Before you begin

Design a SoTL project at your own pace

This site walks you from a teaching question you have noticed to a project you could carry out and share. Work through it in order, or go straight to the stage you are in.

First, a short survey

Please complete this survey before you start. It opens in a new tab, and you can come back here when you are done.

Take the first survey

How this site works

The path has seven stages. Stages 3 to 5 include worksheets you can type into.
Your notes stay in this browser. Nothing you type here is sent to anyone. Use "Copy my notes" in stage 5 to paste them into a document of your own.
The library at the end of the menu collects readings, databases, measures, software, conferences, and journals. Treat it as a reference and come back when you reach a new step.

A note on paceStages 1 and 2 take about 30 minutes together. Stage 3 is the core of the site and is worth an unhurried hour. The process is not always linear, and returning to an earlier stage after your literature search is common.

Stage 1

What kind of educator are you?

SoTL begins with your own professional identity: how you teach, how you research, how you mentor, and how you show up in academic spaces.

Reflect

How does your personal background influence your teaching style or philosophy?

How do your values or lived experiences show up in your research?

What is one lesson you hope every mentee takes away from working with you?

What came to mind as you answered? How much of a scholarly teacher do you think you are?

The teacher-scholar model

The teacher-scholar model affirms that teaching and research are connected. It treats them as complementary and mutually reinforcing, and it recognizes teaching as a scholarly endeavor that calls for intentionality, critical reflection, and continuous improvement.

Faculty who work this way design learning experiences informed by current research and pedagogical theory, bring their scholarly expertise into the classroom, engage students in inquiry, and use what happens in their teaching to refine and expand their research. The model also reaches beyond the classroom, into public scholarship, community-based learning, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

At the University of Denver

At DU the teacher-scholar model is central to faculty identity. As an R1 institution with a strong emphasis on teaching, DU supports faculty in both teaching and scholarship. A teacher-scholar there trains the next generation of researchers, brings current knowledge into the classroom, and engages students in meaningful inquiry. Faculty who do not teach in traditional classrooms take part as well, by sharing research publicly, mentoring students, or refining their practice in dialogue with pedagogical frameworks.

An optional exercise: draw your chimera

Bennett and colleagues describe the SoTL academic identity as hybrid, even monstrous, in their article "Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics." Try drawing your academic identity as a composite creature that includes your disciplinary self, your SoTL self, and any other parts that matter. Then consider:

Is it easy or difficult to bring the parts of your academic identity together? Why?
In what directions do you want the creature to grow? What will you feed it, and what might you leave behind?
What broader contexts, at your institution or beyond, matter for understanding yourself as both a SoTL scholar and a disciplinary academic?

Stage 2

What SoTL is, and why people do it

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is a systematic, evidence-based approach to investigating student learning and teaching practices in higher education.

Faculty, sometimes in partnership with students, pose meaningful questions about learning, gather and analyze evidence, and share findings publicly. SoTL rests on the same principles as other scholarship: it is inquiry-driven, methodologically rigorous, peer-reviewed, and publicly shared. That process moves teaching from a private practice to scholarly work that is open to critique and refinement.

Scholarly teaching and SoTL

The two are closely related and form a continuum. Faculty move between them, at times focusing on being a scholarly teacher and at other times on producing scholarship about teaching and learning.

Scholarly teaching

Consuming, using, and applying scholarship about teaching, learning, and disciplinary knowledge
Consulting the literature on teaching in your field
Consulting other teachers in your field or your teaching and learning center
Assessing student success and using it for ongoing adjustments

Scholarship of teaching and learning

Producing scholarship about teaching and learning
Asking questions about student learning and conducting systematic inquiry to answer them
Making that research visible to a community of practice, locally or through peer-reviewed publication
Seeking critical review by others
Providing enough detail to make the work replicable

Summary slightly modified from the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University, SoTL vs. Scholarly Teaching.

Five principles of good practice

Peter Felten's widely cited framework, "Principles of Good Practice in SoTL," describes high-quality SoTL work as:

Inquiry focused on student learning
Grounded in context
Methodologically sound
Conducted in partnership with students
Appropriately public

Student partnership means students can be collaborators in the inquiry, and are more than the subjects of it.

