Ten years ago Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released the book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990). A small book of less than a hundred pages, it was a manuscript with very big ideas that would begin what some would see as a revolutionary change in how those in the academy would view the role of the professoriate. In campuses across the country, from Level I research universities to community colleges, colleagues began to discuss the Boyer model and its implications for their scholarly endeavors, their teaching, and their professional lives. For the first time in fifty years our profession began to reflect seriously on the potential for new roles and rewards within the institutions. The academic revolution of the 1940's and 1950's (Jencks and Riesman, 1968) which had established a climate based on research as legal tender was now being challenged by a new revolution which suggested a broadened view of the professorate. For a generation of academics who had been raised on the centrality of discovery research the possibilities of a broadened view of scholarship raised questions and sparked debate. On some campuses this was a civil intellectual exchange welcomed by many in the academic community: these discussions often led to changes in the climate of the college or university. Other campuses experienced greater resistance and, perhaps, less civility in the discussion. But in the past decade few campuses in America have escaped the impact of the Boyer model. A brief history of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and JoSoTL Ernest Boyer and his colleague Gene Rice started the fire and kept it going at the national level. Others at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ( http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ )and the American Association of Higher Education (http://www.aahe.org/) expanded the conversation with publications, conferences, and new initiatives. Gene Rice’s work at AAHE with Faculty Roles and Rewards and his working paper “The New American Scholar” framed the agenda for faculty and administrators in higher education. As the conversation proceeded questions were raised about the legitimacy of teaching in terms of scholarship: what criteria should be used to assess valid scholarship? Scholarship Assessed (Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff, 1997) helped answer these concerns by offering six criteria for evaluating all types of scholarship. In 1997 Lee Shulman became president of the Carnegie Foundation and in 1998 the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) was launched. CASTL is a project which focuses on the development and encouragement of programs in the scholarship of teaching and learning in institutions of higher education and K-12 programs. The goals of the program are to:  Foster significant, long-lasting learning for all students  Enhance the practice and profession of teaching  Bring to faculty members’ work as teachers the recognition and reward afforded to other forms of scholarly work To meet these objectives CASTL has launched three programs designed to: recognize and foster the work of outstanding faculty who are involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning; work with the scholarly and professional societies to advance the scholarship of teaching within the professional disciplines; and support campus initiatives in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The “Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars” selects and brings together outstanding faculty to create a community of scholars in teaching and learning. The purpose of the Pew Scholars program is to support, foster, and deepen the profession of teaching and the learning of students. The “Work with Scholarly and Professional Societies” program is designed to provide networking opportunities for scholarly and professional organizations to support teaching and learning. CASTL will also afford these organizations grants to share findings in the scholarship of teaching and learning, encourage extensive peer review, and support graduate programs to be more responsive to the scholarship of teaching and learning. The “Teaching Academy Campus Program” was the first CASTL initiative and also the impetus to create the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (JoSoTL). In the fall of 1998 the Carnegie Foundation and the American Association for Higher Education invited institutions of all types from higher education to join in a discussion on the scholarship of teaching. The first step, Level I: Campus Conversation, invited any interested campus to draft a definition of the scholarship of teaching and identify supports for and barriers to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Level II: Going Public asked campuses to widen their circle by sharing their work including peer review and collaboration. Level II initiatives include seed grants to help campuses communicate their outcomes; this level of the program will continue through December 2001. In 2002 the Campus Program will begin Level III: National Teaching Academy by inviting selected campuses to become initial members of the national Teaching Academy. The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning started as an idea spawned at a conference for the Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) ( http://www.iusb.edu/~facet/ ). A number of colleagues from Indiana University South Bend were discussing how our campus could make the scholarship of teaching and learning more public on our campus. Before long the discussants became more ambitious and faculty suggested that we widen our scope to communicate our findings to our FACET colleagues from across the state. A number of faculty in the discussion had web pages and when Gary Kern, a management information systems professor, suggested we could put a journal on the web, JoSoTL was conceived. The birthing process has taken a little more time and effort. The initial issue of JoSoTL has been created in the past six months out of an interest in creating a forum that would encourage faculty to share their knowledge and inquiry into the teaching - learning process. When we first began this endeavor our focus was the faculty on the eight campuses of Indiana University. We quickly learned the world wide web offered us the opportunity to reach out beyond Indiana University and our state to include colleagues from around the world. As soon as JoSoTL was put on the web (before any articles were included) inquiries arrived from across the nation and around the world. I like to think the creative touch of our web-master (Gary Kern) inspired colleagues to contact us but the overwhelming response rate is also indicative of the widespread interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Clearly, a vehicle is needed to allow scholars of teaching and learning to share their work in a public forum to build a knowledge base for a growing scholarly community. The revolution that began ten years ago with Scholarship Reconsidered has already had a dramatic impact on higher education. However, there is still a great deal of confusion and misperception surrounding what is meant by the scholarship of teaching and learning. Some colleagues have