EMERGING ISSUES

In December we asked Visible Knowledge participants to complete an online survey, which we designed in order to gauge the first three years of the Visible Knowledge Project. We wanted to appraise four broad areas: perspectives on technology and teaching, involvement with the scholarship of teaching, the scale of collaborative activity, and the departmental and campus contexts for the work VKP promotes.

We'd like to thank everyone who responded to the survey. We had over 50 respondents, a sample size that represents over 75% of the faculty participating in the Visible Knowledge Project. This high response rate is a strong indicator of the commitment faculty have to the practices and processes VKP sponsors. Indeed, 96% of our respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that "participating in the Visible Knowledge Project has overall been a rewarding experience."

We are now in the process of cross-tabulating the results of the survey, but even without sophisticated number-crunching and statistical analysis we have discovered a number of findings we would like to highlight in the newsletter. Think of this brief report as a "sneak preview" of the findings to come!

The survey attempted to delve more deeply and systematically into what exactly has made VKP a rewarding experience for so many participants. One of the surprises we have found is that faculty goals have shifted as faculty have become more involved with the project. For example, 17 participants joined VKP wanting to understand more about how their students learn, but now twice as many-34 participants-want to understand more about their students' learning (see Figure 1). This tells us that while many people joined VKP thinking of it as a technology project, now the majority think of VKP as a teaching and learning project. This finding is further bolstered when we consider that 98% of our respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that using technology in their teaching has led them to think differently about how their students learn.

Faculty report a number of substantive changes in their approaches to teaching since becoming involved with the Visible Knowledge Project:

• 90% have changed the design of their courses since becoming involved in a scholarship of teaching project
  
• 96% have begun to think differently about their use of technology.

Although it is too early to say conclusively, anecdotal evidence gathered in a series of faculty interviews suggests that faculty are exercising a mounting judiciousness about how they use technology.

We have also seen an increase in faculty awareness about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL). Almost a third of the participants were only vaguely aware of the SoTL when they joined the project, and another 24% had never even heard of the concept. There are still a handful of faculty who have found it difficult to actually practice the scholarship of teaching and learning, but 53% now report that they are either currently successfully engaged in a scholarship of teaching project or that they have finished a project and have already begun sharing their findings with others. One survey respondent wrote: "Participation in VKP has been a pivotal moment in my professional career-both in finding a robust, inspiring, and stimulating community and in opening up new questions and issues for my professional work. At the same time, participation in VKP has provided some frustrations-which have less to do with VKP than with the vistas opened up by VKP in contrast to my local campus horizon." These are truly encouraging findings which illustrate how far we have come in the past three years.

Initial data from the survey also indicates that faculty are increasingly engaged in the more public aspects of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: organizing professional development workshops on their own campuses, attending sessions devoted to the SoTL at discipline-based conferences, and most encouraging, presenting and publishing on their own SoTL (see Figure 2).

While Figure 2 shows that fewer faculty have presented than have not, the results are nonetheless encouraging. Faculty are publishing their scholarship of teaching and learning on the web (often through the online posters) and certainly more faculty are more publicly involved in the SOTL now than three years ago. We would expect the numbers to change even more dramatically if we conducted a similar survey at the conclusion of VKP's five-year run.

Sixty-three percent of our respondents reported that it would be impossible to balance the scholarship of teaching with their other responsibilities as professors without a grant-funded project. This sobering statistic validates what many of us at VKP have known all along: that taking on a SoTL project places a heavy burden upon faculty, and it is often only through a coordinated, concerted and financed effort that this kind of work can blossom.

The survey reveals that institutional procedures present a major roadblock for many faculty. Seventy-eight percent of our survey takers disagreed with the statement that support for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at their institution is widespread, and 83% do not think the criteria for promotion at their respective institutions reflect the core principles of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Even criteria for teaching awards seem skewed: 69% of the respondents felt that the criteria for teaching awards at their institutions are inconsistent with the principles of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Still, we take comfort in the overwhelmingly positive response of VKP participants. Perhaps this comment, culled from the open-ended feedback section of the survey, best summarizes what we hope is everybody's experience with the Visible Knowledge Project: "VKP has re-invigorated my professional life here.it has enabled me to connected teaching and research in ways that have been productive for me individually and, I hope, helped refine my thinking about student learners on my campus."

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March 2004

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