The P3 Collaboratory is pleased to continue “Teaching Tuesdays,” our ongoing series on pedagogy in higher ed and on the RU-N campus. Our thanks to Dr. Consuella Askew (Dana Library) and Dena Novak (Teaching and Learning with Technology) for their assistance with this week’s entry.
While faculty expect to develop familiarity with library resources in their field, most faculty are less clear how to navigate library resources and research services in teaching. Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a vastly interdisciplinary field that aims to inform and improve how we teach and how we understand our students’ learning.
Actively navigating the world of SoTL can seem overwhelming and most faculty start with the familiar journals and publications that describe, synthesize, or editorialize recent findings in the field. These outlets are a great way to discover recent publications in the field, determine the areas of SoTL that most interest you, and connect with the broader SoTL literature. For example:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Note: Some Chronicle content is available for free on the web, but should you hit a paywall, use the library’s subscription access.
Harvard Business Publishing: Education
See also: Inspiring Minds from Harvard Business Publishing
For faculty members seeking a deeper dive into SoTL, familiarity with peer-reviewed journals is key. Among the many outlets that publish original SoTL research, several journals stand out as worthwhile starting points:
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Open access flagship publication for the SoTL field.
International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Journal of Faculty Development
Contains SoTL alongside topical issues in the world of higher ed.
Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability
Focuses on Universal Design for Learning strategies; associated with the Association on Higher Education and Disability.
Teachers College Record (see "Higher Ed" section)
Of special relevance at the moment are SoTL journals and web-based publications that focus on online-, remote-, or distance-learning. Importantly, this is *not* a new subfield of SoTL; on the contrary, educational research on remote teaching/learning has existed since the first correspondence-based courses! Respected peer-reviewed publications in this vein include:
Open access journal; the result of a 2015 merger between the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, or JOLT, and the Online Teaching Consortium.
Focuses on issues of educational technology. Also check out the Educause Center for Analysis and Research which publishes incredibly useful annual reports.
Further populating the SoTL landscape are many subscription-based newsletters, webinar series, podcasts, and informal or community-based resources. We’ve previously written about some of these resources, but here are others in this category worth knowing:
The Teaching Professor Newsletter
Subscription access provided by Rutgers – New Brunswick
Teaching Newsletter from Chronicle of Higher Ed
You must first create a FREE account, then select “Teaching” from various newsletters in the “my account” settings.
An informal weekly conversation about teaching with members of Rutgers community, particularly the School of Arts & Sciences, Rutgers – New Brunswick. Part of the broader SAS Office of Undergraduate Education “Teaching and Learning” programming.
Learning how to navigate the world of SoTL can be the first step towards developing (or fine-tuning) an evidence-based teaching philosophy, as it allows you to gauge the field’s contours, schools of thought, and methodologies while contemplating your institutional positionality and pedagogical instincts. Taking an active approach towards SoTL empowers faculty and instructional staff to seek out the data they are most interested in. Finally, harnessing the power of SoTL allows faculty to engage with the work of SoTL directly, either by improving/expanding the measurement of student learning outcomes in your courses, or by conducting original research in this important and inclusive field of study.
For further exploration, Dr. Consuella Askew, Associate University Library - Newark, Director of the John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University, has compiled an annotated bibliography of resources for effective online pedagogy.
Additionally, Rutgers - New Brunswick Librarian Leslin Charles has put together an Education Research Guide. She is also available for faculty consultations.
Brought to you by the P3 Collaboratory for Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Publicly-Engaged Scholarship at Rutgers University-Newark
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