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Institute of Teaching and Learning

Header with the words 'Sharing your Scholarship'

Why share your scholarship?

The University of Manchester defines of scholarship as:

“Evidence based systematic practice that positively impacts student outcomes or experience and is disseminated for critical review and, where appropriate adoption by others. Scholarship can include the scholarship of teaching and learning, or discipline based educational or pedagogic research, as well as the development, application and synthesis of disciplinary knowledge to inform teaching (e.g. research-informed teaching).”

As this indicates, and as our long and short reads show, scholarship is defined by its dissemination, evaluation and use by the wider academy.

Sharing, or disseminating, your scholarship ensures that your innovations and developments may benefit others, enhancing teaching and learning beyond your immediate teaching context. Dissemination also enables you to receive feedback and critical review of your scholarship which in turn contributes to your professional development and to the further development of your scholarship and your teaching. Sharing your scholarship also helps to forge networks and collaboration with others, which again will ultimately feedback positively into your own practice.

Dissemination is not just publication

Because of the generative power of scholarship for positively impacting student outcomes and experiences, traditional research-based routes for dissemination, such as monographs and journal articles, are not necessarily the most appropriate means for sharing your work. Sometimes sharing your work via presentations, seminars, workshops, blogs, or making and sharing a set of resources, or feeding your scholarship into a text book (or a combination of all of these) might all be much more appropriate. Of course, more traditional academic outputs may still be an important route for the dissemination of your scholarship, but this is very much dependant on the nature of your scholarship and the audiences you are trying to reach.

Wherever and however you disseminate your work, it can be helpful for your own evaluation of your scholarship to find ways to track the reach of your work, the impact it is having and value it is bringing in other contexts.

Share with Whom?

Who you disseminate your scholarship to is dependent on your context; you might share it with your department, division, school, faculty or across the university. You might share it beyond the University in your discipline or professional body, or contribute to debates around higher education or even scholarship itself. You might also share it with your students, co-creating scholarship with them, or letting them know the work that you are doing to enhance teaching or the university community. Perhaps you may do, or aim to do, a mixture of each of these things.

When to share?

One of the things which may determine who you share your scholarship with is when you decide to share your work. You might find local fora, such as teaching and learning committees or away days in your department, division, school or faculty provide a helpful place to test out your ideas and get feedback on an early iteration of your work. However, if you are looking to scale up a piece of scholarship that you have only tried in your own teaching so far, effectively to build a “proof of concept”, then reaching out across appropriate networks will be essential. These might be across your discipline, but they may also be interdisciplinary. You will know what is best in your context, but you can also reach out to the Institute for Teaching and Learning for further support and advice.

Where to share?

Once again, the primary answer is that this is often context specific so you will know best. For instance, if your scholarship is discipline based educational or pedagogic research, or involves the development, application and synthesis of disciplinary knowledge to inform teaching, then you may find that conferences, blogs, web resources or other publications hosted by your professional body or subject specific learned societies might be the most appropriate place to present your work. Some professional bodies and learned societies may have specific committees or special interest groups for teaching and learning your subject, whilst some disciplines may have their own specific teaching and learning societies. Of course, some professional bodies and learned societies may not have any provision for HE teaching and scholarship – but if there is a gap, you could consider starting a special interest group or committee.

There are also lots of national and international higher education specific teaching and learning specific opportunities where you can disseminate your scholarship. We list a few here.

 

Networks

Note that each of these networks communicates primarily through a listserv email list which can be really helpful spaces for hearing about various opportunities for disseminating your scholarship.

 

· The University’s T&S Network – web page under construction. Joining link here

· The UK National Learning and Teaching Focused Network

· SEDA - The Staff and Educational Development Association 

· Higher Education Special Interest Group (HESIG) of the Comparative and International Education Society 

Societies and Conferences

· The University of Manchester annual Teaching and Learning Conference 

· The Society for Research into Higher Education - hold an annual conference, and also have grants for T&L

· International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning – hold an annual conference and have a blog and podcast

· AdvanceHE – hold a number of annual conferences, including their annual EDI conference and annual teaching and learning conference

· British Educational Research Association – covers all levels of education but has a Higher Education special interest group and have a small grants fund

Blogs and other fora

· The ITL’s Teach, Explore Apply blog - contact the ITL team about contributing to this

· Times Higher Education Campus  – contact the ITL team about contributing to this

· WonkHE 

· The National Teaching Repository – this uses Figshare and is therefore great for sharing resources you create. Anything you upload will be given a stable DOI and can be connected to your Pure profile. The NTR also provides metrics on downloads and reads which can be helpful for evidencing the reach of your scholarship.

Journals