The Connected Learner: The Teaching Research Taboo

The Connected Learner is an interesting project led by Mary Lou Maher at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her blog post quoted below points to one of the difficulties in talking about teaching among CS faculty.

It seems relatively uncommon for research-track CS faculty to discuss their teaching at conferences and research meetings (no, I’m not saying it never happens, but it is rarely the focus, except at CS education conferences like SIGCSE and ICER). So, while we are likely aware of our colleagues’ research projects, we may not realize that our colleagues are experimenting with innovative teaching methods, trying out new learning technologies or adapting some best practices related to active learning. Because we don’t talk about it, we may think it’s not happening and this can lead to us not wanting to talk about our own innovations. We think our colleagues only value core research, so that is what we focus our own discussions on.

Source: The Connected Learner: The Teaching Research Taboo