Session 2: Getting started with SoTL
Introduction
This session provides you with strategies and tools for getting started with Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
The session starts by highlighting the motivation for conducting SoTL. You will learn about the advantages of a collaborative SoTL inquiry involving peers and students.
Mentoring is an important professional development activity in SoTL practice that can have a positive influence on those involved in a mentoring relationship. You will learn how institutional centres of SoTL provide funding, training, infrastructure for setting up mentor–mentee relationships and for stimulating the development of communities of practice. Communities of practice are another source of mentoring and co-mentoring to support SoTL practice.
You will learn about learning analytics and how learning analytics can guide the design of a SoTL inquiry. Learning analytics is the collection and analysis of usage data associated with student learning and can provide an evidence base for reflective practice in SoTL.
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
- discuss the benefits of conducting collaborative SoTL
- describe the role of mentoring in supporting SoTL
- explain how SoTL is supported by communities
- understand how communities of practice can provide co-mentoring for SoTL
- describe how learning analytics can be employed in SoTL
- discuss the ethical considerations of using learning analytics in SoTL.