SoTL Commons Conference Presenters
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Beyond Teaching Portfolios: Using a Course Portfolio as a Form of Scholarship to Improve Students' Learning [pr-2]
Judith Longfield (Georgia Southern University): jlongfield@georgiasouthern.edu
A course portfolio, unlike a teaching portfolio, is a form of teaching scholarship which epitomizes the inquiry and research focus of SoTL. Its purpose is to document the design, implementation and evolution of a specific course, thereby making explicit the implicit intellectual work of teaching. It is a tangible means of engaging in SoTL with the purpose of improving student learning and students' understanding. Often created in cross-disciplinary teams, course portfolios can also provide a forum for thinking about and discussing important teaching-learning issues with colleagues from other departments. This session will show how one instructor's participation in a course portfolio group enhanced preservice teachers' understanding of the nature of science and science teaching, and improved the intellectual discourse in the course she studied.