Center for Teaching & Learning

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

Thank you to everyone who participated in the inaugural, campus-wide UVM SoTL Symposium on May 21, 2024. Faculty from across campus shared their findings and work-in-progress related to teaching and learning research conducted here at UVM.

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The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at UVM is a form of educational research that offers faculty members a way to systematically investigate and answer questions that emerge from their practice as course instructors. SoTL research can involve qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches as well as case study, quasi-experimental, and experimental research designs.

Why engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?

There are many reasons to pursue SoTL research, including:

• To find answers to questions about teaching practices that you currently use or would like to use
• To produce evidence about specific teaching practices and share it formally
• To enhance your disciplinary research with research on your teaching practice, or allowing those with very little research time in their workloads to engage in efficient forms of scholarship
• To engage with a community of scholars who are interested in improving their teaching practice

SoTL Research Group

Join us in Fall 2024

Please complete this form if you’re interested in becoming involved in this research group.
The CTL will facilitate a new faculty research group in the Fall of 2024, and we’re pleased to welcome a faculty associate and a graduate student on board who are dedicated to support SoTL research this semester. During the Fall and Spring of 2022 and 2023, faculty in the SoTL group worked together and developed strong collegial relationships. Several members worked together to write an NSF grant and other participants worked together on another SoTL study. Members of the community helped each other think through the literature review process and the IRB process, establishing rich long-term connections on campus around teaching and research.

SoTL research generally progresses through the following steps:

1. Identify a teaching and/or learning question or problem to address
2. Review related literature to refine research question
3. Design data collection procedures to answer research question
4. Obtain research approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB)
5. Collect data
6. Analyze data
7. Share, present, and/or publish research findings

Gaining Approval for a SoTL study through the UVM Institutional Review Board (IRB)

SoTL Resources