Why do SoTL?

SoTL lets you examine your own teaching systematically, reflect on your methods, and improve students' learning experiences. Disciplines and institutions vary a great deal in how they value SoTL in tenure and promotion, so it is worth asking yourself early why you want to do this work.

Watch and read

Key characteristics of SoTL (video)
SoTL vs. scholarly teaching (video)
Making a Case for SoTL (video, Elon Center for Engaged Learning)
Why do SoTL? (Vanderbilt)
What is SoTL? (Elon)
SoTL at DU, including the PEOPLE framework behind the fellowship

Optional commentary articles

Bernstein (2013). How SoTL-active faculty members can be cosmopolitan assets to an institution. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 35-40.
Franks & Payakachat (2020). Positioning the scholarship of teaching and learning squarely on the center of the desk. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 84(9), 1169-1174.
Kreber (2013). Transformative potential of the scholarship of teaching. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 5-18.
Pecorino & Kincaid (2007). Why should I care about SoTL? The professional responsibilities of post-secondary educators. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 1-6.

Try itFind one peer-reviewed article in your discipline that studies a teaching or learning practice relevant to your classroom. The Teaching Journals Directory from Kennesaw State lets you browse by discipline or topic. What does the article explore, could you apply it in your context, and what questions does it raise for you?

Stage 3

Plan your project with IGNITE

IGNITE is a six-step guide: Identify, Generate, Narrate, Illustrate, Timeline, Evaluate. Each step is a question. Answer in your own words and revise as you go.

Each prompt has two worked examples you can open: one about teaching during the pandemic, and one about AI in the classroom. If you would like to send your answers to Kayoung, the same six steps are available as an online IGNITE form.

IIdentify what has been bugging you

What particular problem, challenge, issue, or need are you interested in studying?

Examples

My students are having a hard time taking classes during the pandemic.

I want to help my students navigate how to study in this new world of AI and ChatGPT.

Why are you interested in this particular topic?

Examples

I want to help students that are struggling.

I want to model good learning behavior. I want to provide good learning resources.

GGenerate keywords for a literature review

What does the field say about your problem? Have other studies looked at something similar?

Do you know if your topic has been addressed in other research studies? If yes, explain.

Examples

I know that there have been efforts made during the first year of the pandemic to help students. I know there is research on Zoom fatigue. But I do not know if there have been specific interventions provided to assist students.

There are many studies that show that ChatGPT can ace standardized tests. But I want to know if there are studies that looked at students using ChatGPT as a prompt to further their writing and studying skills. Can ChatGPT serve as a tutor or learning guide?

What key concepts would you like to explore in the literature?

Examples

Zoom fatigue, cognitive bandwidth, students of color disproportionately affected, trauma-informed teaching, metacognitive skills, executive function.

ChatGPT, artificial intelligence in the classroom, classroom technology, learning resources.

NNarrate what you want to do

Do you want to develop an intervention? Test a new assignment, exercise, or tool? Hold a focus group and gather reflections?

What do you want to achieve? What are the goals of your study?

Examples

1) I want to teach my students a few metacognitive skills during the semester. 2) I want to include trauma-informed exercises in the assignment. 3) I want to hear from my students what they think about this exercise.

1) I want to model learning behavior by including ChatGPT as an in-class writing and discussion activity. 2) I want to see if students can learn to use these programs as learning resources. 3) I want to hear my students' reflections on AI in the classroom.

What materials do you need to meet your goals?

Examples

1) A multi-part assignment for my students to complete. 2) Materials on cognitive flexibility and prioritizing skills. 3) A self-reflection in the last part of the assignment.

1) An in-class activity that intentionally uses ChatGPT as a discussion and writing prompt. 2) A rubric to compare students' writing before and after. 3) A self-reflection in the last part of the assignment.

IIllustrate your study with research questions

Who will be the participants in your study?

Examples

Students enrolled in the introductory psychology course at an HBCU.

