The October 3rd Conversation focused on the Intersection of Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SOTL) and service learning. The discussion was led by Maria de la Fuente, (Spanish and Linguistics).
SOTL research is the systematic inquiry about student learning, grounded in theory and research, and disseminated through scholarly publications or presentations. Community-engaged learning pedagogies like service learning are excellent spaces for SOTL research.
Faculty often use data from student reflection assignments, exams, interviews, or outcomes assessments to explore:
- student achievement of course learning outcomes from service-learning or engaged research
- student outcomes on civic outcomes, such as cultural intelligence, empathy, or awareness of structural inequity
- student outcomes on academic skills such as writing, problem solving, or critical thinking
De la Fuente's presentation highlighted existing SOTL research at GW. This included Lotte Baker's (GSEHD) recent publication reported findings from her examination of Dolores Perillon's (Spanish) service-learning course on student language acquisition outcomes. She also offered a reminder that GW's Teaching Day offers faculty opportunities to present SOTL research. To this point, Maranda Ward, Assistant Professor in Health Sciences, shared with the group the SOTL research poster presentation she presented at Teaching Day last week. Her study is examining student development of empathy in her health equity course.
Many thanks to Maria de la Fuente for leading this discussion.
Resource Links from this Conversation:
- Maria de la Fuente's presentation slides
- The live presentation of this Conversation (over 140 views so far!) available via Periscope
- Lotte Baker's recent research publication in partnership with Dolores Perillan's SPAN 3040 course.
- An interesting meta-analysis article of SOTL studies examining service-learning courses
- There are many publication outlets for this work, one example is The International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Nashman Center Resources
Here are some Nashman resources to support faculty with an interest in conducting a SOTL study of their community engaged scholarship course:
- The Nashman Center's faculty development grants, available annually, can be used to support SOTL studies of community engaged scholarship courses
- Our web resources includes a list of peer reviewed journals that publish research related to community engaged scholarship
- Our staff can offer assistance identifying measurement scales for learning outcomes that are common in this work (for example: the civic minded graduate scale, the social perspective taking scale, or the AACU Value Rubrics for assessing reflection papers or similar student work)
- We welcome input on the items included in the bi-annual survey of students enrolled in community engaged scholarship courses, and will share the de-identified data from students enrolled in your course.
- Student staff support for certain tasks