argued excellent teaching qualifies as the scholarship of teaching. Others claim any professor who is an expert in the pedagogy of their discipline is really demonstrating the scholarship of teaching. While there is still much to be learned about the scholarship of teaching and learning we at the JoSoTL believe we should offer a general definition of the scholarship of teaching and learning to begin the discussion. This is not intended to thwart a discussion of definitions, or other debates, about SoTL but rather as a starting point and we invite colleagues to send us an essay or challenge us on our threaded discussion page. To begin the discussion we turn to Lee Shulman for a definition. Defining the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Making it Public As we begin the new century we have an opportunity to promote the scholarship of teaching and learning in an environment which is more receptive to the significant contributions of the study of effective instruction, student learning, and the expertise of the pedagogues of the disciplines. To take advantage of the opportunity to define the role of the scholarship of teaching and learning it is critical to start with a general definition of scholarship. Lee Shulman, the president of the Carnegie Foundation, describes scholarship as disciplined inquiry and invention that has clear characteristics whether the scholarship be discovery, integration, application, or teaching (1998): “For an activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least three key characteristics: It should be public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s scholarly community. We thus observe, with respect to all forms of scholarship, that they are acts of mind or spirit that have been made public in some manner, have been subjected to peer review by members of one’s intellectual or professional community, and can be cited, refuted, built upon, and shared among members of that community. Scholarship properly communicated and critiqued serves as the building blocks for knowledge growth in a field.” (p. 5) In the last analysis, however, the scholarship of teaching is best defined through actual practice. The purpose of the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is to serve the professional community by giving individuals within our professional community an opportunity to make their own work public, open to critical review and evaluation, and accessible to a wide spectrum of colleagues from many disciplines. As we discussed the creation of JoSoTL we realized the technology of the electronic journal could make a unique contribution to further the development of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Paper journals invariably lead to a time lag of months, if not years; an electronic journal allows knowledge to be disseminated almost immediately. Paper journals are extremely costly and tend to be discipline specific; an electronic journal is practically free and is accessible by anyone. Paper journals advance the knowledge base through the dissemination of information but do little to directly facilitate communications between colleagues; while electronic journal allows colleagues from distant settings and diverse fields to have real time communications in an open forum. Thus, the goal of the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is to create a forum without boundaries for colleagues from any discipline to join the discussion of the teaching-learning process. We believe it is extremely important to invite all of our colleagues to join the discussion. This would include teachers from any discipline; there is much to learn across disciplines. We have noted an increasing number of colleagues have begun serious discussion on effective teaching within their own disciplines and they have much to teach those of us outside their field of study. We also believe it is critical to invite colleagues from all levels of “expertise” into the discussion. Teaching has always been viewed as a private activity that is seldom discussed in an open forum. This has created an army of experts who, ironically enough, seldom share their teaching knowledge and may not realize the value of their own private learning. We need to invite these “silent” experts to share what they have learned about the teaching-learning process. Even if this knowledge is more intuitive than empirical it can be instructive as part of the larger collegial exchange. Our goal is to create a forum that invites colleagues to share their work through their writing but also share their expertise and experience through their critique of, and commentary on, other’s work. As information on the world wide web expands it is important for the academic community to carefully evaluate and screen information for rigor as we have always done through the peer review process. The advantages of the electronic medium (speed and availability) must not be undermined by the potential weaknesses (flood of data without peer review.) Because we at JoSoTL believe it is extremely important to uphold the standards of scholarship, we use double-blind reviews for all the articles we publish. At the same time, we also want to take advantage of the strengths of speed and availability which an electron journal affords by including our readers in the peer review process. The technology of the web allows for interactions to be held on-line through a threaded discussion that invites comments and questions from any reader. These critiques will add a new dimension to the peer review process. We believe the scholarship of teaching and learning can have an enormous impact on our understanding of the teaching-learning process, how we deliver instruction, and the learning which occurs within and outside our classes. We also believe the electronic format of the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning can facilitate this impact by creating a wider circle of SoTL. We thus extend an invitation to you, as readers of this inaugural issue, to discuss these papers, to share your own ideas about and critiques of the findings, and to consider submitting your own contributions to this challenging ongoing conversation. Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Our Initial Public Offering In the first chapter of Scholarship Reconsidered Boyer describes the changes which occurred in the United States over the past two centuries which brought about the modern university. One of the most dramatic changes was the “conviction that knowledge was most attainable through research and experimentation.” (1990, p. 9) As we enter the 21st century the problems that need to be addressed are clearly different. In the late 1800's outreach became the mission of many universities through applied research in areas such as agriculture. In the mid-1900's universities served a nation at war and through scientific collaboration changed a country and the workforce. As we enter a new millennium the most pressing challenges to our universities may be occurring on our own campuses: How can we better serve the country by increasing the learning of our students? Knowledge is still the focus of our studies but it is time to focus our research and experimentation on the teaching and learning which occurs within the