Junior and senior students enrolled in major-specific courses.

What research questions are driving your study?

Examples

1) Can metacognitive skills training be implemented within a single college classroom? 2) Do trauma-informed exercises assist students of color in their academic performance? 3) Do students of color perceive these trainings as useful?

1) Can modeling be an effective strategy to help students learn to use ChatGPT as a learning resource? 2) Can AI be intentionally and effectively incorporated into the classroom without getting in the way of student learning?

TTimeline for your study

How many groups of comparison do you need to include?

Example

Baseline. Program 1: instruction. Program 2: instruction plus reflection.

Which tasks will you complete in each term?

Tasks to place: project planning, IRB, baseline, each program or intervention, data analysis, presentation, publication.

Example

Term 1: project planning and IRB. Term 2: baseline. Term 3: Program 1. Term 4: Program 2. Term 5: data analysis and presentation. Term 6: publication.

EEvaluate based on data

Will you collect quantitative data? If so, what, and how will you analyze it?

Example

Yes. Objective measures of academic performance, such as assignment, attendance, and exam grades. I will do statistical analyses to compare between groups.

Will you collect qualitative data? If so, what, and how will you analyze it?

Example

Yes. Individual reports taken from students' reflections on the exercises. I will do text analysis, retrieve themes, and calculate interrater reliability based on the thematic coding.

Stage 4

Sharpen the research design

This worksheet checks the alignment in your project: challenge, intervention, questions, hypotheses, and data should each follow from the one before.

Be as specific as you can. Terms such as "improving learning" or "help with understanding" are too general to design around. The running example is a course with long lab assignments and uneven final projects. Adapted from Scharff, L. (n.d.), Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, USAF Academy.

Identify challenges

What is going wrong that you want to fix, or what might you want to improve? What does the literature say on your topic?

Example

I want to fix the quality of analysis and writing on the final project, and the student and instructor fatigue caused by very long lab assignments that include both content and analysis questions.

Determine an intervention

What will you do to address the challenge? Are there interventions in the literature you might try or modify?

Example

I will redesign the lab assignments. The format and expectations of the analysis questions will be clearly explained, aligned with the final project, and repeated in every lab for two analysis questions. To shorten labs, students turn in only analysis questions and instructors grade only those. Answers to content questions are provided with the lab so students can check right away, and instructors give more formative feedback on analysis.

Identify research questions

What are you curious about? The effect of the intervention on the challenge, on your students, on the classroom climate?

Example

Does the redesign improve analysis in the final projects? Do students use the formative feedback? How do students feel about having the checkpoint answers?

Hypotheses

Turn your questions into predictions you can test with data. In a proposal, link each one to the literature so the logic is clear. Personal experience can be part of that logic, alongside the literature.

Example

The redesigned labs will improve final project analysis quality. The repeated, aligned format makes it likely that students will review formative feedback to improve later submissions. Students will perceive that immediate access to content answers improves their understanding and preparation.

Plan data collection

What data will you collect to test each hypothesis? The literature may suggest methods and quality measures.

Example

Quality of final projects before and after the redesign (rubric). Feedback forms on student use and perception of content answers and formative feedback. Student self-reflection on changes in analysis and writing from first to last lab. Student observations of the lab format through focus groups.

Methodology plan

Design

The research design you intend to use, and why it fits your questions.

Participants

Demographics of your population, sample size, and how the sample is selected.

Instruments

The data collection instruments you will use. The Measures list in the library is a place to look.

Data collection procedures and timeline

How data will be collected, how often, and who collects and secures it. For each research question, name at least two or three data sources and say when and how each is generated.

Analysis

How you will organize and analyze the data, aligned with the research questions above.

Example: matching data sources to questions

Main research question: What impact does peer tutoring have on students in Calculus I?

