Valuing faculty and staff development as an essential component to enhancing student success, Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) has developed a twofold approach to supporting pedagogical inquiry and learning. First, the college founded an academic journal, Teaching and Learning Excellence through Scholarship (TALES), as a mechanism to encourage faculty engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Second, CCBC established a journal club for faculty to foster a culture of curiosity and lifelong learning in pedagogy. Both of these initiatives are low-cost and high-benefit, and could easily be replicated at other colleges interested in increasing faculty and staff involvement in SoTL.

Launching an Academic Journal With an Eye on Professional Learning

The evolution of TALES began in spring 2020 when the hiatus on travel and on-site activities due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions created a need to develop valuable professional learning activities that could be completed virtually. The result was the formation of a board of CCBC faculty and staff with the vision to launch an academic journal in which community college colleagues could share their insights about fostering student success.

By August 2021, after a series of presentations and outreach efforts, the first issue of TALES was published with supportive opening remarks from CCBC’s President, Dr. Sandra Kurtinitis, and Provost and Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, Dr. Joaquín Martínez. Following the board’s recommendation for the journal to be published online in an open-access format immediately set the journal up as a powerful repository for faculty innovation at CCBC and beyond. Registering TALES with the Library of Congress and Crossref allows for each article to be assigned a digital object identifier that connects the research published in the journal with a larger network of open-source metadata in a global community of scholarship.

Beyond its contribution to printed pedagogical discourse, TALES is an important mechanism for professional development within CCBC’s Institute for Transformative Teaching, Learning, and Leadership. The journal provides valuable opportunities for growth at each level of engagement, including:

Readers

Examining scholarly content exposes readers to novel techniques and inspires professional inquiry. Physical science instructor James Spray, who led the committee to evaluate the 2023 research articles in TALES and identify CCBC’s research paper of the year for award, noted,

Our reviewers loved the opportunity to actually sit down and read cutting-edge scholarly research. TALES is a great way for faculty to learn about what innovations their colleagues are developing and then think about applying them in their own classrooms. Seeing the kind of research that is being done at CCBC can also spark creativity and encourage us to develop our own studies.

Peer Reviewers

TALES employs a double-blind peer review process that has grown to involve 18 trained faculty from each academic school at CCBC. Managing Editor Michael Hands has observed that,

Peer review has enabled faculty to work with colleagues from different disciplines and broaden their perspectives regarding the variety of approaches to scholarly work. Reviewers have also been inspired by the work of the authors, and some have even requested to be introduced to authors after the peer review process for help with implementing what they had read into their own classrooms.

Authors

Sharing outcomes is a core step in the cycle of SoTL. At CCBC, faculty are more likely to share through presentations and other informal methods than peer-reviewed scholarly publications, but analyzing and presenting data in a written article is a highly valuable process. TALES author Jewel Daniel feels that,

Gathering and analyzing data on student learning allows you to make necessary interventions that would increase the success and retention of students in the course. That transforms students from being passive passengers to active participants in their learning. If that’s not transformative education, I don’t know what is.

Editors

Each editor has benefitted from collaborating to produce the issues, adapting their particular skills to the service of the journal, and participating in the world of academic publishing from within. TALES Website Editor Roni Noone said,

I love being involved with TALES! It allows me to use my skills and knowledge to benefit the college, and I get the added benefit of using the work I do in the classroom. I can show my students the HTML versions of the articles as an example of how and why distributing content in simple forms is beneficial. I have also increased my skillset by learning the [journal hosting] system and more about publishing academic journals in general.

Establishing a Journal Club to Cultivate a Culture of Lifelong Learning

Following the successful initial launch of TALES and a strong sophomore follow-up with the publication of the second issue in summer 2022, a faculty journal club was initiated the following fall. The rationale for a journal club centered on a desire to instill routine investigation of the scholarly literature, a beneficial habit on its own, with the added potential to inspire classroom research projects. A breakout session at CCBC’s annual collegewide development conference—Fall Focus—provided education and outreach about the initiative. The first cohort of 10 participants met throughout the fall 2022 semester to discuss articles on the theme of innovative grading techniques, class policies, and student course evaluations. Journal club membership grew in spring and fall 2023 to include faculty from other community colleges in Maryland (i.e., Carroll Community College, Wor-Wic Community College) and beyond (i.e., Central Arizona College), with each group independently selecting their focus within SoTL and the slate of articles for the semester.

Over three sequential semesters of journal club cohorts, 19 faculty have participated in one or more semesters and 17 of these faculty completed a survey on their club experience in January 2024. Respondents unanimously indicated both that they appreciated the journal club for the opportunity to interact with other faculty and that they would enjoy participating again. Regarding the specific academic goals of the club, all 17 respondents indicated that participating in the journal club was valuable to their learning about SoTL, and 15 members agreed that reading about SoTL as part of the club helped them learn even more than if they had only read the articles. Figure 1 shows how participation in the journal club increased SoTL article readership. Notably, three respondents indicated that they didn’t typically read articles during teaching semesters prior to participating in the journal club, whereas during the club, all participants reported reading at least three SoTL articles that semester.

Figure 1: Average Number of SoTL Articles Read

Next Steps

Given that the primary goals of TALES and the journal club are to boost the practices of scholarly reading and classroom research, we will need to assess long-term habits of readers, reviewers, and authors. To date, TALES has enjoyed repeat authorship by Tim Faith (three articles) and Linda Prentice (two articles) at CCBC and Paul Miller (two articles) at Montgomery College. The majority of TALES’ peer reviewers have volunteered their service over all three issues, and TALES’ visibility received a boost in January 2024 with the inaugural award for CCBC’s Research Paper of the Year. CCBC is committed to continuing to foster a culture of active scholarship at the college through these initiatives and more in the coming years.

Lead image: Journal Club members from CCBC and Central Arizona College meet to discuss a research article.

Robin Minor, Ph.D., is Director, Center for Professional and Organizational Learning, and Dallas Dolan, Ph.D., is Dean, Teaching and Learning, at Community College of Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland.

Opinions expressed in Member Spotlight are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.