This seminar series aims to update HKMU academics on the latest trends in research on SoTL, to promote the pursuit of SoTL in the University and the enhancement of the quality of our teaching and learning through relevant research. In the seminar series, the keynote speakers will provide useful information and stimulate reflection on SoTL.
Date: 21 May 2024 (Tuesday)
Time: 11: 00 am – 12:00 nn
Topic: “Going Public” with Your SoTL: For Whom & Why?
Abstract: In this keynote, Nancy Chick will look back to SoTL's origins to revisit its requirement of “going public.” Early SoTL texts describe plenty of reasons for this move that emphasizes the “S” for scholarship and sets SoTL apart from scholarly teaching. This part of SoTL has been widely accepted for over 30 years now as SoTL has settled into the traditional academic space of primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, conference presentations, and the occasional book. Recent years have seen the expansion of this space to welcome a few SoTL-focused blogs and podcasts, as well as some supporting appearances in social media. However, in this traditional academic space—even with these digital extensions—the audiences remain largely the same. Dr Chick will consider how we are limiting SoTL's potential when we imagine fellow academics and teachers as the outer limit of SoTL's reach and impact. Who else can SoTL be for, and why? These are the questions at the heart of this keynote.
Please click the following Registration button to register for Seminar 1.
Nancy Chick is a SoTL scholar, scholarly teacher, and faculty developer. In 2011, she left full-time faculty work as an English professor to focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and faculty development first at Vanderbilt University, then the University of Calgary, and now 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 has an extensive editing background in both journals and books. She is currently writing (with Peter Felten and Katarina Mårtensson) The SoTL Guide: An Introduction to Doing and Understanding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which will be published in early 2025. From 2019-22, she served on the ISSOTL presidential team and (with Chng Huang Hoon) as ISSOTL co-president during 2020-21—at the height of the pandemic—and is currently ISSOTL’s inaugural Historian. She was presented with an ISSOTL Distinguished Service Award in 2017.
Date: 30 May 2024 (Thursday)
Time: 11: 00 am – 12:00 nn
Topic: Beyond What Works: Asking New Questions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Abstract: In this interactive talk, Dr Cruz will provide participants with a guided overview of recent research, highlighting how scholars have expanded, challenged, and re-imagined the foundational research question(s) that characterize the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
Recent syntheses of SoTL work have indicated the majority of published studies still follow the original “what works” formula, first articulated by Pat Hutchings in 2009 (Manarin et al, 2021; Pechinka, 2020; Yeo et al, 2023). In a typical “what works” study, an instructor identifies a classroom problem, proposes a solution, and implements an assessment to determine the extent to which the intervention works, i.e., solves the problem.
In this talk, participants will explore the ways in which SoTL scholars have sought to move the field beyond the “what works” paradigm and open up new questions about teaching, learning, and scholarship (Chick, 2023; Cruz & Grodziak, 2021). Answering these new questions necessitates the identification different sources of evidence, the cultivation of alternative modes of knowledge production, and perhaps deeper epistemological shifts in how we perceive our work as scholars, educators, and global citizens (Bass, 2022; Cruz et al, 2024: Felten & Geertsema, 2023).
Laura Cruz (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) is a Research Professor with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State. She is also a Fulbright Specialist and visiting professor with the University of Prishtina (Kosovo). She previously served as a tenured faculty member, the director of two centers for teaching and learning, lead editor of three academic journals, including her current position as editor-in-chief of Transformative Dialogues. Her extensive body of research includes work on undergraduate research, general education, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Most recently, she served as the co-editor for three volumes in Wiley's New Directions for Teaching and Learning series (volume 177 : Fostering a Culture of the Scholarship of Teaching in Higher Education (2024) and volumes 178 & 179 : The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the Health Professions (2024)).
