Researching Your Teaching: Creating a Space for Inquiry

Facilitators:  
Cora McCloy, PhD, Faculty Liaison Coordinator, SoTL, CTSI 
Kyle Turner, Faculty Liaison, Teaching and Learning, CTSI 
Faculty presenter: Sadia Sharmin, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Department of Computer Science 

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) helps us avoid what Shulman (1999) described as “pedagogical amnesia,” the many things about our teaching we forget from one term to the next. SoTL enables us to capture insights into our teaching in a way that allows us to revisit them time and again.

This interactive session serves as an introduction and launch to the 2022 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) webinar series. In Part I of the session, we cultivate a way of thinking about teaching inquiry, beginning with curiosity/inquiry questions and ideas that you currently have about your teaching and learning context. We discuss possible strategies to transform conceptual research ideas into concrete research questions.

In Part II we address the range of evidence/artifacts or sources of data you may use and/or collect to explore your question in more depth. By getting into a mindset of inquiry, this session creates a space to launch your journey from one of reflective teaching to the initial stages in research design.  Participants will have opportunities to learn and gain advice from facilitators and Dr. Sharmin who will address key topics from her own project in both parts of this session. The session includes breakout groups to cultivate discussions with your colleagues.

By the end of this session, you will have:

• Identified a curiosity/inquiry question and/or area of research interest
• Heard from a U of T faculty who has undertaken a SoTL project
• Considered sources of data to draw on to examine your research on teaching question(s) further
• Mapped out your early research design plans
• Participated in building a community of teaching and learning researchers at U of T
• Learned about the upcoming CTSI-SoTL programming.

This webinar is open to instructors of all levels of experience with research on teaching and learning.