At our university, we support small grants for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects. Our team is seeking to address the concern that prospective SoTL investigators may not have sufficient relevant methodological perspective and/or expertise to approach SoTL questions, and thus certain designs are over/under-utilized and/or not well-suited to the inquiry at hand. To address this, we have reviewed 120 of our small grant projects, harmonizing them into a single framework, and developing accompanying support materials. The framework includes quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and conceptualises projects according to their research purposes (exploratory or testing), project types (e.g., design, evaluation), data sources, and participant selection/recruitment methods. Drawing from our own SoTL experiences and disciplinary backgrounds (Education and Statistics), we have sought to make this framework practical and understandable to SoTL researchers across disciplines. The materials accompanying the framework facilitate informed choices regarding the relative suitability and implementation of different research designs by providing practical advice and suggestions as well as resources for further reading. We will share an abridged version of our framework and accompanying materials with participants and we will engage participants in an activity in which they will apply our framework to their own question(s). Attendees will develop a deeper and wider understanding of the range of methodologies that can be used to address SoTL questions, as well as some of the theoretical, practical, and methodological considerations that should inform their choice(s).