Sub-question	Data sources
Does regularly participating in peer tutoring significantly change students' Calculus I grades?	Two sources, such as peer tutoring records and Calculus I grades
Does participation in peer tutoring change students' attitudes toward calculus?	Three sources, such as student focus groups, the student reflection survey, and faculty interviews
Which aspect of peer tutoring do students find most beneficial?	Three sources, such as student focus groups, the student reflection survey, and peer tutoring records

The original worksheet shows this as a grid of five data sources (student focus groups, student reflection survey, peer tutoring records, Calculus I grades, faculty interviews). The pairings above are plausible readings of that grid.

Example: a project timeline

Task	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5+
Project planning and IRB	X
Data collection: baseline		X
Data collection: interventions 1 and 2			X	X
Data analysis, presentation, publication					X

Stage 5

Write a short research proposal

Do not feel overwhelmed. A proposal sounds serious, and it is very doable. If you completed stages 3 and 4, you already have a rough draft.

A research proposal is a blueprint of the research: a summarized preview. Think of a movie preview. It works when there is a story, intriguing characters, a glimpse of a conflict, and an interesting title. A good proposal should leave you and your readers excited, intrigued, and informed. You are presenting your research to an audience of fellow educators.

Aim for one to two pages, not counting references, which is usually four or five paragraphs. Follow this outline closely or elaborate on it.

Part	What goes in it
Title	A brief and meaningful title.
1. Introduction	The general topic, the main research question, why the question matters, and your hypotheses.
2. Preliminary literature review	Who has studied similar questions, and what did they find? What were the limitations? What open questions remain? This is the rationale for your study.
3. Methodology	Who the participants are, what materials you will use, what measures you will use (a survey, a focus group), and how you will analyze and interpret the data.
4. Predictions	What you expect to find, what it would mean, how it would fit into the literature, and the takeaway message.
5. Possible challenges	Difficulties and limitations, and how you propose to handle them. For example, if you teach only one section and cannot form control and intervention groups, you could use a pre-post design and collect a second dataset the next time you teach the course.
References	Cite the source of all factual material that is not your own. APA is preferred, and any consistent style that suits your field is fine.

This stage takes the most time and usually involves several rounds of revision. The goal is alignment between the problem and background, the research objectives, and the research design. A colleague, a mentor, or your teaching center can help by reading a draft.

Your notes so far

Copy everything you typed in stages 1, 3, and 4, then paste it into a document and start drafting.

Stage 6

Get ethics review before you collect data

If you plan to present or publish what you learn from your students, your project needs review by your institution's IRB or research ethics board.

Check locallyThe principles below apply widely. Forms, timelines, and training requirements differ by institution, so your own IRB office has the final word. Details marked "At DU" are specific to the University of Denver and were last checked in October 2026.

Do I need review?

IRB review covers research with human subjects, meaning a systematic investigation designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge.
Improving your own course for your own use generally does not need review.
"Exempt" does not mean you can skip the application. Only the IRB can decide that a study is exempt.
Apply before you collect data. An IRB cannot approve a project after it has started, and you may not be able to use data collected before approval.

Which review type?

SoTL projects usually go through exempt or expedited review, and almost never full board. A quick tip, though not a rule: if your data are anonymous, think exempt. If you collect anything that identifies a student, even initials, think expedited. "Expedited" is a review category and does not describe speed.

Tips for classroom research

Keep yourself out of the consent process. Ask a colleague to collect consent forms and hold them until final grades are posted, so you do not know who agreed. Analyze the data only after grades are in.
Student records. Having access to educational records as the instructor does not by default permit research use. In the U.S., FERPA generally requires the student's written authorization.
Write in plain language. Describe your study as you would to someone outside your field, in as much detail as you can.
Anonymous and confidential are different. Anonymous data can never be linked to a person. Coded data that can be linked back are confidential. Removing names is not enough if other details could identify a student.
Any change needs an amendment first, even a reworded survey question.

Storing your data

Use institution-maintained, password-protected storage.
Keep signed consent forms separate from the research data.
Destroy the key that links names to codes once you no longer need it.

At DU

Complete CITI human subjects training, register in IRBNet, and download fresh forms each time, since they are revised often.
The application asks you to allow 6 to 8 weeks for review to begin. Count back from the first day you need data.
Appendix M, on research in educational settings, is part of nearly every SoTL application.
Qualtrics may not be used to collect electronic signatures. It works for online consent without a signature.
Questions go to the IRB office at IRBAdmin@du.edu.

