This exploratory mixed-method pilot study investigated students’ experiences with artificial intelligence (AI)-guided assignments across selected humanities, design, and STEM courses in higher education during the academic term beginning in August/September 2024. Using a custom survey tool grounded in Bloom’s taxonomy, the study assessed AI’s perceived effectiveness in enhancing cognitive engagement and explored students’ ethical awareness through open-ended reflections. A literature review, interdisciplinary collaboration, and iterative refinement using Copilot prompting informed survey questions in order to ensure cross-disciplinary applicability. Quantitative data came from Likert scale responses, while the researchers drew qualitative insights from coded action verbs and thematic analysis of open-ended responses. Preliminary findings indicated generally positive perception of AI, with mean scores above three across all six cognitive levels. The results underscore AI’s potential to support critical thinking as a layered cognitive process, rather than a discrete skill. Students often reported having engaged productively and skeptically with AI rather than over relying on it. Reflections highlighted concerns about query refinement, content verification, and responsible use, suggesting a meaningful link between ethical AI engagement and critical thinking development. Due to the small sample size and reliance on self-reported data from students, findings are not broadly generalizable. Future research should incorporate longitudinal and triangulated methods to better capture evolving student behaviors and align perceptions with actual AI use.
Drawing on organizational development research, this “SoTL in Process” essay imagines a leadership pipeline for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). A leadership pipeline is a conceptual metaphor that describes an approach to developing future leaders. This essay argues that by developing an ISSOTL leadership pipeline, the Society can foster the growth of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) broadly through strategic leadership transitions across different roles within the organization. Ultimately, this essay invites ISSOTL members to imagine a leadership pipeline that may ensure the future growth of SoTL.
While national reforms encourage the integration of critical thinking in Vietnamese universities, limited empirical research guides lecturers at agricultural institutions in how to conceptualise and apply critical thinking to their teaching. This study aimed to gain insight into educational pedagogies that engineering lecturers employed to support their students in improving critical thinking. Utilising a qualitative approach, the researcher conducted six in-depth, semi-structured interviews with lecturers from two programmes at an agricultural university in southern Vietnam. Obtained data, processed through the thematic coding method, revealed that lecturers applied three key pedagogies to foster students’ critical thinking: pedagogy for how to think, pedagogy for the enrichment of knowledge, and challenge-based pedagogy. These pedagogies do not simply comprise techniques but also the strategies or principles for their practice. While focused on agricultural engineering education, the study findings offer transferable implications for lecturers across disciplines and policymakers in higher education on how to foster critical thinking through disciplinary reflection and context-based pedagogy. The study also recommends further research involving students’ perspectives in order to fully comprehend how learners experience these pedagogies in practice.
Faculty and students have diversified and refined design thinking over recent decades, and more institutions are using it in the development of transformative learning experiences. The first of its kind, this study examines the potential outcomes of design thinking educational workshops, through which students learn and practice design thinking methods. Tailored for the promotion of each course’s learning objectives, these sessions cover a diverse range of topics and skills. We build upon existing research, backed by over two decades of design thinking literature and five years of data from a university center for design thinking, to share teaching strategies and classroom practices that foster engaged learning. Through a mixed-methods design, this article explores data collected through five years of short-form design thinking “workshop” sessions. We sourced this data from 971 sessions and represents 7,400 individuals’ responses for a short survey provided at the end of each session. Findings are compared to research on high impact learning practices for supporting engaged learning environments. Comparative analysis shows that design thinking learning strategies consistently fostered engaged learning environments. From this comparative analysis, we analyzed the various design thinking learning strategies that participants felt were most valuable. Beyond the analysis, this paper will also present the most highly valued pedagogical tools used in these sessions for readers interested in implementing them in a classroom setting.
In this study, we explore two academics’ critical reflective process as they transition from predominantly online solo teaching work into a shared classroom teaching arrangement, including the impact on their teaching approaches and practices. We employed an autoethnographic and action research methodology to facilitate the shift from critical reflection to collaborative action within a purposefully designed shared teaching classroom space. Leveraging Baeten and Simons’ five-pronged team teaching model, we articulate the benefits and challenges of shared teaching responsibilities through the practices of adaptability, open communication, emotional intelligence, and the splitting of cognitive load and practical responsibilities. We suggest that the practice of shared teaching paired with a formal collaborative reflective process is central to authentically revealing teaching values and approaches and can form the basis for acquiring new knowledge and transforming effective learning and teaching practices. This serves as a powerful means to enhance educator professional development in order to support student learning in tertiary education.
