Sparking SoTL: Triggers and Stories from One Institution (original) (raw)

With the growing interest in educational research across post-secondary campuses, it is useful to identify the specific supports that best enable Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) initiatives. This paper documents a picture of SoTL interests and supports at one institution through survey and semi-structured collaborative interview data. Both the survey data (289 respondents) and three semi-structured group interviews (8 participants total) provide a picture of participants who have completed or are interested in completing a SoTL study; the events and experiences that triggered an interest in SoTL; and their perceptions of the importance of SoTL in their own teaching, student learning, in their department, and within the institution as a whole. Based on these two datasets, we propose four lenses that are defined in terms of SoTL triggers and which we name a Scholarship Window. We conclude with a number of recommendations as a way to build capacity for SoTL at the instituti...