The missing piece: Connecting SoTL and student learning

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

Principles of good practice in SoTL

For the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to be understood as significant intellectual work in the academy, SoTL practitioners need to identify shared principles of good practice. While honoring the diversity of SoTL in its many forms across the globe, such principles can serve as a heuristic for assessing work in our field. These principles include (1) inquiry into student learning, (2) grounded in context, (3) methodologically sound, (4) conducted in partnership with students, and (5) appropriately public. Taken together, these five principles can be guideposts for developing and refining individual SoTL inquiries and larger SoTL initiatives. These principles also can clarify and demystify SoTL to those on our campuses who evaluate our work, helping us to make the case for institutional resources and support for SoTL. Even more importantly, these principles articulate a vision of a scholarship that enhances, perhaps even transforms, teaching and learning in higher education

Partnering with Students

Research demonstrates the importance of student engagement in learning. Faculty and colleges encourage that in diverse ways, including everything from undergraduate research to writing-intensive and community-based courses. What happens when go further, inviting students to join us in pedagogical planning and in research into how undergraduates learn? This interactive session will explore practical questions about and approaches to student-faculty partnerships in teaching and learning

Reflecting on Reflecting: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a Tool to Evaluate Contemplative Pedagogies

Although interest in contemplative pedagogies has grown considerably in higher education, faculty have relatively few resources available to help them make evidence-based choices about the use of different contemplative pedagogies in particular disciplinary or course contexts. We propose adapting a framework from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to serve as a heuristic for assessment of the design and implementation of these practices. After outlining this framework, we provide concrete examples from undergraduate courses to explore how a SoTL-informed design, implementation, and assessment process could be applied to the utilization of contemplative pedagogies. The examples suggest that there are many ways in which practices can be incorporated in support of deepening student learning and creating transformative learning opportunities for our students. We conclude with reflections on the potential and the limitations of this approach