The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a rich forum where scholars from different fields and philosophical orientations find space to share their research on teaching and learning in higher education. Within this paper, we will share our individual and collective experiences of why we perceive phenomenology as a methodology well-suited for a broad range of SoTL purposes. Phenomenology is

ABSTRACT From 1981 to 2015, the US Professors of the Year program recognized 101 college and university teachers as national winners in its annual competition for faculty who demonstrated “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” Their dossiers provide a window onto the leading edge of teaching and educational leadership over a critical thirty-five years when innovative faculty nationwide

The present study investigated university student beliefs and behaviours with respect to co-curricular activities among incoming (n=983), mid-degree (n=173), and graduating (n=1006) students. When asked about their most significant learning experiences during their time at university, graduating students were more likely to report on co-curricular activities than those related to coursework. However

I analyze student submissions from a photography-based assignment in introductory sociology. In this exploratory study, I address the patterns found in student submissions in order to uncover what sociological concepts students observe in their everyday lives. My primary research question, therefore, is what do introductory sociology students see when they are given few guidelines as to what they “should”

Team teaching can be a valuable means of enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration, interdisciplinary study, and pedagogical innovation, but the logistical and intellectual challenges can seem too daunting to overcome. In this essay, we share the story of how four faculty members from professional writing, communications, and computing sciences developed a team teaching “family” as we imagined, created

This paper describes a course called The First Year Experience: Mapping our Communities designed around a theme of asset mapping, which allowed us to organically integrate a number of pedagogical goals with a number of high-impact practices. The mapping metaphor extended from physical mapping of the university campus as a space to the mapping of academic and social resources, including mapping of the

Teaching can change the fabric of the world. Never has the call to assume this agency been more immediate and crucial than now. We are standing on the hallowed ground of the academy at a privileged moment in time. We are called to assume this power and authority in the service of our students, one another, and the planet. Of course, we must summon a radical bravery, a willingness to step beyond the

Many institutions of higher education increasingly place a focus on various forms of experiential education. While much work has been done in this and related areas, the resources currently available are not sufficient to effectively guide, assess, and evaluate student learning. Personal reflections can be used as a tool to assess student learning through experience. However, guiding students through

This essay proposes a series of “threshold concepts” for literary studies: text, meaning, context, form, and reading. Each term carries both commonsense understandings and disciplinary understandings, which differ from each other drastically. The disciplinary understandings entail far “more” than the commonsense ones. Unless such differences are named and explained clearly, unacknowledged commonsense

In this playful meditation on academic pronouns, I report on my research findings from three separate studies: a 2007 analysis of pronoun usage patterns in recent higher education articles; a 2017 analysis of pronoun usage patterns in Teaching and Learning Inquiry since the founding of the journal in 2013; and an updated 2017 analysis of the same five higher education journals examined a decade earlier

What, then, do we need to know about our students to better provide for more equitable outcomes? Who will succeed depend on many factors, and student personality traits is one factor less discussed in the engagement and First year experience literature. The aim of this study is to add to the teaching in higher education discussion by exploring how student differ regarding personality traits profile

The University Life Experience (ULE) scale was created to determine how students utilize their time between academic (class and preparatory) and non-academic (work, social, leisure, and health) activities. In addition to the ULE, 239 undergraduate students completed inventories assessing academic resourcefulness, academic self-efficacy, and university adaptation and satisfaction, along with single

Developing strong communicative ability amongst science graduates, especially in science communication, has been included as a fundamental learning outcome in some science degree programmes. This article focuses on a compulsory academic literacy course for first-level undergraduates that is aimed at developing academic reading and writing skills beyond the considerations of deficit language proficiency

Some advances in bioethics regarding ethical considerations that arise in the context of medical research can also be relevant when thinking about the ethical considerations that arise in the context of SoTL research. In this article, I aim to bring awareness to two potential ethical challenges SoTL researchers might face when playing a dual role of teacher and researcher that are similar to the challenges

As internet access and use increase exponentially, pedagogical practice becomes increasingly embedded in online platforms. We report on an online initiative of engaged student learning, the peer-led, staff-assisted e-helpdesk for research methods and statistics, which we evaluated and redeveloped using the lens and guiding principles of the framework for partnership in learning and teaching of the

The 3M National Teaching Fellowship is a national teaching award program that has recognized over 300 teachers at more than 80 Canadian universities for their teaching excellence and outstanding educational leadership. Despite its rich, 30 plus-year history, its impact has remained largely anecdotal. In this study, we build on Hannah and Lester’s (2009) original, multilevel approach that looks at interactions

Tertiary education institutions grapple with how to better engage students in their learning in high-enrolment, introductory courses. This paper presents a case study that examines a large-scale, faculty-level course redesign project in which this challenge was addressed through the use of blended learning models. The main research question was: Are students in blended formats engaged in their learning

Why do not academic teachers more frequently use results from education, psychology, cognitive sciences, and related fields while planning, carrying out, and evaluating teaching? It has been argued that if only they did, education would improve. It has further been argued that results from these fields are not communicated in ways suitable for teachers from other disciplines, and therefore there is

This short tribute to the value of ISSoTL conferences explores metatphors of crossing bridges and gaining the confidence through ISSoTL's support to 'dive in.' It reminds us of the value of colleagial networks in encouraging us to swim.