This qualitative case study explores how an analysis of short fiction course (ASFC) supports learning and academic readiness among first-year English language and literature (ELL) students in Türkiye. The researchers gathered data over a semester through teacher observations, weekly student journals (n = 30), and semi-structured interviews with a diverse subset (n = 10). Analysis employed open and axial coding, with researchers’ reflexivity and an independent coder improving trustworthiness. Readiness is defined by various scholars as academic and social integration, self-regulated learning, and scaffolding. Results show a shift from basic learning-style preferences to strategic, metacognitive engagement; ongoing yet decreasing linguistic and affective barriers (e.g., vocabulary, symbolism, writing) addressed through scaffolded tasks; increased motivation and sense of belonging within a supportive classroom environment; and improvements in analytical vocabulary, critical reading, and academic confidence. The study demonstrates that genre-specific pedagogy—specifically, the analysis of short fiction—can facilitate first-year students’ transition into disciplinary study, integrating the cognitive, affective, and social aspects of readiness. Limitations include a single-institution context and a small qualitative sample. Recommendations include applying ASFC-like, scaffolded approaches across literature curricula and related humanities courses, as well as conducting comparative and longitudinal research on genre-based interventions.
Adaptarse a las demandas sociales y académicas exige que las universidades implementen una serie de cambios didácticos y pedagógicos, siendo la evaluación auténtica un elemento clave. Si bien ha sido ampliamente estudiada a lo largo del tiempo, la evaluación auténtica se considera actualmente un medio crucial para mejorar la calidad educativa. Por lo tanto, esta investigación busca identificar estudios relevantes sobre la evaluación auténtica en el contexto de la educación superior y en relación con la mejora de la calidad educativa. Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura de los últimos diez años, siguiendo el método PRISMA. La muestra consta de 36 artículos publicados en revistas de alto impacto sobre el tema. Entre los principales hallazgos, destaca el interés internacional en este tipo de evaluación. Además, se identificó una amplia variedad de enfoques y herramientas utilizados para implementar con éxito la evaluación auténtica, lo que se traduce en mejores resultados educativos para los estudiantes. En consecuencia, se puede concluir que la evaluación auténtica constituye una vía eficaz para avanzar en la calidad educativa, en línea con las recomendaciones de la Agenda 2030. Adapting to social and academic demands requires universities to implement a series of didactic and pedagogical changes, with assessment of student progress being a key element. While widely studied over time, authentic assessment is currently considered a crucial means to improve educational quality. Therefore, this research aims to identify relevant studies on authentic assessment in relation to improving educational quality and in the context of higher education. The research team conducted a systematic review of the literature from the last ten years following the PRISMA method. The sample consists of a total of 36 articles published in high-impact journals on the subject. Among the main findings, an international interest in this type of assessment stands out. In addition, higher education institutions are using a variety of approaches and tools to successfully implement authentic assessment, resulting in improved educational outcomes for students. Consequently, it can be concluded that authentic assessment is another means of working toward educational quality in line with the recommendations of the 2030 Agenda.
A book review of SoTL Research Methodologies: A Guide to Theoretical Frameworks and Approaches, authored by Michelle Yeo, Janice Miller-Young, and Karen Manarin (2024).
The prevalence of virtual reality (VR) is growing in many educational spaces. Yet while explored extensively in medical science research, there is a need for more studies on VR in educational and social science research. The present study explores the use of VR to teach higher education students about anti-racism content, specifically about privilege. Recognizing privilege is central to learning about anti-racism since it helps people understand each other’s social location, intersectionalities, and access to services. We implemented a two-staged mixed-methods research design, with the first stage consisting of a survey design and the second relying on interview data. Participants volunteered either for stage one or for both stages. Twenty-three students participated in stage one, while 11 participated in both stages. The findings reveal that the VR module promoted the participants’: 1) layered understanding of privilege; 2) critical reflection on their privilege; and 3) impetus to engage in more advocacy around the misuse of privilege. The findings point to a need for more strategies that specifically detail how to address the abuse of privilege in order to increase people’s comfort in conducting this type of advocacy. The research contributes to a growing body of studies on VR’s ability to improve participants’ understanding of complex humanistic principles, such as privilege.
Arts and humanities educators have been urged in recent years to remain attentive to the political, economic, and ideological forces shaping their institutions, their work, and their students’ expectations. The arts landscape continues to face challenges such as global pandemics, online learning, and changing student populations. In continuing to be mindful and engage with teaching and learning as a collective, we must persevere and share both our successes and challenges in the arts and humanities teaching and learning space. At Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM), at the University of Sydney, Australia, we have a workforce of expert musicians who mentor tertiary music students within a variety of disciplines including music composition, performance, musicology, etc. In their roles as practice-focused educators, these musicians have significant experience of teaching and learning, yet many have had no opportunities to engage in formal training as higher music educators. In order to provide formal training as an essential component of an academic’s growth and development, institutions have established short-term postgraduate programs, such as the Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies (Higher Education). We present two examples of how this formal training has led to significant innovations within our faculty’s teaching practice. The importance of encouraging arts practitioners to engage in this training has established a framework of excellence in our tertiary music institution and challenges music educators to refocus on the significance of teaching and learning in music degrees globally.