Stage 7

Go public with your work

Going public is what makes teaching inquiry scholarship. It is not the same as going to publish: a poster, a talk, or a workshop all count.

Sharing lets others learn from your work, including from what did not go as planned. A study that does not confirm its hypothesis is still a contribution, and fellows in our program often describe that realization as the turning point of their year.

Ways to share

On your campus

A poster session, a teaching center workshop, a department talk. At DU, fellows present at the annual SoTL Research Symposium.

At a conference

SoTL-focused and teaching-focused conferences welcome work in progress. See Conferences in the library.

In print

Cross-disciplinary SoTL journals, teaching journals in your discipline, and book series. See Journals in the library.

Getting ready to submit

Publishing Research on Teaching and Learning (Elon)
Publishing SoTL Work: Directions for the Future and Tips for the Present (The SoTL Advocate, Illinois State)
SoTL & Promotions and Tenure (Elon), on how this work counts in review

Place your project in the field

ISSOTL, the international society, has named five Grand Challenges for SoTL. They are shared questions that can help you locate your project. For another view of the whole process, see the Utrecht Roadmap for SoTL.

What next

Where to go from here

You have a project design. The next step depends on where you work.

At the University of Denver?

Interested in applying for SoTL Faculty Fellows? The program gives you a cohort, mentors, and a year of structure to carry out the project you just designed.

Apply to SFF About the program

At another institution?

Interested in starting a SoTL community? Our toolkit describes how the DU fellowship is built and what we would decide early if we were starting again.

For DU faculty: the program in brief

SoTL Faculty Fellows is a yearlong, cohorted fellowship at the University of Denver that guides instructional faculty through a SoTL project from question to public presentation. It began in 2022. Fellows come from across disciplines and work on their own projects alongside a cohort and the program director.

Year one: Scholarly Teacher

The entry point. Prepares fellows to carry out a SoTL project whatever their prior experience, through conferences on campus and a monthly Faculty Forum.

Year two: Advanced Practitioner

Fellows carry their work forward with director support, online modules, and consultations.

Beyond: Legacy Fellows

Returning alumni keep access to all program content and anchor the community for incoming cohorts.

The program year

All convenings are held on campus. Fellows produce a proposal, a mid-year review, a data report, and a public presentation.

When	Convening	Deliverable
May to July	Call for applications; fellows notified
August	Research in Teaching and Learning Conference	SoTL proposal (September)
Sept to May	SoTL Faculty Forum, monthly
October	SoTL Research Symposium	SoTL poster
December	SoTL Winter Conference	Mid-year review (January)
June	SoTL Data Summit	Data report (July)

Key dates for 2027-28

Date	Event
Aug 24-26, 2027	Research in Teaching and Learning Conference
Sept 24, 2027	SoTL proposal due
Oct 14, 2027	SoTL Research Symposium, 4 to 6 pm
Dec 7-8, 2027	SoTL Winter Conference
Jan 21, 2028	Mid-year SoTL review due
Jun 13-14, 2028	SoTL Data Summit
Jul 21, 2028	Data report due
Oct 12, 2028	SoTL Research Symposium

The SoTL Faculty Forum meets on Fridays from 12 to 1:30 pm: Oct 1 and Nov 5, 2027, then Feb 4, Mar 3, Apr 7, and May 5, 2028.

Our model: PEOPLE

The fellowship is built on PEOPLE, a SoTL community of care model centered on mutual care, empathy, practitioner well-being, and peer support.

Public invitation to the campus community
Engaged and supportive peers and mentors
Ongoing center leadership and guidance
Purposeful conversations
Learning community
Engagement in public dissemination

Questions, or want to talk through an idea?

Contact Kayoung Kim, Director of SoTL and Faculty Learning Communities, Office of Teaching and Learning, at kayoung.kim@du.edu. Completing the IGNITE form beforehand makes a consultation more useful. Happy SoTLing!