A broad consensus exists that the use of appropriate methods are important in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. However, methodological controversies arise around what constitutes acceptable evidence, if one needs a control group, how generalizable results must be, and other similar issues. Much SoTL work, I argue, asks questions about how much a particular treatment (innovation) caused an

Within postsecondary education, the assessment of effective teaching has largely relied upon student evaluations of teaching. However, the process through which teachers make sense of their student evaluations is unclear. A research team of six undergraduate nursing students and four nursing educators explored the research question: How do nursing educators make meaning from their student evaluations

Faculty members participating in a year-long Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) development program experienced various surprises as transformational events. This study is a phenomenological exploration of these surprises. We use Dastur’s (2000) understanding of surprise as a phenomenological event that allows for changed perception and the possibility of a different future through an altered

The need for inclusive and equitable approaches to teaching and learning is a persistent theme in recent literature. In spite of relatively widespread agreement about this objective, inclusion remains elusive, and opinions about how best to achieve it proliferate. To provide a landscape view of the field and offer recommendations for research and practice, this article provides a focussed review of

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,

A Review of Faculty Development and Student Learning: Assessing the Connections by William Condon, Ellen R. Iverson, Cathryn A. Manduca, Carol Rutz, and Gudrun Willett

The introduction of generic skills, such as communication, into undergraduate science degrees is becoming common in higher education and has met with mixed implementation success. This study designed, piloted, and evaluated a set of adaptable activities that scaffold the explicit teaching and learning of science communication with non-scientific audiences. These activities were implemented in undergraduate

In this paper, we are concerned with how change agents go about and experience change implementation in higher education. We identified change agents and interviewed them about how they implement change. Empirical data was analysed using a theoretical framework of change. The findings suggest that change in the university is enacted through a process of negotiation. The findings of this study may offer

A Review of Critical Reading in Higher Education by Karen Manarin, Miriam Carey, Melanie Rathburn, and Glen Ryland

This study evaluated a model of student-engaged educational development. Despite widespread commitment to student engagement across many institutional activities, student participation as partners with faculty in teaching and learning enhancement has been identified as a threshold concept for educational development. This study sought not only to establish a student-engaged model of teaching observation

Learning within the sciences is often considered through a quantitative lens, but acquiring proficiency with the symbolic representations in chemistry is arguably more akin to language learning. Representational competencies are central to successful communication of chemical information including molecular composition, structure, and properties. This article reports on a qualitative study of learner

While the model of students and staff working in partnership to enhance university education is well-established internationally, it is still an emerging field in Australia where most of such initiatives involve only small numbers of students. This paper examines the opportunities and challenges for students-as-co-inquirers initiatives in Australia. Drawing on a review of the literature, a consideration

Co-inquiry represents a distinctive relational model for partnering with students in SoTL that focuses on the process of seeking itself, and in particular, the importance of shared questions. We use case studies from two institutions to illustrate co-inquiry in action and highlight the importance of shared questions in changing the faculty-student dynamic in ways that foster deep learning. Clarifying

Two students at a Canadian university perceived there was a lack of opportunities for peer mentoring support in their teacher education program. They approached a faculty member to co-create and research a blended peer mentoring support program embedded in a first-year education course. This study documents the journey of these two students as co-inquirers in a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

A Review of Critical Reading in Higher Education: Academic Goals and Social Engagement by Karen Manarin, Miriam Carey, Melanie Rathburn, and Glen Ryland

Quantitative results from empirical studies are common in the field of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), but it is important to remain aware of what the results from our studies can, and cannot, tell us. Oftentimes studies conducted to examine teaching and learning are constrained by class size. Small sample sizes negatively influence statistical power and make non-significant results a

Linguistic, literary, and feminist studies define translation as a process of rendering a new version of an original with attention to context, power, and purpose. Processes of translation in the context of student-faculty co-inquiry in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offer examples of how this re-rendering can play out in the realm of academic development. In this article, translation serves

This article reflects on a conceptual model for mapping the work which fits under the broad heading of students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education (Healey, Flint & Harrington, 2014). We examine the nature and purpose of the model with reference to specific examples and reflect on the potential and actual uses of the model in the development of practice and policy, focussing particularly

This essay explores the use of undergraduate research posters in English literature classrooms; at the same time, it argues for a scholarship of teaching and learning responsive to how meaning is constructed in the arts and humanities. Our scholarly practice requires interaction with texts and with each other, yet the undergraduate research paper typically does not involve much interaction between

This study provides insight into technology-enhanced assessment (TEA) in diverse higher education contexts. The effectiveness of using technology for assessment in higher education is still equivocal, particularly in regard to evidence of improvements in student learning. This empirical research explores the affordances that technology offers to assessment for transforming student learning. A systematic

A Review of Doing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Mathematics edited by Jacqueline M. Dewar & Curtis D. Bennett