And ‘more people sharing resources in new ways’ is the history of civilisation in — pause — seven words.
Key characteristics & structure of Disciplinary Commons:
A Disciplinary Commons involves a group of educators from diverse institutions who teach within the same discipline meeting monthly during an academic year to share, reflect on and document their teaching. The participants prepare a course portfolio, describing their own teaching of a particular module during a single academic term; additionally they critique each other’s portfolios, and visit each other’s classrooms. This combination of critical self-examination and peer review helps participants understand their own teaching, identify places where innovation and change are desirable, share what works, borrow from others, and see their own teaching in the context of a broad range of possibilities.
There are two primary roles associated with a Disciplinary Commons: a group of participants and one or more leaders. The mechanism for instantiating a Disciplinary Commons is a series of workshops over the life of an academic course. However, this straightforward and well-understood method of delivery is not what defines the characteristics of a Commons: it is only the visible expression of a series of interlocking design decisions, the top of the iceberg. An intervention described as a Disciplinary Commons is informed by a theoretical rationale and incorporates practical elements suggested by previous work.
The 2007 paper "Opening the Door ...", below, outlines some basic features. The 2007 paper "Warren's Question" gives a flavour of some of the experience. If you are interested in running a Commons yourself we have written a handbook: A Commons Leader's Vade Mecum (and accompanying Big Illustration) which you may find useful. If you would like a hard copy of this, please get in touch. There is also additional "backstage" information available from the Commons Leader's page.
Sally Fincher, Josh Tenenberg: 13th April 2011
Project Home Pages:
2016/17
- GECCo: Building Graduate Employability Community in Computing (Sally Fincher, Janet Finlay & Sebastian Dzialla)
2010/11
- Project Work Disciplinary Commons (Tony Jenkins, UK)
2009/10
- Database Disciplinary Commons (Rich Cooper & Sally Fincher UK)
- A Disicplinary Commons in Computing Education (This represents a series of Commons involving High School teachers in Georgia, USA. A first instantiation was led by Allison Elliott Tew and Lijun Ni. Workshop leaders for the second DCCE were Ria Galanos and Briana Morrison)
2007/08
- hcidc: Creating a Disciplinary Commons in HCI education (Sally Fincher & Janet Finlay, UK)
2005/06
- Creating a Disciplinary Commons in Computer Science through the use of Course Portfolios (Josh Tenenberg, USA)
- Creating a Disciplinary Commons in Computing Education (Sally Fincher, UK)
Papers and presentations about the Commons
| 11 November 2013, Aarhus, Denmark | Classrooms, Kitchens and Farms: The Narrative Nature of PCK Presentation (.pptx) |
Eighth Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (WiPSCE) | Sally Fincher |
| 9 September 2012, Auckland, New Zealand | Adapting the Disciplinary Commons Model for High School Teachers: Improving Recruitment, Creating Community Paper (.pdf) |
Ninth International Computing Education Research (ICER) conference | Briana Morrison, Lijun Ni, Mark Guzdial |
| 9 March 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA | Building a Community to Support HS CS Teachers: the Disciplinary Commons for Computing Educators Paper (.pdf) |
Forty-second SIGCSE Symposium | Lijun Ni, Mark Guzdial, Allison Elliott Tew, Briana Morrison, Ria Galanos |
| 28 June 2010, Abertay, Scotland | A Disciplinary Commons for Database Teaching Presentation (.ppt) |
Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD) Conference, 2010 | Richard Cooper |
| March 2010, Milwaukee. Wisconsin, USA | Useful Sharing Presentation with audio (mp4) |
Forty-first SIGCSE Symposium | Sally Fincher | 19 February 2009, Glasgow, Scotland | Useful Sharing Presentation (.ppt) Video of session |
Evening Seminar series in Computing Education | Sally Fincher |
| 11-13 December 2007, Brighton UK | Re-shaping practices of academic development: The Disciplinary Commons Paper (.pdf) Presentation (.ppt) |
Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education | Sally Fincher & Josh Tenenberg |
| 15-16 September 2007, Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Warren's Question Paper |
Third International Computing Education Research (ICER) conference | Sally Fincher & Josh Tenenberg |
| 7-10 March 2007, SIGCSE Symposium, Covington, Kentucky, USA | Opening the Door of the Computer Science Classroom: The Disciplinary
Commons Paper (.pdf) Presentation (.ppt) |
Full paper | Josh Tenenberg & Sally Fincher |
| Summer 2006 |
Experiences of a Disciplinary Commons (.pdf) pages 31-33 |
University of Gloucestershire Electronic Journal of Learning and Teaching (e-JOLT) | Vicky Bush |
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29th-31st August 2006 Trinity College, Dublin |
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7th Annual Conference of the ICS HE Academy |
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| 18th & 19th May 2006 City University, London |
The Disciplinary Commons (abstract) The Disciplinary Commons (presentation) |
London SoTL 6th Annual International Conference | Sally Fincher & Josh Tenenberg |
| 5th May 2006 |
Building a Disciplinary Commons using Course Portfolios (.ppt) | Pacific Northwest Higher Education Teaching & Learning Conference | Josh Tenenberg, Janet Ash, Donald Chinn, Ravi Gandham, Michael Gelotte, Richard Hoagland, Laurie Murphy, Brad Richards, John Staneff, Phyllis Topham, Jeffrey Weiss |
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2nd May 2006 University of Kent |
National Teaching Fellowships & the Disciplinary Commons (.ppt) | Seminar, Academic Development Week | Sally Fincher |
| March 2006 University of Bolton |
Fridays: Where's Pete Been? (.ppt) | Departmental Seminar | Pete Bibby |
| 3rd March 2006 SIGCSE Symposium, Houston |
Creating a Disciplinary Commons in Computer Science (.ppt) | SIGCSE Special Projects Showcase | Josh Tenenberg |
| 24th January 2006 Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia |
UK National Teaching Fellowships & the Disciplinary Commons (.ppt) | Seminar | Sally Fincher |
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14th & 15th October 2005, University of Washigton, Bothell. |
Using Course Portfolios to Create a Disciplinary Commons Across Institutions (.doc) | Seventh Annual Northwestern Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, CCSC-NW | Josh Tenenberg & Qi Wang |
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11th March 2005 University of Washington, Tacoma |
Report on a pilot project: Creating a Disciplinary Commons in IT using Course Portfolios (.ppt) | Institute of Technology/CCTC Cojoined meeting | Josh Tenenberg & Qi Wang |