Toolkit for other institutions

Starting a SoTL community

A working description of how the SoTL Faculty Fellows program at DU is built, written for colleagues starting SoTL programming at their own institutions.

The program began in 2022 with a single cohort of eight faculty. Fifty-two people have taken part since then as fellows, peer mentors, or program directors, across five cohorts and fourteen departments and units, and 43 projects have been shared at the Symposium. Details describe the program as of 2026-27.

The premiseThe program is designed to move faculty toward adopting SoTL scholar as a professional identity, in addition to producing completed projects. That framing shapes nearly every structural choice below.

1. Decide the model

Before the tracks, the calendar, or the course shell, a program needs a claim about what it is for. A SoTL program can be organized around methods, around a curriculum, or around a community, and each produces a different program. A methods-centered one schedules instruction and measures competence. A community-centered one schedules convenings and measures belonging alongside capability.

Our model is PEOPLE, a sustainable SoTL community of care model centered on mutual care, empathy, practitioner well-being, and peer support. It is offered as an example of a claim worth making explicit, and your own should follow from your faculty and context.

P	Public invitation to the campus community. The call goes to the whole campus.
E	Engaged and supportive peers and mentors. Fellows work alongside a cohort and returning alumni mentors.
O	Ongoing center leadership and guidance. The center stays present across the whole year.
P	Purposeful conversations. Convenings are structured around inquiry and response.
L	Learning community. The group is the unit of the program.
E	Engagement in public dissemination. The year ends in public presentation, as part of the work.

Naming the model makes the hard calls easier. When the budget is cut, a community-centered program knows to protect the convenings and thin the content. A program without a stated model tends to default to whatever is easiest to schedule, which is usually content delivery.

2. Program architecture

We run two tracks in sequence, plus a returning alumni group: Scholarly Teacher (year one), Advanced Practitioner (year two), and Legacy Fellows. This is difficult to retrofit once you have a cohort.

The program first offered the two tracks as a choice at application. Running them as a sequence has held up better, because the shared year-one experience is where the cohort forms. Sequencing also creates the alumni pipeline: Legacy Fellows are the reason a fifth-year cohort has people in the room who have already had a study not work and can say so out loud.

If you are designing this nowDecide early whether your tracks are levels or lanes. Levels give you an alumni structure and a progression story for your provost. Lanes give you flexibility and a lower barrier for experienced faculty. Both are defensible. Switching later means telling an existing cohort their track has been redefined.

3. The program year, and what to call it

The year is built around three on-campus conferences and a monthly forum, ending in a public Symposium. The schedule and deliverables are in the table under "What next."

We renamed our convenings in year five so that fellows can record the work accurately on a CV or annual report.

Previously called	Now called	How to list it
Fall retreat	Research in Teaching and Learning Conference	A conference presentation. The culminating poster is listed under this name.
Winter retreat	SoTL Winter Conference	A conference presentation or scholarly participation.
Summer retreat	SoTL Data Summit	A conference presentation of data and findings.
Monthly FLC meetings	SoTL Faculty Forum	An invited or guest presentation when presenting; scholarly service otherwise.

The naming change costs nothing and gives faculty a defensible line on a CV. Every convening is held on campus, with no hotel or travel line. That removes the largest budget item and the participation barrier that comes with overnight stays, so fellows with caregiving obligations, adjunct appointments, or commutes can take part.

4. Scaffold the project

Faculty often arrive with a teaching problem clearly in view and the research design still ahead of them. A named step tool gives the cohort a shared vocabulary and makes the path visible.

Hopscotch 4-SoTL (Kennesaw State University, CETL). An interactive web tool with nine steps for designing an empirical SoTL project. It states plainly that the process is not always linear.
IGNITE Your SoTL (University of Denver, OTL). The six-step guide in stage 3 of this site, used as a one-page handout and an online form.

The step count matters less than whether a facilitator can hold the whole tool in mind during a session and a fellow can find their own position on it. If you build your own, write each step as a question.

