Teaching and Learning Research Day

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): Preparing the Distinctive UWI Graduate

The inaugural Teaching and Learning Research Day conceptualised by the Instructional Development Unit (IDU) as part of its SoTL programme of activities, took place on Thursday 30th October 2008 at the Institute of Critical Thinking, UWI, St. Augustine.

Elsa Ann Leo-Rhynie, Professor Emerita of the University of the West Indies, was invited as our Feature Speaker.  Prof. Leo-Rhynie's PowerPoint presentation can be accessed here.

Pro Vice Chancellor and Campus Principal, Prof. Clement Sankat, gave the welcome remarks, and Vice Chancellor Prof. E. Nigel Harris also briefly addressed those in attendance.

This event was designed to disseminate research information on teaching and learning generally and to provide our teaching practitioners with a forum for demonstrating scholarship in their practice. As such, there were opportunities for teaching staff to present their research relevant to teaching conceptualisation and teaching practice.  In addition to providing a forum for publicising the normally private and unknown events within the teaching and learning dynamic, the Research Day also highlighted and acknowledged scholarly teaching.

The ultimate goal of Teaching and Learning Research Day is to publish the works of those presentations that have been judged as deserving thereby facilitating requirements for promotion and tenure. These works will become part of the first issue of the Caribbean Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education .  This will be a peer reviewed journal of particular importance to Caribbean teachers.

Click here for the programme, abstracts of papers and posters presented, as well as biographies of the presenters.

Awards

The UWI/Guardian Holdings Award for Most Outstanding Classroom Research Paper went to Dr. Godfrey Steele.  His presentation was entitled "Using Online Technology in Communication Teaching".

Dr. Nicole John-Thomas was awarded Best Poster Presentation for her poster "Evaluating Students' Conceputal Understanding of Chemistry".