Resumen de Supporting teachers in doing SoTL: Development and effect of an interdisciplinary courseat Utrecht University
Irma Meijerman
Establishing and sustaining a culture of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as part of aprofessional approach to teaching and learning offers many challenges. Careful introduction of SoTL isneeded with many aspects to be considered such as the development of support structures like pedagogicalcourses.Recently Educational Scholarship, including SoTL, became one of the cornerstones of the newUtrecht Centre for Academic Teaching (CAT) of the Utrecht University (UU), the Netherlands, with theaim to make SoTL part of the learning culture of the UU. UU is therefore at the starting point of integratingSoTL as part of the professional development of academic staff. Based on our experiences withtwo explorative pilot courses for teachers, literature research and a theoretical framework, a new pedagogicalcourse for science teachers that want to get engaged in SoTL was developed. A communitybasedapproach, with plenty of room for peer-discussion and feedback, was chosen to make it able forparticipants to share their projects and to collaborate. Other main principles for the development of thecourse were mentoring by experts, relevant workshops, guided discussions, financial support, dedicatedtime for the participants, and the encouragement of participants to work together on (shared)projects in theme groups. The course is aimed at teachers from the faculty of Science and was givenfrom October 2018 until September 2019.In this study the theoretical framework of the design of the course will be illustrated. The first resultsof a mid-term evaluation show that the participants appreciate being part of a community withplenty of opportunity for peer discussion, reflection and structured support for their SoTL-project. Itis expected that most of the participants will successfully finish the course by executing a SoTL-projectand sharing the results.The final study contributes to the quality of teaching and student learning, and the academic developmentof teachers, by formulating design principles for SoTL-courses. In addition, success- and failurefactors of SoTL-courses and support programmes will be identified.
