ClaireR_Topic

I've done absolutely no research on this, so it's highly subject to change, but I'm interested in the possibility of considering teaching as a scholarly output. Particularly at big R1s, where teaching is seen as less important/rewarding than research, I don't know how much incentive professors have to devote time and energy to their teaching (and it takes a lot of time to plan/deliver a good class!). A few buzzwords in this area are discipline-based education research and scholarly teaching. Both basically mean that professors keep in touch with the emerging research on how students best learn the content of their field, and then incorporate it into their teaching. An added bonus is that it's pretty easy to get work published about how one has incorporated research into their own teaching and a critical reflection of how it's worked, so that others can learn from your experiences. I imagine my presentation would feature some specific ideas for how to incentivize this kind of approach among professors that would rather spend their time researching and publishing.

Certainly teaching is a scholarly communications! And the scholarly output would consist of both the content and the presentation form. Teachers generally try to stay current and update their content as it changes (some fields change much more rapidly like ours). They also (perhaps less often) work at updating how they deliver the content (presentation and format) so as to be successful at reaching and engaging students. Large R1 institutions often have units devoted specifically to helping professors with the latter (at UNC it is the Center for Faculty Excellence; formerly Center for Teaching and Learning). They would be a good place to start.