Plenary - Integrating the scholarship of teaching and learning into the academy Harvey P. Weingarten (Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario)

The speaker started by saying how difficult it was to choose a title several months before you had to do a plenary and that if he had been asked now he would have called this “How to get Teaching and Learning on the radar screen?”

He started by discussing the issues of budgets and how often the issue of impact of the budget on student learning was a missing piece of information and a question not asked which should be. This shows that often learning and teaching are not a priority but the emphasis has to be central with a focus on outcomes, curriculum and student experience.

Rankings and reputation matter for institutions but the focus is mostly on research, income from research and research prizes which distracts and completes with SoTL.

The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQC) was set up in 2005 to improve the quality and access to post secondary education and increase the accountability. They undertake a lot of research but this is not enough the research has to influence what is happening. HEQC have been doing research and influencing government in allocation of funding. Some of the areas researched include effectiveness of large classes over 50 projects, a tuning project looking at what students should do so the outcomes of programmes, assessment, technology assisted learning and how it is being used, evidence of impact on the quality of education and cost.

The 21^st century student is different now they are more diverse in background, learning needs, more with learning issues such as dyslexia, they are more vocal and they focus on the job they will get at the end. Employers are often very critical of the preparation for employment by HEI’s and where once HEI’s were valued by the population people now question the value and what Universities do.

The speaker shared his prescription for change that should raise the profile of learning and teaching.

• Senior administration he believed there should be a senior learning and teaching academic at the senior management table and that there should be start up funds for new hires that focus on teaching not the research (in Canada/USA often new academics do get money for new equipment etc). The practice usually was to get a new academic and then reduce their teaching workload for the first few years so they could develop their research. What message does this give from the beginning? It says research is more important this needs to change.
• Faculty evaluation process instead of evaluating both each year do these alternate years so there is a clear focus on teaching one year and research the next. Everyone has to be good at teaching and research and this would raise the profile. Teaching should be evaluated with the same process as research so include peer review as an essential component. There are limited sources of funding for learning and teaching research this needs to change. Publicise the results of teaching evaluations and insist teachers with poor scores undertake some professional development.
• Teaching and learning centres they must show the value of their work to the university and how they support staff. There should also be a focus on ensuring support is available in departments and schools as well.
• Government cannot rely on our own institutions we need to have government buy in and they should insist on measurement and public disclosure of results.

He said there is much change coming and some might see this as a time of crisis however this can also be an opportunity to be ceased.