Aracelie_Reflections_23 Mar

Posted by on April 4, 2010 
Filed under Reflections

At last…my language is being used, even if only very briefly.  My old friend SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) has reappeared in my life.  Last class, Darren gave us an outline to use for creating an Action Plan when beginning work on a research question, and SWOT is one of the elements of that plan.  It is a tool commonly used in business planning, so I saw it frequently while doing my MBA.

The Action Plan includes situational updates (current and ideal), benchmarks on a timeline (if possible), SWOT Analysis, and resources to be used.  We spent a few minutes applying these steps to our own questions. The topic of whether it was easier to write on paper then type, or simply type directly onto the computer from the start came up at this time.  Ironically, I wrote down initial thoughts, then typed the rest and saved them onto a flashdrive.  When I tried to retrieve the files, the drive had malfunctioned, and I have not been able to access the work I did.  Lesson learned?  When conducting idea-generating exercises and not near your home computer (where you can backup info immediately), beware of relying entirely on hardware.  (I know, I know; email it to myself from now on.)

Finally, we spent some time going over the community college-focused articles.  It was interesting to hear how the community college differs from larger and/or four-year institutions from a faculty perspective.  Jason offered much of his experience to the discussion and was adamantly against forcing faculty members into the “publish or perish” state of mind.  After much discussion, we convinced him that was probably not what the author intended.  However, it did get us talking about why community college faculty would not be more willing participants in the higher education arena.   It is not always that there is no money available; some schools receive millions of dollars to be able to incorporate aspects of SoTL.  Many community college educators are content to remain only in the world of similar educators.

I would venture to guess, though, that much of it is awareness.  As Prager mentions, a good deal of knowledge is passed on by word-of-mouth, essentially as folkloric tales.  For new “tales of SoTL” to be created, someone would need to be there dedicated to advocating its use.  It may not be that SoTL for the masses will apply to the community college realm, but there are so many aspects, as pointed out in McKinney’s ch8 that can be tried and possibly instituted.  It is as I said before about sending a Tiger Team.  They would be a dedicated team to focus on what was being done with SoTL, and then hand out copies of McKinney’s book to help faculty get started on the journey to implementing SoTL.

Comments



Leave a Reply