university. The purpose of JoSoTL is to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning by creating a vehicle for colleagues to make their studies of teaching and learning public, facilitating critical review and evaluation, and helping to build a knowledge base for exchange and use by members of a diverse scholarly community. In our first issue we have three papers to begin the discussion. Each paper is from a different discipline and each raises a different question but all demonstrate an important reason why the scholarship of teaching is so important. Scholarly teachers are reflective practitioners who have many questions they wish to answer about the practice of teaching. Sometimes our questions are brought to the fore by outsiders (e.g., accrediting agencies); some questions arise out of institutional needs (e.g., student retention); other questions originate in our own curiosity or feelings of professional need (e.g., need to adapt new instructional strategies.) Each of these questions can be addressed by the scholarship or teaching and learning although there are a variety of strategies which can be used to begin to answer the questions. The articles by Kern and Osborne we have described as research reports and the article by Milner-Bolotin and Svinicki we are describing as classroom action research. As you read these articles consider the questions the article raises, including questions from your own teaching. And remember that JoSoTL is very different from paper journals in that you can “talk” with the author and other colleagues who have read the article. We like to think of JoSoTL as a cross between a paper journal and a conference. You don’t have to rush to front table to get a copy of the paper: just “click” on Print the Paper for your own copy from Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can also get involved in a discussion with the author and other readers: just “click” the Discuss the Paper and you can read the remarks of other readers and post you own comments. We hope you will take full advantage of the opportunities available with our web journal. As we tackle the difficult questions of higher education in the 21st century we need a venue to communicate. As Shulman says, “Scholarship properly communicated and critiqued serves as the building blocks for knowledge growth in a field.” The research article by Beth Kern, “Using role play simulation and hands-on models to enhance students’ learning fundamental accounting concepts”, is a controlled examination of a pedagogical approach to addressing a specific classroom challenge. Building on the work of colleagues who have studied active learning strategies in higher education, Dr. Kern explores the effectiveness of active learning and the specific learning outcomes in her accounting class. Many in the academic community are asked to make curricular changes in response to accreditation agencies and many programs make the “required” changes simply to meet the agency demand. Dr. Kern has taken the Accounting Education Change Commission’s call for active learning strategies in the accounting curriculum as an opportunity to study how active learning effects specific types of learning in her introductory students. She reports both significant and non-significant learning results which may assist instructors in choosing when to use active learning or more traditional approaches. The research article by Randall Osborne, “A model for student success: Critical thinking and ‘at-risk’ students” addresses a growing institutional problem. As universities open their doors to students with less academic preparation they also invite increasing student failure in introductory classes which demand higher order thinking skills. Professors often express displeasure at the number of students who are unable to think critically and it is not uncommon for faculty to believe these skills cannot be taught. Universities who are concerned with student retention, as well as faculty who are troubled by high drop-out and failure rates, will be encouraged to read Dr. Osborne’s study. In a study of short-term and long-term gains Dr. Osborne reports on a program teaching critical thinking to his introductory psychology student. In their classroom action research study, “Teaching physics of everyday life: Project-based instruction and collaborative work in undergraduate course for nonscience majors”, Milner-Bolotin and Svinicki explore a taxing problem for math and science teachers in higher education. They point out that scientific literacy and critical thinking is a requirement for every educated citizen in the 21st century but students who do not believe they can learn science and do not see the need to learn science make motivation a serious challenge in science classes for nonscience majors. Their detailed account of how they implemented a Project Based Instruction (PBI) into their physic class for nonscience majors is a pilot for future research with qualitative outcome measures and reflective commentary. Their article is also a gateway to many web sites on innovative approaches to the teaching of science and mathematics. We at the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning are excited to begin the adventure. We know there are university teachers from every possible discipline, with various levels of expertise in teaching and research, who are interested in adding to and learning from the growing knowledge base of the scholarship of teaching and learning. We hope each of you will get involved on some level. As you read the articles in our first edition please consider the questions each article raises and post them on our threaded discussion. Whether you are doing traditional research on teaching and learning or classroom action research please feel free to send your work to us for review. If you have ideas you would like to share about the scholarship of teaching and learning put them into an essay and send them in for review. And please feel free to contact us with your feedback about our electronic journal. At the American Association for Higher Education conference this winter on “Scholarship Reconsidered Reconsidered” the theme for Lee Shulman’s key note address, “Teaching Among the Scholarships” was - Pass It On. This is also the guiding principle of JoSoTL. We are here to help facilitate the discussion and we hope you will join us in passing on what you have learned, and are learning, about teaching and learning in higher education. References 1. Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. 2. Glassick, C.E., Huber, M.T. and G.I. Maeroff (1997). Scholarship assessed: Evaluation of the professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 3. Jencks, C. and D. Riesman (1968). The Academic Revolution. New York: Doubleday. 4. Rice, G. (1996). Making a place for the new American scholar. American Association for Higher Education. 5. Shulman, L. (1998). Teacher portfolios: A theoretical activity. In N. Lyons (Ed.), With portfolio in hand: Validating the new teacher professionalism (pp. 23-37). New York: Teachers College Press. 6. Shulman, L. (2000, February). Teaching among the scholarships. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association for Higher Education on Faculty Roles and Rewards, New Orleans, LA.