios?
While their print ancestors can accommodate some multimedia (e.g., photos, drawings, etc.), ePortfolios can showcase a broader array of media (e.g., audio, video, hypertext, etc.). How might you use multimedia components in your portfolio? Here are a few questions to spark your brainstorming:
- What do key aspects of my identity look like? Sound like?
- What might my future look like? How would I visualize it?
- What curricular, co-curricular, or extra-curricular projects have I composed or contributed to that I could showcase in a portfolio as examples of my developing identity?
- How might an audio clip enable me to talk through my reflection on a project or my integration of lessons learned from multiple projects?
- What could a video clip show readers/viewers that they might miss in a text-based version of the same project or idea?
- How might I play with organization/arrangement to either guide readers/viewers through my story or offer them a choose-your-own-adventure representation of me?
Web Platforms
My students routinely use WordPress, Wix, or Weebly; Google Sites and Digication are additional options. I encourage you to select a web platform that you already are comfortable composing within or that you wish to learn for other professional development goals.
Many professionals maintain both private working portfolios and public portfolios. Working portfolios are collections of documents/projects that might be included in the public portfolio in the future (or have been in the past). If you anticipate expanding and maintaining your public ePortfolio, establish an organizational strategy for also maintaining a private working portfolio; Google Drive, Dropbox, or an external USB drive are helpful tools for organizing and archiving materials that – at some point – might be included in your public portfolio.
Digication examples:
- Maggie Achey (Professional Writing & Rhetoric ’14): https://elon.digication.com/maggie_acheys_professional_writing_portfolio/Welcome/published
- Victoria Doose (Professional Writing & Rhetoric & Art History ’12): https://elon.digication.com/vdoose_pwr_portfolio/Home
WordPress examples:
- Kate Sieber (Professional Writing & Rhetoric ’18): https://katesieberblog.wordpress.com/
- Sophia Abbot (MHE ’20): https://sophiaabbot.com/
WIX example:
- Micaela Soucy (Professional Writing & Rhetoric ’18): https://soucymicaela.wixsite.com/portfolio/tedxelonuniversity
- Kiara Hines (MHE ’20): https://kiara5868.wixsite.com/kiarahines
Questions about ePortfolios? Have strategies for ePortfolio development? Please share them in the comments. Thank you!
Call for Proposals: Stylus Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching, in Partnership with the Center for Engaged Learning
I’m excited to partner with Peter Felten and Stylus Publishing on a new book series on engaged learning and teaching. Here are the details…
Series Editors:
- Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu), Director, Center for Engaged Learning, Elon University
- Peter Felten (pfelten@elon.edu), Executive Director, Center for Engaged Learning, Elon University
Primary Contact: Jessie L. Moore, jmoore28@elon.edu
About the Series
The Stylus/Center for Engaged Learning Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching features concise books (both single author and edited collections) for a multi-disciplinary, higher education audience interested in research-informed engaged learning practices. Series books are published by Stylus Publishing and supplemented by open-access resources hosted on the Center for Engaged Learning’s website.
Book authors/editors who publish in the series will join a community of scholars focused on engaged learning and teaching, with series books collectively marketed to faculty, staff, and administrators across higher education institution types. The Series Editors
- collaborate with book authors/editors on promoting their books to a broad audience of stakeholders in higher education,
- offer strategies for showcasing books in conference presentations, and
- support the development of robust supplemental resources that extend readers’ use and discussion of the books.
Series Audience
Although individual books in the series might most appeal to those interested in a specific topic, authors/editors should “translate” their research/theories for broad audiences in higher education, including faculty, staff, faculty developers, administrators, and policy makers. Therefore, authors/editors should speak to the scholarship’s implications for higher education, including effective practices for teaching, curriculum design, and/or educational policies.
Expectations for Promoting Series Books
The Series Editors will collaborate with authors/editors to promote each book on the Center for Engaged Learning’s website, through social media, and by targeting conference sessions near publication dates. Proposals for books in this series should include a preliminary list of open-access resources (e.g., discussion questions for reading groups, videos and other multimedia resources related to the book topics, sample research materials that might otherwise appear in an appendix, etc.) that could be hosted on the Center for Engaged Learning’s website (pending final review by the Center). Submitted manuscripts must include these supplemental materials. The Series Editors will share strategies for developing and curating these materials.
Guidelines for Brief Proposal
Authors/editors should submit a brief proposal for feedback from the Series Editors before developing a full proposal. The brief proposal should include a one- to two-page summary of:
- the book concept,
- its potential contribution to practice and literature,
- its appropriateness for the Stylus Publishing/Center for Engaged Learning Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching,
- an indication of the anticipated format (e.g., authored book or edited collection, estimated number of chapters, and organizational structure),
- brief information about the relevant qualifications of the authors/editors, and
- a preliminary plan to promote the book at conferences, etc.
Questions?
Please direct questions to Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu).