PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Inspired by Ernest Boyer’s influential work Scholarship Reconsidered, this virtual learning series during the 2024-2025 academic year helped faculty and staff from across the 14 colleges of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest explore and engage with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Participants learned how to conceptualize, develop, and disseminate SoTL projects that enhance their pedagogical practices, promote student learning, and contribute to academic discourse about higher education. By the end of the series, participants acquired the tools to design and complete a SoTL project ready for future presentation or publication.
As part of the program application, participants were asked to identify an area of interest for a SoTL project they plan to develop through the series. SoTL projects aim to enhance our understanding of or improve student learning experiences, broadly defined. SoTL inquiries take place in the classroom, in the lab, during office hours, in study groups, in the library, and in the many other contexts that make up students’ experiences of college learning. SoTL projects are conducted by faculty, student-facing staff, and even students-as-partners, and they invite (but don’t require) collaboration.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Participants:
- applied Boyer’s concept of scholarship to implement scholarly practices in their pedagogical work.
- acquired the tools to design, conduct, and disseminate SoTL projects.
- learned how to prepare a scholarly piece for submission to academic journals or conferences.
DELIVERY OPTIONS
This virtual learning series was made up of three modules, each of which included:
- one synchronous virtual meeting,
- short asynchronous components (e.g., brief readings, short written assignments, project milestones), and
- optional office hours with the program facilitator.
A brief overview is below:
INCENTIVIZING ACM FACULTY AND STAFF PARTICIPATION
ACM was fortunate to draw on support from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to underwrite the full cost of this programming. Participation was limited to 50 faculty and staff members at ACM colleges. All participants received a copy of SoTL in Action: Illuminating Critical Moments of Practice. Participants who completed the full programmatic series and attended all sessions received a stipend of $400.
PROGRAM LEAD
Dr. Nancy Chick is a SoTL scholar, scholarly teacher, and faculty developer at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters on the results of SoTL projects and on the field of SoTL, and her book The SoTL Guide: An Introduction to Doing and Understanding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, co-written with Peter Felten and Katarina Mårtensson, will be published in early 2025. Nancy also has an extensive editing background in both journals and books, including serving as the founding co-editor of Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the journal of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL).
