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Teach Talk

Efforts to Link Research and Teaching
More Closely Are Gaining Ground

Lori Breslow

In the university, research and teaching are usually thought of as archenemies whose battlefield is the time and energy of Every Faculty Member. Even those who have attained the Holy Grail of tenure are not immune from the unsettling tug of war the two are forever engaged in.

On the other hand, the common wisdom is that they cannot be uncoupled in the sense that one cannot be a good college teacher without being a strong researcher. Research done to test that belief, however, has proven it not to be true. For example, in 1987, Kenneth Feldman reviewed 43 studies conducted on the relationship between teaching and learning and found ". . . for all practical purposes, [the two] are essentially unrelated." In other words, there was no correlation between research productivity and teaching effectiveness. ("Research Productivity and Scholarly Accomplishment of College Teachers as Related to their Instructional Effectiveness: A Review and Exploration," Research in Higher Education, Vol. 26, 1987, p. 275, as quoted in Hattie and Marsh, below.) A similar meta-analysis of 58 studies done nine years later by John Hattie and H.W. Marsh reaffirmed Feldman's findings. "We must conclude," the authors write, "that the common belief that research and teaching are inextricably entwined is an enduring myth." ("The Relationships Between Research and Teaching: A Meta-Analysis," Review of Educational Research, Vol. 66, 1996, p. 529.)

(Interestingly, while Hattie and Marsh confirm that prolific research does not correlate with excellent teaching, they did find that those who did both well shared traits in common. "Good researchers and good teachers," they write, "are more enthusiastic, have greater breadth of coverage, are more committed to teaching, and appear more knowledgeable." [p. 529].)

The reality, of course, is that since at least the turn of the century, teaching and research have been in bitter competition, and research has won. In his book, How Scholars Trumped Teachers, Stanford education historian Larry Cuban writes, "Amid repeated presidential and faculty claims for the signal importance of teaching and affirmations that harmony, not conflict, characterizes teaching and research, critics and scholars have noted the research imperative as dominating academic work again and again." He ends the paragraph with the cynical, "No news here." (p. 5)

Far be it from me to assert that the playing field between teaching and research is level at MIT. I know of only one faculty member in the Institute who maintains he was tenured because of his contributions to education. And only twice have I been contacted to help young faculty members improve their teaching because there was a fear their tenure cases would be negatively affected by poor student evaluations. So this column is not about how research and teaching happily co-exist at this or any other research institution.

But . . . there are a number of ways the faculty and administration at MIT have sought to combine teaching and research so they reinforce one another, and these efforts have born fruit. In this Teach Talk, I would like to describe three ways this linking has occurred here: by talking about research in the classroom, through UROP (the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program), and in subjects that ask students to engage in primary research. Then I would like to briefly detail several endeavors that are going on nationally and internationally to strengthen the connection between teaching and learning.

 

Efforts at MIT

Intertwining research and teaching can be as simple as a faculty member talking about research (his/hers or someone else's) in class. "When I teach my freshman physics subject (8.022)," explains Professor Peter Fisher, "I make sure to talk about the work that went on at MIT during World War II to develop radar. I think the students should have a sense of how the seemingly abstract concepts they are learning were applied in a way that had profound consequences." And although I've never done a full-scale study on the advantages of talking about research in class, any time the subject has come up in casual conversation with students, they have been nothing less than enthusiastic.

Of course, the most well-known effort to combine teaching and research at MIT is UROP. Begun in 1969, UROP was the brainchild of the late Margaret MacVicar, professor of Physical Science and dean for Undergraduate Education, and was "inspired by Edwin H. Land . . . who believed in the power of learning by doing." (http://web.mit.edu/urop/) Almost 80% of all MIT undergraduates now participate in at least one UROP during their time at MIT, and UROP has become a model for many programs of its kind at universities throughout the world.

Since I assume most readers of the Faculty Newsletter know about UROP, I won't belabor the point except to say that the founding principle behind UROP is that by doing research alongside UROP supervisors, those supervisors have the opportunity to teach students about the research process, the physical concepts and phenomena underlying the research they are doing, and the knowledge gained as a result of the research program. As UROP Director and Dean for Undergraduate Research Kim Vandiver explains, "UROP allows the students to progress from reading about research and hearing about it to seeing it, doing it, and beginning to understand it." UROP may be the quintessential example of how research and teaching can be interlinked.

