In the journey of SoTL, the initial exploration through a literature review provides a strong foundation. But that’s only the beginning. To gain deeper insight into your students’ learning and to effectively address your research questions, you will need to identify the right evidence to collect from the classroom.
According to Bernstein and Bass (2005), faculty members engaged in SoTL projects often pose the following questions: “How did they know that their students were learning?” and “Did the students’ learning promise to last?” Bernstein and Bass (2005) explained that “By asking these questions, many faculty discovered early on that what most interested—or eluded—them about their students’ learning could not be answered simply by looking at regularly assigned course work” (p. 39). Therefore, SoTL collects the evidence of learning in a variety of forms.
Evidence of learning may include:
- Classroom assessment techniques, or CATs (minute paper, muddies point, clicker data, etc.)
- Evidence of how students actually think (think-alouds, process logs, reflective journals/reflection papers, concept maps, etc.)
- Exam scores, or scores on a single exam question
- Counts (the number of online discussion postings/replies, the number of logins to Brightspace, the number of Brightspace pages read/written, number of videos watched etc.)
- Samples of students’ work (papers, journals, projects, presentations, performances, online discussion posts, etc.)
- Institutional research data (grades, GPAs, admission scores, retention rates, etc.)
- Students’ reports of their learning (surveys, interviews, focus group interviews, etc.)
*Adapted from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching’s guide on identifying evidence.
References:
Bernstein, D., & Bass, R. (2005). The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Academe, 91(4), 37-43.