SoTL Guidance for promotion

This is a beta phase document - please email any feedback to Kerry.Dobbins@warwick.ac.uk

Prepared by Kerry Dobbins (ADC)

This brief guidance document aims to illuminate how Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) activities may be explored and evidenced in any promotion application within the Research and Scholarship Area of Activity. It should be used in conjunction with the Academic Promotions Criteria (available for download from Academic Promotion).

Research and Scholarship

Applications for academic promotion are assessed on the basis of four Areas of Activity: Research and Scholarship; Teaching and Learning; Impact, Outreach and Engagement; and Collegiality, Leadership and Management. The focus of this guidance is the Research and Scholarship Area of Activity, which is described in the Academic Promotion Criteria as encompassing:

pedagogical and teaching related research, practice focused research and broader scholarship within and across disciplines.

SoTL may be the mechanism through which you are engaging in and with pedagogic and teaching-related research and therefore can provide sound evidence to support a promotion application[1].

SoTL definition

We can define SoTL as work that aims to enhance students’ experiences and outcomes in the HE setting. SoTL emphasises teaching as an evidence-informed and evidence-based activity. It encourages us to ask questions about the influence and effectiveness of our teaching and assessment practices on our students’ learning, and gain evidence to draw informed conclusions to act upon and share with others.

Enhancing students’ experiences

There are various facets of students’ experiences[2] that SoTL activities may focus and impact upon. These include induction; curriculum and assessment design; learning design; student engagement with course content and digital learning; student participation in learning activities; inclusive education; learning/academic support; student satisfaction rates.

Enhancing students’ outcomes

Aspects of students’ outcomes that SoTL activities may focus and impact upon include: average marks and pass rates; module completion rate; module pass rate; student retention rate; student progression; specific skill development.

Impact of SoTL activities

The framework below is a useful tool for considering the levels at which your SoTL work may have impact:

Figure 1: The 4M framework (Simmons, 2020)[3]

SoTL and the R&S Band Criteria

Band 2 Criteria

For colleagues engaged in teaching and supporting learning, pedagogy may also be viewed as your discipline, alongside your subject area expertise.

Examples of evidence for this band most relevant to SoTL activity include:

·Conducting individual or collaborative scholarly projects.

·Engagement in subject, professional, pedagogic or EDI-related research.

If we consider this evidence from a SoTL perspective, types of activity you might have been involved in that you could draw on include:

-Incorporating improvements into your practices based on your up-to-date knowledge of teaching or assessment techniques and evaluating the effects.

-Using your pedagogic knowledge base to effectively translate advances in your subject area into your teaching or assessment practices.

-Participating in projects that contribute to enhancing students’ experiences or outcomes with evidence of impact on your personal practices (micro level) as well as impact at meso, macro or mega levels if achieved.

Band 3 Criteria

Examples of evidence for this band most relevant to SoTL activity include:

·Engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning.

·Creation/utilisation of research to inform and change pedagogic practice.

For this band, engagement in SoTL means undertaking research or evidence-based inquiry into students’ experiences and/or outcomes and sharing your work to have impact upon the meso, macro, and potentially mega, levels. This work may be individual or collaborative. Engagement with SoTL may also be the mechanism through which you are creating or utilising research to inform and change pedagogic practice.

Table 1 contains examples of impact that your SoTL activity may have on practice or policy.

Table 1: Impact of SoTL activity

A central aspect of SoTL is the sharing of your work so that others may learn from and build upon your findings or insights. It is through this sharing that your SoTL activity can have impact beyond your own practices. There are various ways that you may share your SoTL work internally and externally to have impact on practice and policy at the various 4M levels.

Table 2: Methods for sharing SoTL work

Band 4 Criteria

Examples of evidence for this band most relevant to SoTL activity include:

·Evidence of research-based innovation in learning and teaching.

·Outputs, such as journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, working papers and possibly books.

Like Band 3, engagement in SoTL here means undertaking research into students’ experiences and/or outcomes; however, for Band 4, the sharing of your work will be focused on impacting upon the mega level (i.e., disciplinary or interdisciplinary levels, or national / international levels).

Band 4 also requires evidence of your ‘high-quality’ work making a ‘significant contribution’ to pedagogy. High quality SoTL work includes:

1.Grounding your research in relevant pedagogic scholarship to situate your study and develop appropriate and meaningful research questions.

2.Articulating the contribution of your work to the field of study on the pedagogical topic you are investigating. Your study may be making a contribution through, for example:

oAddressing a gap in existing scholarship on the topic.

oResearching the topic through a new lens or theoretical perspective.

oExploring overlooked or underexamined features.

oApplying new or novel research methodologies to the topic.

3.Generating new insights on the topic.

Outputs from your work, such as journal articles, conference papers, book chapters and working papers, may be the mechanism through which your SoTL research makes a significant contribution to pedagogy. A significant contribution may also be achieved through the external-facing methods for sharing highlighted in Table 2. Your high quality research, for example, may have been translated into professional or sector body guidelines.

A key point to note is that evidencing a significant contribution goes beyond simply producing an output. The questions below may help you to think about how to evidence the contribution of your work:

-Has your research had impact upon professional bodies, peer institutions, policy makers, or other such external agencies?

-How many and what types of groups or organisations have benefited from your research?

-How has your research facilitated knowledge generation and its transfer to external stakeholders or communities?