When I talk with faculty members about their potential SoTL projects, the issue of IRB approval always comes up, either through them asking if it’s needed or disclosing a fear of the process. My standard blanket answer is yes, you need IRB approval. However, you should always defer to the IRB board at your institution… Read more »
In the November SoTL Series blog post, I explained that SoTL research uses the methodology used by the discipline of the researcher. I will admit that this transfer of methodology from disciplinary work to SoTL work is often a smoother transition when the researcher comes from a social science background. Therefore, I would like to… Read more »
In the SoTL blog series thus far, we’ve been exploring what constitutes SoTL and sources of previously collected data. In this blog, I’d like to discuss another source of previously collected data for SoTL researchers: learning analytics. Broadly defined, learning analytics is the “collection and analysis of data generated during the learning process in order… Read more »
Undertaking a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project is much like undertaking disciplinary research. Like other forms of research, SoTL follows the broad steps of the scientific method. Applied to SoTL, these steps are as follows: Identify the research question Design the study Collect the data Analyze the data and draw conclusions Present and… Read more »
I am a huge advocate for multi-purposing, much like the Swiss army knife in the accompanying image. The same is true of my views on data. Collect it once and use it (at least) twice. Most data can be utilized to answer a number of questions, and multi-purposing saves effort on the part of both… Read more »
When a student asked, “How many sources do I need?” history Professor Leah Shopkow took the question seriously, transforming her teaching. In an article she wrote about this assignment transformation, Shopkow explains how she went from answering, “It depends,” to truly teaching her students what historians do when they write. Unaware of the forms writing… Read more »