Over the past several decades, the authors of this reflective essay have written together about the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in books, articles, reports, and blog posts. Drawing on their own experience as collaborative writers, conversations with others who have written together, and analysis of co-authored works in Teaching & Learning Inquiry and other outlets, they explore the possibility that writing together, for all its challenges, may now be a signature feature of SoTL. This does not, of course, suggest that work by single authors does not have a powerful place in the field. What it does indicate is that there are aspects of SoTL that invite collaborative writing. This in turn raises questions about the forms such writing may take, strategies for managing the process, and ways that co-writing may strengthen not only the SoTL movement but other developments in higher education that seek to overcome pedagogical solitude.
Although study abroad programs have been shown to increase intercultural awareness, these programs are not accessible to many students due to factors such as finance and fear of culture shock. According to various reports, Canada and especially countries in Latin America have among the lowest proportion of student participation in these programs in the world. Given these barriers, we conducted a 12-week virtual exchange in two neuroscience-related courses, pairing students in Canada (N=20) with students in Ecuador (N=22). Students in this virtual exchange worked together in small inter-institution groups to develop an intervention for a neuroscience-related problem, culminating in a written report and a pitch to external judges. To better understand Canadian and Ecuadorian student experiences and takeaways from this virtual exchange, we conducted qualitative analyses on written reflections and feedback from students. Several key themes emerged from our analyses, including navigating differences, language expansion, intercultural collaboration, and inclusive atmosphere. These themes suggest our virtual exchange project successfully increased student awareness of and openness to other cultures. Although generally positive, our findings also suggest areas of improvement, particularly related to technology and time. We discuss these findings in light of current literature on the topic and provide considerations for the improvement of future virtual exchanges. Importantly, as the majority of virtual exchange literature involves partnerships with the United States, our findings add to the scholarship by highlighting the perspectives of students who have not traditionally been represented.
Many post-secondary institutions have mandates to ensure access to high-quality experiential learning (EL) for all undergraduate students. Historically, EL initiatives have focused on immersive, high-impact practices like co-op and internship placements, honours research theses, and global exchanges, which are time- and resource-intensive for both students and institutions. While there are many benefits to participating in these experiences, not all students have the resources or interest to take part in these immersive types of EL. To broaden participation in EL across campus contexts, we advocate for a strategic shift in EL’s typical focus on highly immersive programs to include smaller-scale, course-embedded experiences—what we call “Small EL”—that maintain pedagogical value while removing traditional barriers to access. As we define them, Small EL activities are time bound, focused, and lower risk, making them adaptable across disciplines and accessible to diverse student populations. Through an exploration of the experiences of five academics in different roles, we provide a framework for developing, implementing, assessing, and supporting Small EL across a large research-intensive university. This approach to scaling EL not only addresses equity concerns by making EL accessible to historically underserved populations but also offers institutions a scalable strategy to meet performance metrics while enhancing student engagement and skill development.
This reflective article reviews the historic and present state of student scholars in SoTL and offers recommendations for further advancing SoTL student scholars. We share our own experiences as a former student scholar and a collaborator with and mentor to student scholars, respectively, and we follow these experiences with the reflections and stories of six other former student SoTL scholars. Looking across both documented history and lived experiences, we suggest that explicit invitations can make students feel valued and significant as well as inspire students to take the initiative to invite others. Invitations to students and initiative taken by students expand who is included in a field still predominantly occupied by faculty and staff. We argue that such inclusion has the potential to change the way everyone in higher education understands, studies, and experiences learning and teaching.
Multiple topics taught together, with the relationships between those topics made explicit, is known as integration; it can be categorized as horizontal integration of topics within a given course or curricular year or vertical integration of topics across years. In this case study, we applied a three-part curricular model to investigate the extent of horizontal integration of topics in the intended, enacted, and experienced curricula of a large first-year dental school team-taught course, which consists of large group lectures and small group labs. We collected data from the course syllabus, exams, student and faculty surveys, and a faculty focus group interview. Findings from the enacted and experienced curricula indicate that this course successfully integrates the lecture and lab components as well as the different topics taught throughout the semester. The intended curriculum, specifically the syllabus, has less evidence of horizontal integration. Positive factors that contribute to the effective integration are repetition of information throughout the course, reinforcement of lecture information in labs, and communication and collegiality among faculty. Challenges to effective integration mainly fall under the categories of consistency and perceived misalignment of lecture and lab. We identified areas where better communication may help ameliorate such issues. Specifically, the designed integration within the course should be more explicitly explained in the syllabus, so that the intended curriculum more closely aligns with the enacted and experienced curricula. Although the course in this study is an anatomy course taught to dental students, the findings discussed here are applicable to other disciplines.
