On Episode 616, I welcome Nancy Chick, Executive Director of Teaching, Learning and Scholarship at Texas Women's University; Katarina Mårtensson, Professor of Higher Education and academic developer at Lund University; and Peter Felten, Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning at Elon University, to Teaching in Higher Ed. We explore how three scholars from different institutions and countries collaboratively reimagined the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) through their new book, The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Our conversation centers on the importance of meaningful, consequential questions in SOTL, the value of focusing on humans and context over rigid methods, and the generative power of collaborative scholarship. We also share practical advice for newcomers to SOTL, tips for literature reviews, overlooked forms of evidence like student annotations and peer conversations, and reflections on fostering curiosity and collaboration.

Resources from the episode:

• The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, by Nancy L. Chick, Peter Felten, and Katarina Mårtensson
• Human Synergistics
• Dan Bernstein, Nancy Chick, Pat Hutchings, and Gary Poole Share Strategies for “Going Public” with SoTL
• Book Resources (Including a Reading Guide)
• I Lost My Job, by Robin DeRosa
• Harold Jarche’s PKM Posts
• A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education
• Drawing Digital: The Complete Guide for Learning to Draw & Paint on Your iPad, by Lisa Bardot
• The Illustrator's Guide to Procreate: How to Make Digital Art on Your iPad, by Ruth Burrows
• The Correspondent: A Novel, by Virginia Evans
• The Academic Imperfectionist
• Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks, by Janice M. McCabe
• Podcast Day: My Class Setup for Informative Speeches by TatianaTeaches on YouTube
• Poll Everywhere

Episode topics:

• Curiosity as the Spark for SOTL Inquiry
• Recognizing the Gap Between Assumptions and Reality in Teaching
• Individual Differences in Student Learning Preferences
• Contextualizing SOTL: Importance of Institutional and Disciplinary Context
• Collaborative Scholarship Across Diverse Educational Contexts
• What Makes a SOTL Question Meaningful
• Starting Small: Practical Entry Points into SOTL
• Underused Forms of Evidence in Studying Student Learning

Discussion questions:

1. The episode highlights the importance of context in SOTL work and collaborative scholarship. In what ways did the international and interdisciplinary nature of the authors' collaboration enrich their project?
2. The podcast guests discussed characteristics of meaningful SOTL questions, including their importance, complexity, and potential to generate further questions. How do you decide whether a teaching and learning question is meaningful enough to pursue?
3. For those new to SOTL, the authors recommend starting with curiosity and focusing on what’s right in front of you. What might be some actionable first steps for novice SOTL practitioners in your context?
4. The guests highlighted types of evidence often overlooked in SOTL, such as student annotations, peer conversations, and meta-reflections on AI interactions. How might collecting such evidence change the insights you gain about student learning?

Quotable Words

As written by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants:

The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world

Next Week’s Episode

On the upcoming episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, Teddy Svoronos discusses how today’s agentic AI changes what and how we teach.

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Disclosures

Affiliate income disclosure: Books that are recommended on the podcast link to the Teaching in Higher Ed bookstore on Bookshop.org. All affiliate income gets donated to the LibroMobile Arts Cooperative (LMAC), established in 2016 by Sara Rafael Garcia.”

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