WHAT is SoTL?
You tried a new pedagogical approach and it seemed to work! Maybe you are thinking of implementing a change to your assessments and/or activities and would like to know the impact? If you were to study these changes, you would be engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), which is research focused on teaching and learning and which invites you to systematically examine your classroom practices, improve your teaching based on your findings, and share your results with your colleagues here at Temple and across academia.
Engaging in SoTL provides you the opportunity to
- Reflect upon your teaching.
- Seek out evidence related to your teaching practices.
- Assess whether your teaching-related practices are effective.
- Improve your teaching and your students’ learning.
- Contribute to scholarship focused on teaching and learning.
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching can help you reflect upon how and why you might want to design and implement a SoTL project in your class and guide you along the way.
WHY might I want to do a SoTL project?
- While reflecting upon our teaching is a first step, seeking out evidence that our teaching practices are effective helps guide us in the decisions we make about teaching.
- It can be a learning opportunity for your students.
- It helps foster deeper teaching awareness and revitalizes your practices over time.
- Contributing knowledge on teaching and learning helps educators across higher education implement more effective teaching practices.