The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Part 1

Welcome to Teaching and Learning Matters. This is Kim Buch, Professor of Psychology, and Faculty Fellow in the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Today I’m going to talk about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, also known as S-o-T-L, or SoTL for short. This is Part 1 in a 2-part series on this topic.

As faculty members, we often feel that our teaching and scholarship are completely separate activities and it’s sometimes challenging to find the time to do both of them as well as we’d like. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is a potential solution to this dilemma.

SoTL is defined as “scholarly inquiry into student learning which advances the practice of teaching by making our findings public." SoTL is regarded as a scientific area of study which can generate publications just as our disciplinary research does.

The SoTL research process is very similar to the traditional research process. It begins with a question, a problem, or an opportunity related to our teaching, for example:

• Why do students perform so poorly on the first paper assignment I give each semester?
• Or how can I increase students’ completion of online homework assignments?
• Or how can I increase student accountability on team projects?

SoTL allows us to synergize our teaching and research activities by turning these teaching challenges or any other you may have into publishable research projects.

So, you may ask, how does SoTL work? There are five simple steps in the SoTL Process:

• First, we recognize a problem or opportunity in our teaching.
• Second, we consult the teaching and learning literature for best practices to find a potential solution to address the problem or opportunity.
• Third, we develop a plan to address the problem or opportunity and then we implement it.
• Fourth, we conduct research to assess the impact of the implemented plan.  
• And, finally, we write up the findings from our research and disseminate it as scholarship.

If you’re interested in learning more about SoTL, please consult the SoTL tab on the Center for Teaching & Learning’s Web site. It has detailed information for each step in this process. Also, please join me for Part 2 of this series on SoTL.

And remember, Teaching and Learning Matters.