The Coming Together of Global Colleagues to Generate Scholarship

By Mandy Frake-Mistak

Earlier this month I participated in an International Collaborative Writing Group in Atlanta, Georgia as part of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). The International Collaborative Writing Group, heretofore referred to as ICWG, is a process modeled after an international network of colleagues in Geography in the late 1990s. From this network, conversations later took place during the ISSOTL conference in 2011 in Milwaukee. The first ICWG, as part of ISSOTL, took place at ISSOTL the following year in Hamilton, Ontario. The aims of the ICWGs are to: “a) build the capacity of participants to work and write in international collaborative groups; and b) contribute to the literature on aspects of a range of [Scholarship of Teaching and Learning] topics from an international perspective” (Healey, 2017).

Upon arrival and checking in at retreat venue, I met my group for the first time. Although we had been working collaboratively on a draft in the months leading up to the writing group experience, we had never met. All prior work had been done through email and joint drafting and revising in a Google docs folder. We were all but virtual strangers. Our group was comprised of seven women representing universities and colleges in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this short, but highly intensive environment, we would share ideas with each other, offer unique perspectives and insights about mentoring in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), interrogate geographical and cultural ways of understanding higher education and our work, and continue to draft a paper for publication in a special issue journal of Teaching and Learning Inquiry.

The process itself is rather an interesting one. In person it is a combination of small group work where we continue to respond from feedback, debrief the process, discuss our work, and as possible, write! Our group of seven came together with a view to exploring mentoring in SoTL. My personal definition of SoTL aligns most closely with the work of Potter and Kustra (2011) who define SoTL as “the systematic study of teaching and learning, using established or validated criteria of scholarship, to understand how teaching (beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, and values) can maximize learning, and/or develop a more accurate understanding of learning, resulting in products that are publicly shared for critique and use by an appropriate community” (p. 2). When I think of mentoring, I think of a reciprocal relationship that emerges through informal, and sometimes, formal process. I believe there are multiple pathways to mentoring, and this is something we discussed at length throughout the writing group process. These pathways may shift depending on the needs of the individuals involved and the desired outcome.

In the time we had together during the writing group process we interrogated definitions and processes of mentoring and ultimately agreed that it was necessary to disrupt conventional understandings of mentoring (e.g. novice and expert models) by suggesting that experience and structure are essentially high quality and mutually beneficial, devoid of limiting power dynamics and immutable roles. We discussed how mentoring can take place outside of more conventional spaces and expectations. These thoughts and ideas are certainly, at this time, not fully conceived or yet articulated, but the collaborative writing process is still unfolding, and we will continue to discuss, explore, and write.

This ICWG provided numerous and unexpected benefits. Most obviously, it gives me another opportunity to publish in a highly respected peer-reviewed journal. Less obvious, however, are through the coming together of numerous global colleagues. In academia, we have the increasing responsibility to produce artefacts of our learning and everyday scholarship in the form of publications. There is evidence to support that one’s participation in a writing retreat process can increase publication outputs (Kornhaber, et al., 2016). In a paper that I have written with colleagues, we repositioned fringe benefits associated with writing retreats as core outcomes of a writing retreat. In our view, there are other greater benefits of one’s participation in a process like the ICWG, namely that one has access to protected time and space, intra-personal benefits, improved writing competency, and a potential to form a community of practice (Maheux-Pelletier, Marsh, & Frake-Mistak, 2019).

I agree with Murray and Newton (2009) who suggest that writing is highly complex. It is a developmental process, and one that provides opportunities to make connections with peers and colleagues internationally, and for learning. I look forward to (re)connecting with my ICWG and continue in our process of reflection, writing, learning, and building relationships that will, hopefully, lead to future projects.

How might you leverage collegial relationships to help your writing process? Let us know in the comments box below!

References

Healey, M. (2017). Reflections on the development of international collaborative writing groups (ICWGs) about Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2017.2.3

Kornhaber, R., Cross, M., Betihavas, V., & Bridgman, H. (2016). The benefits and challenges of academic writing retreats: an integrative review. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(6), 1210-1227).

Maheux-Pelletier, G., Marsh, H., & Frake-Mistak, M. (2019). The benefits of writing retreats revisited. In N. Simmons & A. Sing (Eds) Critical Collaborative Communities: Academic Writing Partnerships, Groups, and Retreats. Leiden, The Netherlands:  Brill Sense.

Murray, R., & Newton, M. (2009). Writing retreat as structured intervention: Margin or mainstream? Higher Education Research & Development, 28(5), 541-553.

About the Author

Mandy, an Educational Developer at the Teaching Commons, was contract faculty for over a decade having taught at Brock University, University of Wilfrid Laurier, Trent University and York. Her expertise is in critical policy studies and the political economy of higher education. This knowledge informs her work at York as she facilitates a number of courses and workshops including the Instructional Skills Workshop where Mandy is a facilitator-trainer, the Education, Curriculum, and Teaching Excellence course (EduCATE), and the Teaching Academy. She publishes actively in the area of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and seeks to support academics wishing to contribute to SoTL and research-informed teaching.