Sue Beckingham NTF Sheffield Hallam University and Professor Dawne Irving-Bell NTF BPP University
At the recent ANTF Symposium we shared some tips on how scholarly practice can be amplified using digital technology and why this is beneficial. We began by acknowledging the broad spectrum of work that can be defined as ‘scholarly practice’ e.g., research informed teaching, pedagogy in and beyond the classroom, and the scholarship of learning and teaching. More importantly we wanted to highlight that the range of valuable outputs are not limited to publications. There are many other examples of scholarly outputs that can be shared with other educators to disseminate our practice and innovative ways to do this. These include:
- Conference posters and presentation slides, and where recorded the video.
- Blog posts and podcasts can provide a summary of the scholarly activity you want to share.
- Visual infographics or sketchnotes can convey information in the form of checklists, how to guides and reflective accounts.
Outputs can be shared via social media channels and result in rich interactions with other educators. In addition, we also presented two other examples of how scholarly practice can be shared.
National Teaching Repository
The National Teaching Repository (NTR) provides colleagues with a global platform to share their learning and teaching research and resources. The NTR generates a citation and DOI for each item shared, enabling others to properly acknowledge use of the work. Authors retain all rights to their work, which can be linked to their ORCID ID, and Altmetric data supports colleagues to measure the impact of their work, and in doing so secures recognition for their practice.
#LTHEchat Learning and Teaching in Higher Education weekly tweetchat
Guests can volunteer to lead a discussion on a topic relating to learning and teaching. Six questions prompt the interactions during this hour-long tweetchat. It is an opportunity to share expertise in the chosen area and share any related resources which will be captured in the associated blog post.
Summary
Who should share their practice?
All educators! We benefit from reflecting on our own practice and evaluating how things have gone. This can be done informally with students and peers. The next stage is considering how others could benefit from this.
What items are best to share?
There is no best. If it might help other educators, it is worth sharing.
Where should your practice be shared?
To some extent this will depend on what is being shared, but the National Teaching Repository is a good place to start and secures a DOI. As mentioned, social media can be a useful way to link to any online resource. Popular channels include Twitter, LinkedIn and Mastodon and video channels like YouTube and Vimeo. If you have published then you may want to consider sharing on ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Figshare, and Mendeley.
When should it be shared?
Often educators will delay sharing until it is ‘polished’. The advantage of using digital technology is that it can be shared yourself easily and quickly!
Why should it be shared?
Some of the key benefits are that it amplifies your scholarly practice, other educators can provide feedback on work in progress or suggest potential solutions to where things may have not gone as well as planned, and others can build upon what you have done by applying in their own practice.
How?
To find out more about the National Teaching Repository and LTHEchat https://ntrepository.wordpress.com/home/
References
Beckingham, S. and Irving-Bell, D. (2023). A practical approach to amplifying scholarly practice through digital technology. National Teaching Repository. Presentation. https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.22672552.v1
Twitter: Follow @suebecks and @DawneIrvingBell for more practical approaches to amplifying scholarly practice through digital technology
