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Universities have a scholarly teaching problem. 

Did that sentence hook you? Have I challenged any readers out there or did that feel like a lukewarm take for some of you? Either way, perhaps I should rephrase that with a bit more nuance—research intensive universities are showing their bias regarding the research and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). 

Who am I to be making these claims? 

Well, hello, my name is J Overholser, and I am a late-stage sociology PhD candidate here at the University of Calgary. I have two passions—academic research and making university teaching and learning more accessible and inclusive. 

During my time in graduate school (both in my PhD program and previously during my Masters) I have noticed that there is the assumption that if you have made it this far you can teach at a university, no problem. After all, we have been taught the vast array of skills needed to conduct rigorous research. And teaching can’t be that different from presenting at a conference or research symposium, right? 

Many workshops and programs are available to help graduate students and early-career academic staff develop teaching skills, but time constraints along with other hurdles can make it difficult to participate. 

So, take this post as a sign—a bright, 700-hundred-foot-tall banner urging you to see why engaging with research and scholarship on teaching and learning matters. You don’t have to want to be a university instructor to benefit from SoTL research; regardless of your future goals I can almost guarantee that engaging with SoTL can be a benefit to you and your work. 

Speaking from a humanities background, I have often been told that there are countless benefits to approaching a research topic from different perspectives. For example, distinct viewpoints can literally “see” the same problem differently and they might reveal or highlight aspects of the topic that would otherwise go unnoticed. 

Diverse perspectives can introduce alternative ways of doing or approaching research, which leads to stronger, more robust work overall. However, I rarely, if ever, hear traditional researchers talk about the ways that SoTL perspectives could help non-SoTL research. I’ll often see the same iterative process that we are taught to use in research design being used in aspects of scholarly teaching (aspects such as course design and developing course assessments). Furthermore, many of the practical applications of SoTL research within the classroom are also aspects that I have ended up integrating into my own research projects (and vice versa).

I’ll share an example from my own experiences to illustrate what I am talking about. I recently worked as a graduate teaching assistant here at the University of Calgary for the SOCI 313 course (Introductory Social Research Methods). For this course, I ran the weekly lab sessions where students applied what they were learning about research design and implementation through experiential hands-on learning. 

For many undergraduate students, this lab can be a terrifying experience as it’s often the first time that they’re engaging with the actual research process. Much of my work in this class focused on developing a welcoming and inclusive learning environment where students felt safe enough to try new skills and fostering an environment where failing won’t feel like the end of the world. 

During the course, I engaged with SoTL literature and workshops to strengthen my ability to create inclusive learning environments and collaborated with the professor on our own SoTL research project focused on that very topic. At the same time, I was also designing and starting my doctoral thesis research. Something I noticed along the way was that the SoTL techniques for creating a safe, welcoming, and inclusive learning environment mirrored those used to build strong relationships with my research participants in our interviews. 

Ironically, because the SoTL literature focused on practical application and was particularly mindful of the power differences between an instructor and their students, I found the lessons easier and more effective to apply in my own research than more traditional research methodology scholarship. I genuinely believe that some of the success of my research so far has come from my engagement with SoTL. 

This is just one of many examples from my own experiences of how SoTL research has helped me outside of simply teaching and learning. And while I am not advocating for SoTL supremacy within universities, I hope that I can encourage you to try engaging with scholarship and research around teaching and learning, regardless of whether or not your future aspirations ultimately lay in the classroom.