What is SoTL?:

In 1990, Ernest Boyer coined the term “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)” and the concept took hold and began to emerge as a movement throughout higher education.   SoTL seeks to use discovery, reflection, and evidence-based methods to investigate effective teaching methods and student learning outcomes.  The overall goal of SoTL research is to enhance teaching practices and thereby, improve student learning outcomes by researching alternative teaching methods and learning environments. The emergence of SoTL over the past few decades has resulted in renewed interest in the development of new teaching approaches, ways to evaluate outcomes and the sharing of results with other teachers and professors.  The dissemination of results has encouraged faculty to engage in conversations about teaching methods and student learning by providing them access to the practical applications of educational theories.

This type of inquiry is referred to by some as pedagogical research. In order for this type of research to be considered scholarly, it must be public, it should be critically reviewed by peers, and the results should be made available and communicated to others in the scholarly community.  In other words, it must adhere to the characteristics of good scholarship.  Therefore, the scholarship of teaching and learning is NOT the same thing as excellent teaching or scholarly teaching. Excellent teachers and scholarly teachers do reflect on their teaching practices, try new methods, and assess the learning in their classrooms.  However, SoTL takes those practices another step farther by conducting research that produces evidence-based results that can be formally shared with colleagues. It is the study of teaching and learning.  As the concept has gained momentum over the decades, the opportunities for researchers to share their findings have also increased.  For example, there are both broad based educational journals, such as the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and discipline-specific educational journals such as the Journal of Chemical Education. Researchers now have many avenues through which they can share their educational research in a scholarly way.

What is the value of SoTL?:

What is the value and purpose of the scholarship of teaching and learning?  The primary purpose is to improve teaching and student learning.  Faculty have an obligation to examine their role as an educator and utilize their experience in their discipline to provide evidence regarding best teaching practices and how to improve student outcomes.  SoTL can be considered a source of faculty development both to those that practice SoTL and to those interested in the findings. Therefore, SoTL can be considered a specialized kind of research with the potential for broad application to educators and implications for scholarly teaching.  For this reason, SoTL research is considered functional in that the teaching strategies that are studied can be implemented and serve a practical purpose. 

GCU places a high value on SoTL research as means of faculty development and the advancement of teaching practices.  Please view of the following video for a more in-depth discussion of SoTL at GCU by CIRT Director, Jean Mandernach:

As SoTL continues to gain nationwide recognition and momentum, the benefits to faculty, students, programs, and higher education in general will become more widely recognized and will hopefully lead to improvement in the areas of faculty reward and recognition. The following YouTube video, Making a Case for SoTL, discusses the value and purpose of SoTL and why institutions should support faculty engaging in SoTL research.

The resources below further explore the history of SoTL and its value in higher education:

The Scholarship of Teaching

Why Do SoTL?

What are examples of SoTL research?

What types of SoTL research are faculty conducting? What are examples of topics that SoTL researchers may engage in?  A biology faculty may explore whether or not problem-based learning has an impact on student learning by teaching half of the courses using PBL and comparing student outcomes with those from courses without PBL.   Another faculty member may explore differences in student learning between classrooms that use journaling and those that do not.  Or a faculty member may explore curriculum development by investigating different curricular approaches to a concept and comparing student learning.  Topics for SoTL projects vary greatly by discipline, but following are additional examples that may serve as ideas:

• Do service-learning projects required by health science students translate to community involvement in their professional careers?
• Does the use of in-class study groups increase scores on physics exams?
• Does the use of Discussion Board assignments increase other types of participation in the classroom?
• What factors influence student success in entry level math courses?
• Are you introducing a new tool or unique technology in your classroom?  Do student outcomes vary between your classes where this new tool is used and classes where it is not?
• Are there behaviors in your classroom that may be impacting student outcomes?  These could include posting length, frequency, response time, feedback quality or length, or time spent talking to students. Do student outcomes differ if these behaviors are changed or modified?
• Is there something that you would like to improve or understand better about your classroom? Do you find that students Turnitin scores are high and you need to find a way to help them understand citations and plagiarism? If an intervention took place, do the Turnitin reports differ after the intervention?

Here is a brief list of SoTL studies by GCU faculty and staff

Routine vs. Non-Routine Educational Practice...What's the Difference?

Routine educational practice includes activities that would be conducted as a component of a faculty's regular, ongoing quest to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness. For example, it might include faculty seeking student feedback on instructional techniques or examining the impact of instructional techniques on student learning, satisfaction, engagement, or retention. Most often, routine educational practice involves faculty implementation or integration of an intervention of sorts in their classroom that is aimed at improving student outcomes or their own teaching pedagogy that is measurable. Because of the nature of the type of the work that we do as teachers, the efforts made to do our work, to be innovative, and meet the changing needs of our students fall within the bounds of routine educational practice. Data would be requested at the end of the project in this case, and requested as historical archival data and would not require institutional approval request until end of the project for Site Authorization and IRB Approval.

Non-Routine educational practice activities also focus on research that informs teaching and learning but extends beyond the bounds of regular classroom practice. In this context faculty that are collecting data/feedback as a component of their teaching that goes beyond routine educational practice need to solicit institutional approval (site authorization and IRB) prior to collecting data/feedback. As such, these projects will need complete research protocols including informed consent and debriefing. 

For the purpose of the THINK! program (this program) we are focusing on Routine educational practice. Our focus is on completing a single intervention in your classroom setting. 

Getting started with your own SoTL research:

The most critical first step is to identify a research problem.  Faculty usually become interested in a SoTL project through reflecting on something in their own classroom experience as an instructor.  It is helpful to start by thinking broadly about a teaching or learning issue, an assignment, a pedagogical strategy or something of that nature. The next step would to attempt to put the problem into a question form. The faculty member can then begin to think about ways to study the question.  What is already known?  What information is needed?  What are some possible data collection strategies? What resources are needed and what would be the time frame? What are practical and ethical concerns that may need to be addressed?  At this point, the faculty member is considering the question in a broad context, but by walking through this series of questions, he or she can begin determining if the question they are interested in has potential as a SoTL project.  The research question can then be refined and narrowed to create a project that is feasible and can produce meaningful results.  Getting Started and SoTL: Designing and Beginning are two resources that can help you begin brainstorming ideas for a SoTL project.