This study tracked 6,236 students across 44 colleges and universities to assess whether various effective teaching practices influenced end-of-fourth-year academic motivation, while also accounting for a wide range of potential confounders, such as precollege academic motivation. Results suggest that prompt instructor feedback, clarity and organization of instruction, challenging courses with high instructor expectations, integrative learning, and collaborative learning positively influenced end-of-fourth-year academic motivation. Exposure to challenging courses with high instructor expectations, however, failed to exert a statistically reliable influence on this outcome measure.
This special section offers readers of Teaching & Learning Inquiry (TLI) a deep-dive into recent international, multi-institutional scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) on work-integrated learning (WIL). In this section introduction, we explore work-integrated learning, detail what TLI readers can glean from an intentional collection of SoTL studies on WIL and provide a brief overview of the collaborative SoTL works featured in the section.
Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are a ubiquitous institutional tool for capturing student feedback, yet they often function as tokenistic, end-of-course mechanisms that fail to support meaningful pedagogical development. This paper shares a critical reflection of the traditional SET model and proposes a new approach to a time-old tradition. Grounded in the Students as Partners (SaP) framework, we propose a reimagining of SETs centered on four interdependent principles: respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and reflection. This proposed model also positions feedback as an ongoing, dialogic process that enhances learning for students, educators, and institutions. This model, the Continual Feedback Loop (CFL), is a cyclical framework that embeds feedback before, during, and after a course, ensuring responsiveness to context, learner-centered engagement, and capacity-building for all. The CFL transforms SETs from static, summative evaluations into dynamic tools for co-created learning environments, supporting educator autonomy while amplifying student voices. This approach also addresses systemic barriers in SET practices, including power imbalances, metric limitations, and the marginalization of educators. By shifting the purpose and structure of SETs, our model has the potential to cultivate an inclusive, intentional feedback culture that fosters mutual accountability, empowers both students and educators, and aligns with institutional goals for teaching effectiveness. We conclude with actionable strategies for implementing the CFL at both the educator and institutional levels, demonstrating its practical relevance and potential to transform SETs from a compliance-driven exercise into a powerful instrument of reflective, collaborative educational change.
The International Collaborative Writing Groups (ICWGs) offer a valuable platform for fostering collaboration, supporting SoTL project completion, and prioritizing inclusivity within the ISSOTL community. While the ICWGs provide numerous benefits, their success depends on effective leadership and a clear understanding of the groups’ goals. This article examines the experiences of the 2023 ICWG-Academic cohort, which focused on the theme “Context Matters.” By applying conceptualization of a landscape of practice, we explore the diversity, political nature, and flatness of the ICWGs. Our analysis highlights the challenges and opportunities associated with the program, including the need for clearer guidelines, stronger leadership support, and greater emphasis on fostering interconnected communities of practice. We offer these recommendations with the aim to improve the ICWGs’ design and operation, ensuring their continued effectiveness and sustainability within the ISSOTL landscape.
How can universities create the right conditions for faculty to engage meaningfully in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)? While SoTL can enhance teaching quality, foster professional growth, and raise the profile of teaching, faculty often encounter several challenges when engaging in SoTL. This poster examines how institutions can create more favorable conditions for SoTL and identifies effective strategies for supporting faculty. It presents findings from a study of a two-year SoTL program at the University of Amsterdam. The program, co-funded by the university’s teaching and learning centre and participants’ departments, offers mentoring, interdisciplinary dialogue, and allocated time (one day per week) to participants conducting SoTL projects. To explore participants’ experiences, the research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 members of the first cohort. We then analyzed data thematically: we coded transcripts inductively iteratively refined those codes, and grouped patterns into overarching themes. Participants valued the combination of individual mentoring and peer exchange, yet many struggled to protect their allotted time and engage colleagues in their projects. Unfamiliarity with SoTL and its norms appeared to underlie several of the participants’ challenges, including uncertainty about expected outputs and impact. We argue that two support strategies are key: building collective understanding of SoTL’s purposes and quality standards, and involving stakeholders to embed SoTL within departments. These principles reinforce each other, enabling SoTL to take root institutionally. The poster further outlines the program design and lessons learned. Findings may be transferable to institutions seeking to strengthen SoTL engagement, helping them anticipate challenges and design powerful support structures.
