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The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a growing field of scholarship in higher education. SoTL fosters a scholarly approach to teaching, engages faculty in reflective practice about their work, and provides an avenue for a peer-reviewed source of evidence to reward teaching.
What is SoTL?
SoTL can be broadly defined as research or creative works that involve a systematic inquiry into the practice of teaching and learning.
Some of the many benefits of engaging in SoTL include:
- Improving student learning through the exploration and development of best practice in teaching and learning
- Furthering a culture of reflective, evidence-based teaching
- Developing community among faculty across disciplines
- Increasing the exposure of teacher-scholars at MSU Denver through public scholarship
Want to stay in the loop about SoTL?
Join our SoTL email list to be notified about upcoming events and resources.
SoTL Interest ListSoTL Faculty Learning Communities
What are Focused Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) FLCs?
SoTL FLCs are small learning communities focused on scholarly exploration of a specific teaching and learning topic or question. Members of a focused SoTL FLC commit to working together during 2-3 semesters to conduct a SoTL study or create a piece of SoTL scholarship together.
Similar to other CTLD FLCs, a small group 3-5 of faculty/staff members work together to explore a common teaching issue in depth. However, in these focused SoTL FLCs, there is a clear expectation to develop a collaborative scholarly project (publication, manuscript, conference presentation, etc.) under the guidance of the FLC Facilitator.
Focused SoTL FLCS are outcome-based, rather than time-based. Each FLC has a small budget for books or materials, and members of the group receive a small stipend, dependent upon group size and paid out partly after a mid-point benchmark (such as project proposal/IRB approval), and partly after final completion (submission of manuscript or conference proposal).
Who should apply to participate as a member?
FLC member participants are not expected to be experts in SoTL. Rather, a variety of disciplines, backgrounds, and experience with SoTL research are desired for each project. Members are expected to be active contributors, and FLC facilitators will guide the group through the process.
The most important factor is your ability to work collaboratively on a project. Commitment could include (varies based on the project and methodology):
- Regular (monthly or at times bi-weekly) meeting attendance and contributions
- Reviewing literature in the field, contributing to an annotated bibliography
- Implementing a teaching method within your course
- Collecting and analyzing student data (surveys, interviews)
- Contributing to a journal article or conference presentation
“Words cannot begin to express the gratitude I have for the chance to be a part of this faculty learning community. We have been able to accomplish scholarship opportunities to enhance our professional careers, but beyond that, great connections have been made.”
– Paris Prestridge, Professor, Assistant Professor of Health Professions
“As the facilitator of a faculty learning community focused on self-study methodology, I gained so much from my collaboration with my colleagues. It has been immensely rewarding to build a strong community of faculty with whom I shared deep reflections on my teaching. The cross-disciplinary community allowed us to share best practices and to learn that many of the teaching joys and challenges we experience are the same across departments.”
– Ingrid Carter, Professor, Elementary Education, School of Education
SoTL FLCs starting in 2025
One of MSU Denver’s strategic goals is to produce relevant and rigorous learning experiences tailored to meet students where they are. Our students arrive at our classrooms with a variety of backgrounds and experiences, making for rich learning environments but also the need for adaptations and individualization. This SoTL FLC will explore the literature around differentiated instruction (individualizing the content, process, product, and climate in our courses), explore ways to implement practices while maintaining a manageable workload, and conduct a study to explore the effectiveness of different approaches.
Facilitated by: Garvita Thareja, Department of Health Professions and Bridget Arend, Associate Director of Teaching and Learning
This SoTL FLC will explore how we can better engage our students in online asynchronous classes, especially regarding the communication loop. Faculty produce a lot of communication, yet how can we ensure that students are receiving and benefitting from all this work? What are some more productive ways that we can receive confirmation and communication back from students? We will look at examples, methods, and issues across disciplines with the goal of creating a paper and presentation for a cross-campus symposium.
Facilitated by: Laurel Lane, Department of Marketing
2023-2024 SoTL FLCs
Facilitators: Dr. Philip E. Bernhardt, Professor of Secondary Education and Dr. Bridget Arend, Associate Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Design (CTLD)
Participants:
Dennis Rudnick, Elementary Education
Mark Koester, Mathematics
Mehpara Qadir, Graduate Student
Research on traditional assessment and grading often demonstrates that these practices are biased, subjective, inequitable, and fraught with a dynamic that interferes with learning. Many alternative assessment methods exist, from providing student choice and options, to competency-based formats, to ungrading. Alternative assessment methods can provide many benefits for motivation, engagement, and learning, but these methods can also pose unintended challenges for first-generation students and can be challenging to use within the norms of higher education.
In this SoTL FLC, we will explore a variety of alternative assessment methods with the intent of exploring the benefits and challenges of these methods with our particular student population. The group will collaboratively identify promising methods to try out in our courses and gather evidence to explore the impact.
Presentations:
Presented at the summer 2024 Grading Conference: Faculty Perceptions on Grading and Assessment (Dennis L. Rudnick, Bridget Arend, Mark I. Koester, Phillip E. Bernhardt, and Mehpara Qadir)
Facilitator: Ingrid Carter, Ph.D., Department of Elementary Education & Literacy
Participants:
Paris Prestridge, Integrative Health Care
Tina Herring, Early Childhood Education
Letitia Pleis, Accounting
Michele Terese Trujillo, Special Education
This SoTL FLC will engage in self-study methodology to delve deeply into multimodal pedagogies to systematically explore innovations in university courses. Institutions of higher education were already offering online courses prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and remote learning has increased awareness of opportunities to utilize instructional technology and multimodal approaches. Multimodal pedagogy is an instructional approach that uses various modes of teaching and learning to open up the curriculum and can include in-person and online engagement though video, audio, interaction with various online platforms and apps outside or within Canvas.
