SoTL in Canada: Resources and Invitation to Engage

This page is the information Dr Andrea Webb has generously provided when we interviewed her for our Learning Teaching and Scholarship Podcast. Listen in to hear Andrea answer my questions about SoTL in Canada, the history off SoTL, and what is next in the field.

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Resources Provided by Dr Andrea Webb

Associate Professor of Teaching & Area Coordinator (Social Studies), Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy

The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) – https://www.stlhe.ca/ is the Canadian national organization to enhance teaching and learning in higher education.

STLHE hosts a conference each June. This year is the 40th anniversary of the conference, to be hosted in Ottawa. https://www.stlhe.ca/conferences/2022-stlhe-annual-conference/

SoTL Canada – https://sotlcanada.stlhe.ca/.

SoTL Canada is a constituency of STLHE that has at its core the goal of improving student learning. This is achieved through scholarly inquiry about learning, about teaching, and about how to best make public the resulting findings. SoTL Canada provides a targeted opportunity for scholars to form a community to share findings and challenges, engage in opportunities for broader dissemination of SoTL work, and consider ways to catalyze initiatives at the institutional, regional, national, and international levels.

SoTL Canada is interested in connecting SoTL folks (SoTL curious, novice, and experienced) to chat about many topics. We host a month event as part of our SoTL Roadshow where we invite people to come and learn about an aspect of SoTL – getting started in SoTL, ethics, publication, etc.

Possible ways to Engage

Through the SoTL community in Canada, we have many ways to disseminate. Including, STLLE conference, CJSoTL / CELT / etc.

The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL) https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cjsotl_rcacea/  is the official, trans-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, electronic publication of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. CJSoTL/RCACEA seeks to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning in Canadian post-secondary institutions. It therefore provides an avenue for a wide range of educators, including faculty members, administrators, academic librarians, educational developers, learning resource specialists, and graduate students, to discuss ways of enhancing student learning experiences through systematic inquiry into teaching and learning in all disciplines. We invite submissions, in either English or French, from anyone, including international colleagues, interested in discussing teaching and learning issues that are relevant to different types of institutions in the Canadian context.

Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching (CELT) publishes peer-reviewed scholarly and practice-based articles associated with the annual conference of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE).  The intent is to challenge conference presenters to convert the essence of their peer-reviewed sessions into essay form for a wide readership interested in teaching improvement practices in higher education. CELT is generously hosted by Open Journal Systems at the University of Windsor.

Transformative Dialogues (TD) – https://journals.kpu.ca/index.php/td/index  – Transformative Dialogues (TD) is a forum for conversations intended to foster the improvement of teaching and learning in post-secondary education. TD facilitates the multi-disciplinary intellectual debate and inquiry, exchange of ideas, actions, and results of innovative and professional practice in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. These conversations are intended to span a wide range of reflections on the processes of teaching and learning ranging from the scholarly to scholarship. The international dialogues are focused on improving faculty and, therefore, student learning, and critical thought processes in their current and future lifelong learning.

Some Resources to help with your own SoTL

Webb (2020) Riding the fourth wave – History of SoTL (through Open Athens)- https://www-igi–global-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/gateway/chapter/full-text-pdf/247679  

Webb & Welsh (2019) Phenomenology as a methodology for SoTL – https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/article/view/57538

Webb (2015) Research interviews in SoTL – TD.8.1.9_Webb_Research_Interviews.pdf (kpu.ca)

Webb (2019) Constraints to engaging in SoTL – https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cjsotl_rcacea/article/view/8173

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