Development of a Faculty Learning Community

Development of Learning Community to support scholarship and progression. Introduction: To explore the ideas of Scholarship of Learning and Teaching, and support career development, a small group of academics from the College of Medicine, Veterinary and Life Sciences established a Learning Community. Based on a model developed at Miami University and first proposed by Cox (2004), Faculty Learning Communities bring together a group of peers to share their judgements and uncertainties about an area of practice and share ideas or experiences to collectively support and improve. Methods: An invite was sent to academics across the college on the Learning, Teaching and Scholarship track to join a Learning Community (LC) to support scholarship and career progression. Monthly meetings to collaborate and support scholarship. Focus groups and quantifiable scholarly output by participants will be used to evaluate usefulness of the Leaning Community as an approach to support scholarship. Results: From 15 staff members that were invited, 7 formed the final community from medicine, veterinary and life sciences. At first retreat, aims of the LC were agreed upon, a focus group was held to identify the needs and concerns of the group regarding scholarship. As a result of the retreat the structure for the proceeding meetings was established. After 3 meetings: Understanding of what scholarship is, and how it influences career progression; group members have identified individual and collaborative opportunities for scholarship, and scholarly output. Discussion: Already, through the sharing of ideas, and collaboration between schools, the Learning Community hopes to publish and disseminate scholarship, and provide a series of recommendations regarding scholarship support. Planned scholarship outputs include papers in educational journals, conference abstracts and presentations, and a significant ambition to influence policy within the university regarding scholarship and career development. Cox, M.D. (2004) Introduction to Faculty Learning Communities. New Direction for Teaching and Learning 97: pp5-23