Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
SoTL generally refers to the process of generating meaningful knowledge, about an educational discipline, by validating claims through critical reflection (Boyer, 1990, 2015). It aims to enhance the “professional status of tertiary teaching” (Haigh, 2010, p. 1) by making transparent the means by which student learning has been enabled (Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, & Prosser, 2000).
SoTL, as scholarship, needs to involve rigorous scholarly inquiry into student learning and thus into teaching as a key aspect of academic practice; that this needs to be made public; and that this process of making it public needs to be subject to peer review.
The Institute for Research in Open and Innovative Education (IROPINE) at the School of Open Learning of Hong Kong Metropolitan University supports HKMU staff for the pursuit of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through promoting impactful research to advance teaching pedagogies and improve student learning. The Teaching and Learning Research Fund is one of the initiatives to nurture and support teaching and learning research in the University for the enhancement of the quality of our education provision.
References
Boyer, E. (1990).Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Boyer, E. (updated by D. Moser, T. C. Ream, & J. M. Braxton). (2015).Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Haigh, N. (2010).The scholarship of teaching and learning: A practical introduction and critique.Auckland, New Zealand: National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.
Trigwell, K., Martin, E., Benjamin, J., & Prosser, M. (2000). Scholarship of teaching: A model. Higher Education Research and Development,19(2), 155–168.
The Teaching and Learning Research Fund aims to nurture and support teaching and learning research in the University. The Fund promotes the pursuit of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the University and the enhancement of the quality of our teaching and learning through relevant research. The application form and guidance notes for this Teaching and Learning Research Fund can be downloaded through the following links:
Seminar | Title | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
1 | Factors Leading to Success and Failure in SoTL Research | Professor Jennifer C. Friberg |
2 | SOTL and Research in Assessment for a Time of Artificial Intelligence | Professor Phillip Dawson |
3 | SOTL and Research in Feedback and Feedback Literacy | Professor Phillip Dawson |
4 | The Status of Open Flexible and Distance Learning (OFDL) | Professor Olugbemiro Jegede |
Professor Jennifer C. Friberg
Director of Scholarly Teaching and Cross Endowed Chair in SoTL, Center for Integrated Professional Development
Professor, Communication Sciences & Disorders
Illinois State University
Dr. Jennifer Friberg is the Director for the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, the Cross Endowed Chair for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and a Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Illinois State University. She is the founding Associate Editor for Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders, and is the co-editor of the published book, Evidence-Based Education in the Classroom: Examples from Clinical Disciplines. Friberg's SoTL interests center on advocacy, mentorship, and learning that occurs outside of the traditional classroom setting.
Seminar notes:
Professor Phillip (Phill) Dawson is the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. CRADLE is the world's leading higher education assessment research, and is widely cited and diversely published. Phill is best known for his research on feedback, and cheating & artificial intelligence in assessments.
In his work on feedback, Phill currently heads an Australian Research Council project focusing on strengthening student feedback literacy. This longitudinal study utilizes behavior change techniques from a health and social science lens to help students develop and utilize feedback capabilities both within the university, and into their graduate working lives.
In his cheating and artificial intelligence research, Phill is working on a collaborative project to design assessments that are valid and timely in this new era of artificial intelligence in higher education. This project is an extension of a previous project that he led, and is funded by the Australian higher education regulator, TEQSA.
Olugbemiro Jegede, is a global academician and a diplomat who has made significant contributions to the development of Nigeria, Africa and the global community in many ways. He propounded two major theories. The first is the Theory of Collateral Learning in 1995 to explain how children from the non-western cultures, (especially from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the South Pacific) cope with the learning of science through the lenses of their socio-cultural background. The second is the Theory of Webagogy in 1999 for the integration of all the viable theories and ideas about information processing, knowledge and symbolic representation under-guarding philosophy, pedagogy and the use of technology (web-based pedagogy).
Professor Jegede was awarded the 2015 International Council for Distance Education (ICDE) Prize for Excellence for Life long Contribution to Open and Distance Learning worldwide, and also awarded the Association of African Universities (AAU) Excellence, and its ambassador in Open and Distance Learning in 2023. He was appointed Emeritus Professor in 2015 by the National Open University of Nigeria.
