Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at UTM: Guidelines for Working with Educational Developers

The educational development team at the RGASC supports teaching and learning at UTM. They work directly with instructors across the campus in their development of pedagogical practices. At the classroom level, instructors can support student learning by taking a scholarly approach to better understanding how their teaching practices can help or hinder learning. This kind of pedagogical research, also called the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), can be used to improve learner experiences and better align classroom teaching practices. SoTL research can also be shared with fellow teaching and learning communities outside of classrooms and institutions. Educational developers can support these efforts by helping instructors develop the necessary research knowledge, skills, and agency to engage in these forms of scholarship that may be new to them or outside the scope of their discipline. Below is a guide outlining some milestones along an instructor’s SoTL research journey, as well as the support that educational developers can/cannot provide to instructors.

If you would like to meet with an educational developer to discuss your SoTL research, please email eddev.utm@utoronto.ca.

SoTL Research Journey Milestones	Educational Developers Can	Educational Developers Cannot
Literature Review for SoTL	Provide resources (e.g., journal articles, journals, SoTL database repositories) as starting points for SoTL inquiry Connect instructors to librarians for literature support Ask questions and provide considerations on literature review drafts	Write or re-write literature reviews Conduct systematic literature searches for instructors Train student research assistants on how to do SoTL literature reviews
Developing SoTL Research Questions	Provide questions for instructors to reflect on with respect to their teaching and classroom observations to generate problem statements as areas of further inquiry Provide support with the refinement process of generating SoTL research questions	Write SoTL research questions for instructors Cannot propose SoTL research projects for instructors.
Navigating Research Ethics for SoTL	Provide resources for instructors to review the best practices of doing SoTL research with their students Connect instructors with Research Ethics administrators for further ethics consultation on their SoTL project Ask questions and provide considerations on SoTL research ethics protocols	Complete and submit research ethics protocols for instructors’ SoTL projects Train Research Assistants on the SoTL research ethics
Data Collection and Research Design	Provide feedback on the instrument development process for data collection tools (surveys, interview and focus group protocols) Provide guidance on different research designs and research paradigms common in SoTL research that may not be known in instructor’s discipline	Develop the data collection tools for the instructor Conduct data collection (administer and collect survey data, run focus groups, and interviews) Be the sole decision maker for the research design and data collection process Train Research Assistants in data collection and SoTL research design
Data Analysis	Provide resources on data analysis methods (Quantitative, Qualitative, Mixed Methods Research)	Analyze data for the instructor Train Research Assistants to analyze data
Writing/Reporting	Provide questions and considerations on journal article drafts Provide resources that may assist the instructor with their writing	Write or re-write any part of an instructor’s articles of SoTL research Submit journal articles, popular press, or conference submissions on behalf of instructors Copy-edit/format journal articles, manuscripts, book chapters etc. Submit conference proposals on behalf of the instructor’s SoTL projects