Welcome to our SoTL Collaboratory!
In Fall 2019, a group of educational developers from six universities in Virginia came together to form the SoTL Collaboratory. Since then, the SoTL Collaboratory has grown into a regional community of practice (CoP) for faculty developers that engage and support faculty doing SoTL work and projects at their institutions. From 2021-2022, the project was funded in part by a grant from 4-VA.
The main goal of the SoTL-C is to build a regional community of practice for faculty developers at Virginia institutions who offer programming to support SoTL scholars at their institution. From 2020-2022, our members met regularly to exchange ideas and resources, contribute to a regional SoTL support model repository which we developed into our SoTL Program Taxonomy, give feedback on our respective SoTL strategic plans, and explore ways that we can share the workload through offering cross-institutional SoTL programming for our faculty.
The SoTL-C is currently evolving its structure as members have moved in and out with role changes. In the coming year (2023-2024), we look forward to using this network to expand the SoTL program offerings that faculty at any of our member institutions can access. Please visit our connect page for announcements of those opportunities.
Participating Institutions
George Mason University, James Madison University, University of Mary Washington, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Tech
Current SoTL Collaboratory Members, 2023
Breana Bayraktar, Ed.D., Educational Developer, Blended Learning/Hybrid Pedagogy Specialist, Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, George Mason University
Sophia Abbot, Ph.D. Student, Higher Education Program, George Mason University
Interim SoTL-C Coordinator (2021 – 2022)
Dayna Henry, Ph.D., Interim Assistant Director for Scholarship; Formerly Faculty Associate for Scholarship, Center for Faculty Innovation, James Madison University
Jessica Taggart, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Virginia
Lindsay Wheeler, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Educational Development Research and Assessment, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Virginia
SoTL Program Development Tools
The SoTL-C developed two tools to support their SoTL program planning efforts. Following multiple rounds of piloting and revision with over 100 other educational developers, we landed on the following tools. We describe our full development process in Lukes, Abbot, Wheeler, et al. (forthcoming).
SoTL Strategic Planning Worksheet
The purpose of this document is to guide faculty developers or other administrators, who are tasked with leading Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) initiatives or programming that aim to engage/support faculty in SoTL work at their institution of higher education, to reflect on their own or their institution’s past SoTL programming leadership experience(s); think through the details of their aspirational and future plans in the context of their current institution; and provide a venue to receive peer feedback on specific aspects of their SoTL strategic plans.
SoTL Taxonomy
The purpose of this document is to offer a common language and organizational structure for understanding a variety of SoTL program models. While the SoTL Program Taxonomy was initially developed to support educational developers who may be tasked with leading SoTL program support for their institutions, this tool may also be helpful to a range of scholars and practitioners across higher education who are seeking ideas for how to support SoTL. This document contains an overview of the Taxonomy organized by program type and a detailed description of each model. This document also includes a brief example of each model to further support readers’ envisioning of program possibilities. Because this document was derived from our Community of Practice (see Lukes, Abbot, Henry, et al., in press), the examples that follow draw predominantly on our respective institutions. Examples drawn from beyond our institutions were generated during group discussions and workshops that applied this tool.
Former SoTL-C Members
Laura Lukes* (formerly George Mason University), 2020-23
Jessica Dauterive** (George Mason University), 2020-21
Wai Ling Fong** (George Mason University), 2022
Sharrell Hassell-Goodman** (George Mason University), 2020-21
Ed Brantmeier* (James Madison University), 2020-22
Liliana Ferrufino** (James Madison University), 2020-21
Melissa Wells* (University of Mary Washington), 2020-23
Kim Case* (Virginia Commonwealth University), 2020-22
Kim Filer* (Virginia Tech), 2020-21
Liesl Baum* (formerly Virginia Tech), 2020-22
*Founding Member **Graduate Student
Workshops & Conference Presentations
Lukes, L., Henry, D., & Wheeler, L. (2022, November 9-20). Strategic SoTL programming planning tools for educational developers engaging faculty [Poster]. POD Network Conference, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Lukes, L. & Abbot, S. (2022, November 2-5). Lessons learned from creating a regional cross-institutional community of practice for SoTL educational developers [Poster]. International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Kelowna, BC, Canada.
Wheeler, L., Abbot, S., & Henry, D. (2022, October, 20). Creating a strategic plan for SoTL at your center/institution [Workshop]. Virginia Educational Development Collaborative, virtual.
Abbot, S., Lukes, L., Case, K., Wells, M., Wheeler, L., Baum, L., Brantmeier, E., & Henry, D. (2022, June 1-4). Communities of practice for sustainable educational development [Paper]. International Consortium for Educational Development, Århus, Denmark.
Wheeler, L., Abbot, S., Lukes, L., Henry, D., Wells, M., Case, K., Brantmeier, E., & Taggart, J. (2022, June 1-4). Planning SoTL educational development [Workshop]. International Consortium for Educational Development, Århus, Denmark.
Lukes, L., Baum, L., Case, K., Henry, D., Wells, M., & Abbot, S. (2021, October 26-29). Sustaining SoTL initiatives by building a community of practice for SoTL faculty developers across institutions [Poster]. International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Perth, Australia.
Lukes, L., Case, K., Dauterive, J., Filer, K., Henry, D., Taggart, J., Wells, M., Brantmeier, E.J., Wheeler, L. (2021, October). Planning SoTL faculty development initiatives during uncertain times [Workshop]. POD Network Conference, virtual.
Lukes, L., Henry, D., Baum, L., Wells, M., Case, K., Wheeler, L., Brantmeier, E., Taggart, J., Hassell-Goodman, S., Abbot, S., (2021, September). SoTL Collaboratory: A scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) resource for instructors, faculty developers, and administrators [On-Demand Presentation]. Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference, Fairfax, VA, U.S.A.
Lukes, L., Brantmeier, E.J., Case, K., Dauterive, J., Filer, K., Henry, D., Taggart, J., Wells, M., Wheeler, L. (2021, January). Creating a strategic plan for SoTL at your center/institution [Workshop]. POD Network Conference, virtual.
Papers
Abbot, S., Lukes, L., Henry, D., & Wheeler, L. B. (in preparation). Examining a regional educational developer community of practice for advancing institutional cultures of SoTL engagement.
Lukes, L., Abbot, S., Wheeler, L. B., Henry, D., Case, K., Wells, M., Baum, L., & Brantmeier, E. J. (in press). Strategic planning tools for educational developers supporting SoTL cultures and programs. To Improve the Academy.
Lukes, L., Abbot, S., Henry, D., Wells, M., Baum, L., Case, K., Brantmeier, E. J., & Wheeler, L. B. (2023). Impact of a regional community of practice for academic developers engaged in institution-level support for SoTL. International Journal for Academic Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2022.2135005