The Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA) is the central forum for the scholarship of teaching and learning at Western Washington University and brings together a broad spectrum of perspectives from across campus. Engaged in studying the intersections between teaching and learning, TLA members include faculty, students, administrators, and staff from across the University, as well as several alumni and community members. In addition to biweekly study group sessions, the TLA also sponsors all-campus forums with featured speakers as well as professional development workshops and seminars.

Grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning, the TLA's central mission is to create a community of scholars who work together to understand better the existing learning culture, to share that understanding with others, and to enhance the learning environment for everyone.

For more on the philosophy and purpose of the TLA, see the Winter 2006 issue of Praxis, as well as the Fall 2002 issue.

In 1998, under the leadership of President Lee S. Shulman, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Association of Higher Education initiated a program to promote scholarly approaches to teaching and learning. Based on Ernest Boyer’s expansion of scholarship to include inquiry into teaching (Scholarship Reconsidered 1990), this national SOTL initiative had at least three primary objectives: 1) to improve the learning of all students, 2) to advance the profession and practice of teaching, and 3) to recognize and reward this kind of inquiry in ways afforded to other forms of scholarly work in higher education. To those ends, CASTL sponsors three tiers of SOTL engagement by working with individual faculty, scholarly societies, and cluster campuses.

SOTL invites us to:

• examine practice, document what works, and exchange our findings with others
• address research questions that emerge from our own lived learning experiences, e.g. Does midterm feedback make a difference in student learning?
• study the places “in between” teaching and learning in order to understand the whole learning process better
• build on the idea of teaching excellence “with its focus on effective practice” as well as on scholarly teaching “with its focus on theoretical soundness”(Les Shulman)
• use a model of reflective inquiry into teaching and learning that is marked by peer review and a public exchange of findings, including working with SOTL inquirers at other institutions

For more information on the nature of SOTL as well as related resources, see the Carnegie Foundation website at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/castl

The TLA seeks to provide:

• a cross-disciplinary space for discussing, understanding, and developing recommendations about ways in which learning can be enhanced throughout the University.
• a structure for integrating the student voice into institutional initiatives for enhancing learning.
• professional development resources and workshops that support both scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
• provide acknowledgement, support, and rewards to those practicing the scholarship of teaching and learning.
• a clearinghouse for publishing and sharing results of TLA study at the campus, state, national, and international levels.
  

In 1998, Western Washington University became one of approximately 150 campuses nationwide to affiliate with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Spearheaded by Dr. Kris Bulcroft (now Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education), the SOTL initiative provided a venue for the longstanding engagement with teaching that faculty have had on this campus. As a participant in the Campus Conversations Program, WWU made a formal commitment to create a structure for promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) and to approach the relationship between teaching and learning as research. With a SOTL summer fellowship from President Karen Morse, Dr. Carmen Werder (current Director of the TLA) worked with Bulcroft to create a thematic approach to “Recognizing, Reflecting on, and Rewarding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” which has formed the basis of Western’s SOTL program.

Out of Western's affiliation with the Carnegie Campus Conversations Program emerged a permanent structure for supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning: The Teaching-Learning Academy. The Provost’s Office supports the TLA with a half-time Director position. Currently, TLA membership runs at about 115 participants, including approximately 55 faculty from across colleges, 15 administrators, 15 staff, and 30 students.

CASTL Cluster Program
Ever since WWU first began its alliance with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) in 1998, the distinguishing feature of Western's initiative has been its attention to incorporating student voices. The focus began when a faculty member from our Woodring College of Education (William Lay) asked in the first year of the project, "Where are the students?" From that time onward, Western has made a concerted effort to collaborate with students in this research.

In partnership with Elon College in North Carolina, Western was recognized with the first American of Association of Higher Education (AAHE) "Going Public" award in 1999 recognizing the two schools for engaging students in the scholarship of teaching and learning. For more information on this alliance, see "Student Voices in the Campus Conversation," in Inventio: “Creative Thinking About Learning and Teaching", Spring 2002, vol 4, issue 1 - c.

In spring 2002 at its annual Colloquium, CASTL named Western Washington University as one of its national "cluster" leaders. Through spring of 2006, Western provided leadership for a group of five institutions in the cluster dedicated to "Sustaining Student Voices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." In that leadership role, Western facilitated national and international conversations on ways to partner with students as agents of institutional change. Western led the Student Voices cluster in the company of four core member schools: University of Maryland (College Park), University of Washington (Bothell), North Seattle Community College, and California State University (Long Beach).
For more information on the Student Voice cluster, please see the Cluster Snapshot.
To see the final results of this cluster's collaboration - a CD-Rom including "Eco-Principles" and glimpses of five institutional models for partnering with students in this scholarship - visit Student Voices.

CASTL Institutional Leadership Program
In fall 2006, WWU was selected as the coordinating institution for a group of schools once again dedicated to working with students as co-inquirers as part of the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program. This three-year partnership between Carnegie and 187 selected higher education institutions committed to a careful study of teaching and learning engages the participating institutions around twelve themed areas. Once again, WWU has committed to the theme of advancing the role of students in this co-inquiry. This group of institutions includes three schools that partnered with WWU on this theme in the past: Elon University, California State University (Long Beach) and North Seattle Community College as well as two new partners: Illinois State University and University of Nevada (Las Vegas).