UROP connects teaching and research in the lab; other faculty members are making that connection in the classroom. For example, in a new freshman subject called Mission 200X (with "X" standing for the year the students graduate), students work together in their first semester at MIT to solve a complex problem in a novel way. This year, Mission 2006, whose focus will be designing new ways to monitor the status of the Amazon rainforest, will become part of the Terrascope project, which adds a second-semester class in which the students will design and build the computer simulations and experimental observational tools necessary to implement the design they created in the first semester. (http://web.mit.edu/terrascope/www) From the moment they arrive at MIT, these students will be working as researchers, exploring new problems and trying to solve them. But they will do it within the classroom environment.

Aero/Astro Professor David Miller's three-semester course "Space Systems Engineering" (16.83) is another excellent example of how research can be integrated into the classroom. The course is the capstone of the department's undergraduate curriculum, which is based on authentic engineering practice. (The curriculum is known by the acronym CDIO for Conceive, Design, Implement, and Operate.) Professor Miller's course allowed students to work together in teams to develop a concept for a satellite formation flight laboratory for the International Space State, build a high-fidelity prototype, and operate it for short periods of micro-gravity on NASA's KC-135. As Professor Miller and Dr. Doris Brodeur describe the subject in a paper they presented at the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, it was a win-win situation for everyone. The students received direct experience in the range of work academic and research engineers do, the product made was something of value to the aerospace research community, and "faculty time spent teaching the course would not only meet academic requirements, but also permit faculty members to direct focused activities that supported their research." (p. 3)

These are only a few examples of how research and teaching intersect at MIT; I'm sure many more exist.

 

Efforts Nationally and Internationally

In 1998, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching issued the Boyer Commission Report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities. (http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf) Charging that "the research universities have too often failed, and continue to fail, their undergraduate populations," the report condemned research universities for not providing undergraduates with opportunities for contact with senior faculty or to do real research. And, in fact, the first recommendation the Commission made for changing undergraduate education was to make research-based learning the standard, with students "engaged in research in as many courses as possible."

The Reinvention Center (http://ws.cc.stonybrook.edu/Reinventioncenter/) was founded at SUNY Stony Brook to promote and coordinate the changes the Boyer Commission advocated. It has established regional networks of research universities to collaborate with one another, and will sponsor a two-day conference in November on "Undergraduate Research and Scholarship and the Mission of the Research University," which representatives from MIT will attend.

Then in August 2001, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced it would award $1 million each to 20 research scientists "on the basis of their plans to transmit the excitement and values of scientific research to undergraduate education." Citing the fact that college students are "learning science in the same old way," the Institute hoped to "empower scientists at research universities to . . . 'break the mold' in science education." (http://www.hhmi.org/news)

Two efforts in the UK to connect teaching and research more effectively have also been recently launched. The Linking Teaching and Research in the Disciplines project, centered at Oxford Brookes University, involves producing generic materials to help strengthen the teaching/research links within specific disciplines, as well as creating five Subject Centres that will be discipline specific. (http://www.brookes.ac.uk/) In addition, the Centre for Higher Education Practices at the Open University has undertaken a project entitled, "Maximizing the Benefits to Teaching of Research" in 2001-2002.

There is one more way that prominent scholars have attempted to strengthen the conceptual bond between teaching and research, and that is to undertake what is generally called the "scholarship of teaching." This perspective has been spearheaded by the Carnegie Foundation's CASTL (Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Higher Education program. (http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/CASTL/highered/index.htm) This project consists of a fellowship program, underwritten by the Pew National Trust, to bring university faculty together in an advanced study center to explore significant issues in teaching and learning in their fields; the Teaching Academy Campus Program, which is coordinated by AAHE and seeks to create a culture of scholarship in teaching and learning on individual campuses; and interactions with professional and scholarly societies. As Pat Hutchins, who directs CASTL Higher Ed, has exhorted the academic community, it is time for faculty to treat ". . . their classrooms as sites for systematic inquiry; framing their own teaching problems as questions of broader scholarly significance . . . ." (Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, p. 1 at the CASTL Website)

There is no doubt in my mind that pressures – and opportunities – from a number of different quarters are changing the relationship between teaching and learning on the campuses of research universities worldwide. I am glad we are participating in that shift.

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