Faculty in the FLC will select a course or courses on which to focus their research, and the work of this FLC will focus on the self-study methodology, collaboration via “critical friends,” and support for one another’s work. Self-study is an approach wherein the educator examines their own teaching with the intent of reflection and insight to improve their teaching. The purpose of self-study is not only reflective, but also to inspire change and improvement to one’s practice and to provide pedagogical insights to others.
Publications/Presentations:
Carter, I., Prestridge, P., Trujillo, M., Pleis, L., & Herring, T. (2024). Exploring assessment and feedback to elevate students’ experiences in online and hybrid courses: A collaborative self-study. Presented at the 31st Annual Kennesaw State SoTL Summit.
Prestridge, P., Carter, I., Trujillo, M., Herring, T., & Pleis, L. (2025). A self-study community of practice to explore elevating students’ experiences in online/hybrid courses. Journal of Excellence in College Teaching.
Facilitator: Steve Geinitz, Ph.D., Department of Computer Science
Participants:
Ranjidha Rajan, Computer Science
Smita Singh, School of Hospitality
Kwabena Peprah, Marketing
Kathryn Crim Shrumm Schmidt, Philosophy
Sam Jay, Communication
The purpose of this SoTL FLC is to investigate the use of Generative AI to enhance a course’s teaching and curriculum. The broader aim sought through this investigation is to improve overall student success and retention. While specific research questions/goals are yet to be determined, there will be an emphasis towards projects where the anticipated benefits align with MSU Denver’s mission and vision (e.g. closing the educational-attainment gap, producing learning experiences tailored to meet students where they are, etc.). Some potential queries to investigate may be related to:
- improving instructor-to-student communication via personalized feedback produced by Generative AI
- improving student-to-student communication through use of Generative AI as a facilitator of collaboration/discussion assignments
- enhancing students’ meta-learning and general study skills through the use of Generative AI as a means for self-reflection
Due to the fast-evolving nature of Generative AI technology, the initial phase of this FLC will consist of monthly/bi-weekly FLC meetings in which participants discuss the latest applications/tools and their capabilities, and experiment with adopting these into their current teaching practices. Once participants are acquainted with the technology, a greater focus will be given on how to implement novel teaching practices using Generative AI. Regardless of how many projects are identified, participants will be encouraged to collaborate with one another to robustly investigate the research questions at hand.
The SoTL FLCs started in 2025 are at capacity. Please check back for future opportunities!
Collaborative SoTL Manuscript Peer Reviews
Want to experience first-hand the peer review process for a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning journal article?
Many of us are interested in doing scholarly inquiries into our teaching, yet we also come from different disciplinary backgrounds where the standard and norms of scholarship can be quite different. In this experience, small groups of faculty collaboratively review a SoTL journal submission. We explore what constitutes evidence and quality in SoTL and open the window to how SoTL work gets published.
The process of Collaborative SoTL Manuscript Peer Reviews includes the following.
“I gained confidence in my own review skills, and the joint feedback felt more dynamic than mine alone.”
Michele Clark, Management
“In the collaborative peer review process, we engaged in an inclusive academic dialogue, integrating diverse insights to deepen scholarly discourse…This approach not only elevates the quality of academic articles but also cultivates a community marked by mutual respect, understanding, and shared progress.”
Ranjidha Rajan, Computer Sciences
MSU Denver Faculty Research Symposium - Oct 23, 2026
Share your SoTL work at the annual MSU Denver Research Symposium.
Research Symposium WebsiteSoTL Poster Session at the Research Symposium
SoTL Conferences and Journals
SOTL Journals
Journal of Excellence in College Teaching
New Directions in Teaching and Learning
Higher Education Research and Development
Comprehensive lists of SoTL journals, including disciplinary journals
SoTL Conferences
Kennesaw State SoTL Summit, completely virtual, usually in Sept
Intermountain Consortium for Faculty Development (ICFD)’s Teaching 4 Learning Conference, usually Feb/March in a western state (Utah, Idaho, Nevada)
SoTL Commons, Feb/March at Georgia Southern University
Lilly Conferences, Annual conferences in Asheville, Austin, San Diego, Traverse City, and Oxford, OH.
The Teaching Professor Conference, every June usually in New Orleans and an online conference fully virtual in November
National Higher Education Teaching Conference, sponsored by ACUE each summer
US Air Force Academy SoTL Forum, in Oct/Nov by email invitation only
Comprehensive lists of SoTL Conferences
Past SoTL Events
Thanks to those who joined our yearlong exploration into the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Topics and Guests included:
- Identifying SoTL projects / Different engagement paths
- Literature Reviews / Geoff Johnson, Auraria Library
- When do we need IRB? / Mike Heathcote, Human Subject Protection Program Manager
- Genuine student involvement in SoTL
- Connections with institutional data, Sean Petronovich, Director of Data & Analytics
- Faculty showcasing their projects:
- Rey Hernández-Julián, Finance
- Kristin Danhoff, Social Work
- Bethany Fleck Dillen, Psychology
- Phillip Bernhardt, Education
- Salini Srinivasan, Chemistry
- Steve Geinitz, Computer Sciences
Thanks to those who joined us for the Spring 2022 SoTL Event!
In that session, we provided an overview and discussion about SoTL and the many different ways to conduct scholarly teaching projects.
SoTL projects were highlighted from:
- Aaron Richmond, Psychology
- Lunden MacDonald, Modern Languages
- Ingrid Carter, Elementary Education
- Shalini Srinivasan, Chemistry
- Bridget Arend, Center for Teaching, Learning & Design
Contact Bridget Arend at [email protected] if you’d like an overview of what occurred in this session or a copy of the PPT slides.