On November 8, 2006, twenty-five representatives from these six institutions convened in Washington, D.C. as part of the new CASTL Leadership Program to articulate both their institutional goals for partnering with students as well as to chart a course of collaborating together. Five of Western's leadership team (four faculty and one student) participated in the convening. Unlike the earlier cluster model, the new Leadership Program invites participating institutions to develop their own individual plans and products at the same time that they work together to advance the role of students in this work.

At that meeting, the cross-institutional group settled on the following title and composed a mission statement for that collaborative work: Student Voices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning - We commit to engaging students as collaborative partners in improving teaching and learning. We charge ourselves to create models that re-conceptualize learning spaces and roles. We will investigate, expand, share, and reflect upon experiences of learning founded on participation, reciprocity, and trust toward the development of student voices in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The Student Voices group also identified a slate of convenings for their three-year collaboration:
October 2007 at the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) to set a research agenda for Student Voices. Theme group participants, including faculty and students from each institution, will come prepared to pose the questions they think need to be asked about partnering with students in the study of teaching and learning.
October 2008 at the University of Edmonton (Alberta) preceding the ISSOTL (International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) conference to respond to the research agenda established in 2007 and share works in progress and tentative findings.
October/November 2009 at Indiana University (Bloomington) preceding the ISSOTL conference to present findings on research begun in 2007.

CASTL Leadership Team at WWU
Western's institutional leadership team includes six students across levels and five faculty:
Kelly Barefield, Elementary Education first-year student; Rachel Christman, Elementary Education sophomore; Deborah Currier, Theater Arts faculty; Leslie Driediger, Human Services junior; Craig Dunn, Management faculty; Lauree Fletcher, Fairhaven College senior; Joyce Hammond, Anthropology faculty; William Lay, Educational Foundations/Special Education faculty; Michael Murphy, sophomore/Teaching-Learning Academy staff; Megan Otis,
Anthropology graduate student; Jane Verner, Human Services faculty, and team coordinator Carmen Werder, TLA Director/Communication faculty.

Student Voices at WWU - Goals for 2006-07
Based on the Student Voices mission statement collectively composed in D.C. Student Voices at WWU has two major action objectives slated for this year:

1. Conference Planning with Students:
We will advance the planning we have already begun for "Festival of Scholarship: Celebrating Learning Partnerships" (working title) of a conference that will be co-sponsored by Western's CASTL Student Voices team and CIEL (Consortium for Innovative Environments of Learning), which our Fairhaven College belongs to.

The event is scheduled for April 10-12, 2008. We have already established a planning team of approximately sixteen people that includes faculty, staff, and students and have developed sub-groups addressing various conferences tasks. We have met as a whole group three times and have established a Blackboard site. Our goal is to partner with students at every step of the process. We see the process of designing the conference in partnership with students just as important as the actual conference itself and have been documenting the process since we began work on it this past November. By the end of this calendar year, we will have the major tasks completed. In Fall Quarter 2007, we have arranged to partner with students in a new event planning course in the Communication Department to work with us on the details as the event approaches the following spring. This conference planning is the primary objective for our Student Voices initiative for this year and will figure significantly in our plan for the following year as well.

The event planning committee welcomes anyone from the WWU campus community to plan and participate in this event. For more details, contact TLA director Carmen Werder.

2. Expanding and Assessing the Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA):
Since the TLA is the hub of the Student Voices initiative at WWU, we are continually working to expand, broaden, and deepen the member participation as well as to refine the dialogue model itself. Currently, the TLA includes about 110 active members (about half students and the other half faculty and staff) who participate in every-other-week dialogue groups. The total membership has been gradually increasing, and students now participate from several courses. To become an active member of the TLA, contact Megan Otis, Program Assistant.

Part of the goal for this year is to bring more of the experienced TLA students into analyzing TLA data that we have gathered over several years. We are identifying potential candidates for independent study credit to do this joint inquiry. Two of our current TLA members, a first-year student and a graduate student will be traveling to the University of Alaska, Anchorage, with the TLA director at the end of March to present a plenary and facilitate workshops on Student Voices. As part of their preparation, they will analyze data on two questions: What do faculty say they gain from this dialogue on teaching and learning? And what do students say they gain from this dialogue?

Assessing the impact of the student voices initiative through the Teaching-Learning Academy represents one of the primary goals for the three-year cycle of WWU's participation in the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program.

For more information on the student voice national cluster as well as on all 12 Carnegie clusters, see the Web Center.

For examples of student-faculty collaborations in doing SOTL, see the results of the Summer 2003 Teaching Learning Fellows research projects.

Each year, the TLA works from a common teaching and learning question. Listed below is this year's question, as well as questions from years past. To find more information on past TLA events, please visit our Archives.

2007-2008: What keeps us from genuine dialogue across multiple perspectives? And what would encourage that dialogue in sustaining a respectful, inclusive learning culture?

We will pursue three thematic strands related to this larger question:

• Identity and Influence
• Co-Mentoring and Co-Inquiry
• Innovations in Assessing Teaching and Learning.

2006-2007: How do we create a positive learning culture at Western

• motivated by hope,
• marked by a sense of shared humanity, and
• made possible by the active engagement of many?

2005-2006: What do we mean by an educated person? And how might we structure WWU to honor and sustain that kind of education?

2004-2005: What role, if any, should the University play in the development of ethical reasoning or civic engagement?

2003-2004: What do we count as the features of an optimal learning environment? And what evidence do we see of those features at WWU?

2002-2003: What do we want for our general education requirements?

For more specific information, see the TLA Archive for all of the weekly highlights.