CLASS 2 SCHOLARLY TEACHING AND THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING

Designing a Research Question

February 10, 2014

Agenda Pam Knapp, PhD Professor, Anatomy and

Neurobiology and former chair, School

of Medicine Promotion and

Tenure Committee

The Conference on

Higher Education

Pedagogy Roy Sabo and Fidelma

Rigby

Developing a preliminary plan

for a study in medical

education:

What interests you?

Fine-tuning a research question

How do you distinguish between scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching?

Purpose of scholarly

teaching is to have an impact on teaching and

learning

SoTL results in formal, peer-

reviewed work that becomes

part of the larger knowledge base on teaching and

learning

Wiman & Richlin (2007)

How do you know if a work is scholarly?

Requires a high level of disciplinary expertise

Charts new territory or is innovative

Provides enough detail to be replicated

Provides documentation of what was done and what was found

Can be peer-reviewed

Can be judged as being significant or impacting the discipline

Are the goals of the research

articulated, and are they clear?

Is there a demonstrable

understanding of the literature?

Does the scholar possess the skills

to conduct the research?

Are the methods appropriate to the goals,

and the research question?

Do the results make a significant

contribution to the literature?

Does the scholar critically evaluate

the work in a manner that will

improve it?

Glassick et al., 1997)

Steps in the SoTL Process

Generate the research question

Design the study

Collect the data

Analyze the data

Present and publish your work

Brainstorm as many ideas as you can consider in 5 minutes

Transform your hunches and ideas about teaching and learning into research questions that can be answered empirically.

What does it take to come up with a good research question?

Time

Thoughtful analysis of your own interests and practical constraints

A thorough review of the literature (in multiple disciplines)

Feedback from trusted colleagues

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/

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