Inquiry into the College Classroom

An essential companion for university faculty interested in conducting scholarly inquiry into their classroom teaching, this practical guide presents a formal model for making visible the careful, difficult, and intentional scholarly work entailed in exploring a teaching question. As a how-to guide, this is an invaluable resource for planning and conducting classroom research—formulating questions and hypotheses, defining a data collection methodology, collecting data, measuring the impact, and documenting the results. Inquiry Into the College Classroom is filled with richly illustrative examples that highlight how university faculty from a range of academic disciplines have performed scholarly inquiries into their teaching and leads faculty on a journey that includes: Developing a formal model for structuring the exploration of a classroom inquiry question Providing a practical and useful guide for faculty interested in exploring teaching and learning challenges Detailing faculty experiences in measuring specific changes in student learning or perspectives Demonstrating how to document classroom inquiry in a form to be shared, used, and reviewed by other faculty Sharing useful and practical suggestions for getting started with a classroom inquiry Highlighting different models for disseminating classroom inquiry work Linking classroom inquiry to larger conversations about the scholarship of teaching and learning

List of Exhibits vii About the Authors x Acknowledgments xii A Guide for Scholarly Inquiry into Teaching 1 The Basic Structure of Classroom Inquiry 31 Incorporating Additional Forms of Data Collection 44 Using Classroom Inquiry to Answer Multiple Questions 59 Overcoming Challenges With Data Collection 78 Linking Classroom Inquiry With Disciplinary Research 93 Obtaining Useful Inquiry Results, but More Data Is Needed 107 Using Classroom Inquiry to Evaluate New Assessment Measures 122 Classroom Inquiry for Measuring Feedback on Student Learning and Aptitudes 138 Classroom Inquiry and Scholarly Teaching 156 Beginning Your Scholarly Journey 174 Lessons Concerning Classroom Inquiry Practical Advice forConducting Your Inquiry From Scholarly Teaching to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Models for Disseminating Your Inquiry Work Resources for Learning More An Invitation to Set Out on Your Scholarly Journey Bibliography 189 Index 191