5. Course shell structure

The program runs on a Canvas course shell organized by track. Year-one content is delivered at the convenings, and the shell holds the calendar, session materials, worksheets, and deliverable templates. Online modules belong to the Advanced Practitioner track: Why Do We SoTL, Inclusive and Accessible Assessment, Going Public, Quantitative Analysis, Qualitative Analysis, and Situating SoTL in Your Career. Legacy Fellows can see all of it, which helps them mentor the current cohort.

6. Logic model and evidence

A logic model documents the program's contribution in terms the institution already uses.

Stage	What it includes
Inputs	Director time, on-campus conference budget, peer mentors, course shell
Activities	Three annual conferences, monthly Faculty Forum, consultations, online modules
Outputs	Completed projects, Symposium posters, publications and presentations, cohort size served
Short-term outcomes	SoTL scholar identity, methodological competence, community connection, faculty well-being
Long-term outcomes	Course-level student outcomes, faculty retention, promotion and tenure, institutional SoTL culture

Evidenced from your own data

Growth in SoTL scholar identity
Growth in well-being and community connection
Self-reported methodological competence
Participation, completion, and going-public rates

Requires institutional research

Faculty retention and promotion rates against a matched comparison group
Course-level student outcomes, including DFW rates and grade distributions

Start this in year oneThe second column needs a data request to Institutional Research and a matched comparison group, which means deciding in year one who your comparison group is. Build the participant survey and open that conversation before your first cohort arrives.

7. Five things to decide at the beginning

Name the convenings for what they are. Doing it at the start saves later cohorts from re-describing work they have already listed.
Decide what "going public" means before recruiting. A poster at an internal symposium, a conference presentation, and a peer-reviewed article are very different commitments.
Build the assessment before the first cohort. A baseline you did not collect in year one is not available in year three.
Protect the community as well as the curriculum. SoTL methods are well documented. A group of colleagues who will look at an unfinished project without judgment has to be built by the center.
Expect the failure conversation to be the turning point. Across our cohorts, reframing failure has been the most transformative element of the fellowship. Design for that conversation deliberately.

Talk it through

Session slides, participant worksheets, and the course shell structure can be shared on request. If you are building a program, a conversation is usually a better use of an hour than any document. Contact Kayoung Kim at kayoung.kim@du.edu. More on SoTL at DU and the PEOPLE framework.

Library

Readings and guiding frameworks

Start with a guide

The SoTL guide from Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching, by Nancy Chick, with a step-by-step tutorial on designing a project
Asking Inquiry Questions and SoTL Inquiry Methods from Elon's Center for Engaged Learning
The SoTL Lit Review, The SoTL Librarian by Nancy L. Chick

The literature review

Two chapters in Nancy Chick's SoTL in Action: Illuminating Critical Moments of Practice:

Gary Poole, "Using Intuition, Anecdote, and Observation: Rich Sources of SoTL Projects"
Margy MacMillan, "The SoTL Literature Review: Exploring New Territory"

SoTL in your discipline: signature pedagogies

Gurung, Chick, & Haynie (Eds.) (2009). Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind. Stylus.
Chick, Haynie, & Gurung (Eds.) (2012). Exploring More Signature Pedagogies. Stylus.

Learning science and taxonomies

Krathwohl (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218.
Lovett, Bridges, DiPietro, Ambrose, & Norman (2023). How Learning Works: Eight Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Wiley.

Threshold concepts

Meyer & Land (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49, 373-388.

Library

Where to search

ERIC. The U.S. Department of Education index of education research. Free to search. The "peer reviewed only" filter is a good first step.
Google Scholar. Helpful for "cited by" searching once you have one good article.
SoTL Commons Conference archive. Presentation materials from 2007 to the present.
Teaching Journals Directory from Kennesaw State's CETL. Searchable by discipline and topic.
Support for SoTL by Discipline from Illinois State University.
Finding SoTL Research from Elon.
DU faculty: the DU Libraries Education guide links to ERIC, PsycINFO, Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, and Sage education journals, and lists the subject librarian.

Search tips

SoTL work is indexed under many labels. Try "scholarship of teaching and learning", "pedagogical research", "discipline-based education research", or your discipline plus "education" (for example, "chemistry education"). The University of Waterloo's Keywords for SoTL guide helps when a first search comes up thin.