Seminar | Title | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
1 | “Going Public” with Your SoTL: For Whom & Why? | Nancy Chick |
2 | Beyond What Works: Asking New Questions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning | Professor Laura Cruz |
3 | Fostering T-Shaped Graduates through the Synergy of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Work-Integrated Learning | Professor Michelle Eady |
Date: 21 May 2024 (Tuesday)
Time: 11: 00 am – 12:00 nn
Abstract: In this keynote, Nancy Chick will look back to SoTL's origins to revisit its requirement of “going public.” Early SoTL texts describe plenty of reasons for this move that emphasizes the “S” for scholarship and sets SoTL apart from scholarly teaching. This part of SoTL has been widely accepted for over 30 years now as SoTL has settled into the traditional academic space of primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, conference presentations, and the occasional book. Recent years have seen the expansion of this space to welcome a few SoTL-focused blogs and podcasts, as well as some supporting appearances in social media. However, in this traditional academic space—even with these digital extensions—the audiences remain largely the same. Dr Chick will consider how we are limiting SoTL's potential when we imagine fellow academics and teachers as the outer limit of SoTL's reach and impact. Who else can SoTL be for, and why? These are the questions at the heart of this keynote.
Nancy Chick is a SoTL scholar, scholarly teacher, and faculty developer. In 2011, she left full-time faculty work as an English professor to focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and faculty development first at Vanderbilt University, then the University of Calgary, and now at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters on the results of SoTL projects and on the field of SoTL, and has an extensive editing background in both journals and books. She is currently writing (with Peter Felten and Katarina Mårtensson) The SoTL Guide: An Introduction to Doing and Understanding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which will be published in early 2025. From 2019-22, she served on the ISSOTL presidential team and (with Chng Huang Hoon) as ISSOTL co-president during 2020-21—at the height of the pandemic—and is currently ISSOTL’s inaugural Historian. She was presented with an ISSOTL Distinguished Service Award in 2017.
Date: 30 May 2024 (Thursday)
Time: 11: 00 am – 12:00 nn
Abstract: In this interactive talk, Dr Cruz will provide participants with a guided overview of recent research, highlighting how scholars have expanded, challenged, and re-imagined the foundational research question(s) that characterize the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
Recent syntheses of SoTL work have indicated the majority of published studies still follow the original “what works” formula, first articulated by Pat Hutchings in 2009 (Manarin et al, 2021; Pechinka, 2020; Yeo et al, 2023). In a typical “what works” study, an instructor identifies a classroom problem, proposes a solution, and implements an assessment to determine the extent to which the intervention works, i.e., solves the problem.
In this talk, participants will explore the ways in which SoTL scholars have sought to move the field beyond the “what works” paradigm and open up new questions about teaching, learning, and scholarship (Chick, 2023; Cruz & Grodziak, 2021). Answering these new questions necessitates the identification different sources of evidence, the cultivation of alternative modes of knowledge production, and perhaps deeper epistemological shifts in how we perceive our work as scholars, educators, and global citizens (Bass, 2022; Cruz et al, 2024: Felten & Geertsema, 2023).
Laura Cruz (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) is a Research Professor with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State. She is also a Fulbright Specialist and visiting professor with the University of Prishtina (Kosovo). She previously served as a tenured faculty member, the director of two centers for teaching and learning, lead editor of three academic journals, including her current position as editor-in-chief of Transformative Dialogues. Her extensive body of research includes work on undergraduate research, general education, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Most recently, she served as the co-editor for three volumes in Wiley's New Directions for Teaching and Learning series (volume 177 : Fostering a Culture of the Scholarship of Teaching in Higher Education (2024) and volumes 178 & 179 : The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the Health Professions (2024)).
Date: 19 June 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Abstract:
Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) is a flourishing, global, educational phenomenon that is changing the field of higher education. Through WIL, relevant, meaningful connections to work are made throughout the curriculum that lead to enhanced graduate employability. The University of Wollongong, Australia has developed a strategic plan which emphasises the importance of WIL in committing to all students experiencing some form of WIL over the course of their degree (1.1). This has been developed from the ground up with the formation of a committee, development of a definition and a framework, and earlier this year a mapping of over 3600 course subjects that identify types of WIL occurring across all degrees offered at the university. Professor Eady will talk about the development of this university wide implementation and offer insight on specific Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research that have grown from this project's initiation. These include Indigenous WIL, Writing Across the Professions, and Student Voice in WIL.
Professor Michelle J. Eady lectures in Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Faculty of the Arts Social Science and the Humanities (ASSH) at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Michelle is a proud Fellow of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), a Fellow of HERDSA and a senior fellow of AdvanceHE (SFHEA). Awarded a national Office of Teaching and Learning (OLT) citation for excellence and innovation in teaching, her current research interests include teacher education, work-integrated learning (WIL), communities of practice, and Indigenous strengths. Professor Eady proudly serves as the current ISSOTL President and looks forward to continuing advancing important SoTL work worldwide through collaborations with colleagues and students.
