Are you interested in getting started with SOTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), but unsure where to start? Maybe you are a teaching-focused or a ‘traditional’ academic looking to publish teaching-related papers, but uncertain what approach or methodology to take?

The good news is that you can probably start with your familiar research methods.

Here’s why SOTL is like carrots

SOTL (and Educational Research in general) is almost as versatile as carrots – you can eat them raw/steamed/stir-fried, etc, and SOTL methodology ranges from quantitative to qualitative and everything in between. I am confident that you can certainly do SOTL. It’s very inclusive.

Below is a recording of a short-ish (15 minute) overview of SOTL methodologies and approaches that I did for the Teaching and Leadership Community of Practice. This group meets monthly and we talk about all things learning and teaching, such as available opportunities and projects, MQ tools, good teaching practice, etc. If you are interested in joining, please sign up here.

If watching a video is not your thing, no worries! Here are the key points.

  1. SOTL methodologies are highly versatile, ranging from highly quantitative to highly qualitative and anything in between. If you have ever done any quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method research, you can do SOTL.

2. There are many areas you can research in SOTL. You can describe things as they are, look for associations and statistically significant relationships or report on an intervention.

3. A bonus tip (subjective!): Studies that do not require ethics approval, like (i) looking at the existing content, e.g. websites, textbooks, course material; (ii) secondary analysis of existing data or a (iii) meta-analysis might be a great place to start to save you time and effort of ethics applications.
Interested in more SOTL resources?

Check out these hand-picked resources on getting started with SOTL

Image credits: Freepik

Posted by Olga Kozar

I'm a 'long-term' Mq girl. I did my PhD here and taught on different courses, ranging from 1st year to PhD students. I now work in Learning and Teaching, which I love. I have 2 young kids and a dog, and I love meeting other Mq people, so give me a shout if you'd like to talk 'learning and teaching' or would like to brainstorm together.

One Comment

  1. […] You, too, can publish teaching-related papers, because SoTL is like carrots (Teche post) […]

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