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The International Collaborative Writing Groups (ICWG) initiative creates a space for ongoing collaboration amongst scholars of teaching and learning who co-author a manuscript on a topic of shared interest. The second ICWG, linked to the 2015 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference in Melbourne, Australia, involved 59 scholars from 11 countries. In this piece, we describe the aims, process, and outcomes for the ICWG, comparing it with the first ICWG in 2012. While international collaboration around a topic of shared interest is generally viewed positively, the realities of collaborating online with limited face-to-face interactions to complete a manuscript can be challenging. We argue, despite such challenges, that ongoing collaboration amongst scholars is vital to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) movement. Drawing on our experience of leading the overall ICWG initiative and our research into participants’ experiences, we suggest there are individual dispositions toward collaboration that enrich and enable successful participation in ICWG experiences. We end by highlighting the final products arising from almost two year of collaborative thinking and writing from six groups.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of requiring clinical justification to override decision support alerts on repeat use of CT.This before and after intervention study was conducted at a 793-bed tertiary hospital with computerized physician order entry and clinical decision support systems. When a CT order is placed, decision support alerts the orderer if the patient's same body part has undergone CT within the past 90 days. The study cohort included all 28,420 CT orders triggering a repeat alert in 2010. The intervention required clinical justification, selected from a predetermined menu, to override repeat CT decision support alerts to place a CT order; otherwise the order could not be placed and was dropped. The primary outcome, dropped repeat CT orders, was analyzed using three methods: chi-square tests to compare proportions dropped before and after intervention; multiple logistic regression tests to control for orderer, care setting, and patient factors; and statistical process control for temporal trends.The repeat CT order drop rate had an absolute increase of 1.4%; 6.1% (682/11,230) before to 7.5% (1290/17,190) after intervention, which was a 23% relative change (7.5 - 6.1)/6.1 × 100 = 23%; p0.0001). Orders were dropped more often after intervention (odds ratio, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.4; p0.0001). Statistical control analysis supported the association between the increase in the drop rate with intervention rather than underlying trends.Adding a requirement for clinical justification to override alerts modestly but significantly improves the impact of repeat CT decision support (23% relative change), with the overall effect of preventing one in 13 repeat CT orders.

This project explored the potential of public-student engagement to enhance the student experience through active community and public engagement activities. The project evaluates existing models of public engagement activities to build capacity in both the University and communities to gain greater benefit from the potential such co-generative relationships can provide. This project focused on one university with the intention of\ud complementing this primary activity with collecting case study material from a range of contexts. The context for graduate employment is rapidly changing and there is evidence that students derive benefits when their programmes include opportunities for authentic\ud engagement with real-world problems. There is evidence to suggest that communities can benefit from genuine engagement with universities and their staff and students.\ud \ud Over a two-year period at the University of Gloucestershire, the project team worked with academics, students and community groups with the aim that universities and communities can make the most of the relationships and in particular to enhance the students’\ud experience. This exciting and innovative project worked closely with the National Coordination Centre for Public Engagement to ensure transferability of the project outcomes and to promote outputs from the project.\ud \ud It finds that an estimated 63% students at the University of Gloucestershire are engaged in voluntary work of some kind (63% nationally), of whom, 22% have arranged this through the University or the Student Union (SU) (38 % nationally). Work carried out as part of a project to log voluntary and community engagement across the university involving staff and students has found that approximately 10,000 hours of voluntary work has been carried out in the 2012/13 academic year. The range of work makes understanding and planning this kind of engagement complex. This comprises \ud • Individual self-organised voluntary work, such as brownie or cub scout leadership.\ud • Individual volunteering through a university programme, such as a sports programme working with local teams, or a school mentoring programme (though some of these are paid and therefore not included here).\ud • Individual or team volunteering through Student Union brokerage, such as the SU-run VolunteerShop, campus-based community gardens and an annual tea dance for elderly residents living near the university.\ud • Individual voluntary work within the context of an internship or placement, which may or may not include work for academic credit, such as for a local community\ud project or voluntary organisation, such as the for sports clubs.\ud However, this does not include undergraduate community based research as part of a module that can also account for a considerable contribution of time, effort and expertise.