Library

Measures

Validated instruments save time and make your findings easier to compare with published work. Before you use one, check its permissions and scoring instructions, and cite the original source.

Motivation and self-regulation. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) manual (Pintrich et al., 1991), available through ERIC, and the Self-Determination Theory questionnaires.
Rubrics for student work. The AAC&U VALUE rubrics cover outcomes such as critical thinking, written communication, and intercultural knowledge.
Student engagement. The NSSE survey instruments.
Online and blended courses. The Community of Inquiry survey.
What happens in class. The COPUS classroom observation protocol and the Teaching Practices Inventory.
STEM concept inventories and attitude surveys. PhysPort lists more than 100 research-based assessments.
Used by our fellows. The STARS questionnaire (statistics anxiety) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980; empathy).

Library

Software

Free and open source

Zotero. Reference manager.
JASP and jamovi. Point-and-click statistics.
R and RStudio. Statistics and graphics through code.
Taguette. A simple tool for tagging and coding qualitative data such as reflections or interview transcripts.

Often licensed by institutions

Qualtrics (surveys), NVivo (qualitative analysis), SPSS and JMP (statistics), Tableau (visualization), and REDCap (secure data collection). Check with your IT office. DU faculty can find download links on DU IT's Research & Analysis Resources for Faculty.

Student dataBefore you put student work or responses into any tool, check that it matches what your IRB protocol says about where data are stored.

Library

Conferences

Dates were checked in October 2026. Please confirm on each conference site before you plan travel.

When	Conference	Where
Oct 22-24, 2026	Symposium for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning	Banff, Alberta
Oct 28-31, 2026	ISSOTL26	Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Nov 18-21, 2026	POD Network Conference	Baltimore, Maryland
Nov 19-21, 2026	Lilly Conference	Oxford, Ohio
Jan 7-9, 2027	Lilly Conference	San Diego, California
Feb 3-5, 2027	Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy	Blacksburg, Virginia
Mar 3-5, 2027	SoTL Commons Conference	Savannah, Georgia
Apr 2, 2027	Midwest Conference on SoTL	South Bend, Indiana
May 17-19, 2027	Lilly Conference	Austin, Texas
Jun 8-11, 2027	EuroSoTL	London, United Kingdom
Jun 11-13, 2027	Teaching Professor Conference (proposals due Dec 28, 2026)	Atlanta, Georgia
Jun 28-30, 2027	STLHE Annual Conference	Halifax, Nova Scotia
Oct 18-21, 2027	EDUCAUSE Annual Conference	Orlando, Florida, and online

Annual events to watch for

SoTL Summit (Kennesaw State). Fully virtual, each September.
USAFA SoTL Forum. A day-long conference in Colorado Springs with no cost to participate. Attendance is by mailing-list invitation and requires security clearance in advance.
ISSOTL. One of the largest international SoTL groups, with annual conferences around the world.

Library

Journals and presses

Journal details change, so check each journal's current scope and author guidelines before you submit.

Journals that publish SoTL across disciplines

Teaching & Learning Inquiry. The ISSOTL journal. Open access, and a good place to browse if you are new to SoTL writing.
Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Open access, from STLHE.
International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Open access, from Georgia Southern University.
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. From Indiana University. Free to read online.
International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Open access, from ISETL.
College Teaching. Cross-disciplinary, with shorter article formats alongside full studies.
Teaching in Higher Education. International, with a critical and theoretical bent.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. An APA journal that welcomes work beyond psychology classrooms.
To Improve the Academy. Open access, from the POD Network. A fit for work on faculty development and programs.

Find a journal in your discipline

Teaching Journals Directory (Kennesaw State)
Support for SoTL by Discipline (Illinois State)
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Publish (University of Colorado Boulder Libraries)

Thinking about a book?

West Virginia University Press publishes the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series. Indiana University Press publishes a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning series. Stylus Publishing, which published many prominent SoTL books, became part of Routledge in 2023.