The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Part 2

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

Today I’m going to talk about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, also known as SoTL. This is Part 2 in a two-part series on this topic.

In Part 1 of the series, I defined SoTL and briefly covered the five steps in the SoTL process. Today, I will focus on the SoTL grants program at UNC Charlotte which began in 2009. The SoTL grants replaced the Curriculum and Instructional Development grants – also known as CID grants – and many faculty are unsure of how the two programs differ.

The major difference is that, unlike CID grants, SoTL grants are NOT intended to fund the development or implementation of a new pedagogy, curriculum, or program. Instead, SoTL grants are intended to fund the evaluation of existing or proposed pedagogies, curricula and programs. This has several important implications for writing a successful SoTL proposal:

First, don’t request funds to design or implement a program. Instead, seek support from your unit to cover implementation costs and seek SoTL grant funds to evaluate the impact of the program and disseminate the results.

Second, carefully design an evaluation plan that will allow you to demonstrate the impact of your program. This plan should be as rigorous as the methodology used in your traditional research studies. It should pay close attention to research design and methodology, data collection, instrumentation and statistical methods. 

And third, pay careful attention to research dissemination. Just as with traditional faculty research, the goal of the SoTL project is to yield findings that are publishable in professional and scholarly outlets.

I hope this podcast has motivated you to learn more about the SoTL grants process and ways you can turn your own teaching ideas into fundable research projects. Your next step is to review the program’s RFP which is located under the SoTL Tab on the Center for T & L’s website.

Thanks for listening. And remember, Teaching and Learning Matters.