Collections
Expertly curated content on a wide range of pedagogically focused topics
Designing a SoTL Study
Designing a SoTL study requires thoughtful decisions about study design, methods, and disciplinary approaches to inquiry. This collection introduces a range of accessible resources to help you choose a study design that aligns with your research questions and scholarly goals.
Using AI to Support Students with Disabilities
Research shows that text-to-speech (TTS) is a prominent use of generative AI by students with disabilities. This collection features ideas for using AI to support students with disabilities in a variety of educational contexts and points to two AI-powered TTS tools.
Conducting SoTL Literature Reviews
Conducting a literature review is essential to any SoTL project, but it can be challenging to know where to begin. This collection offers practical tools and strategies to help you search for, organize, and engage with SoTL literature—whether you're using traditional methods, AI tools, or both.
Collaborative Writing in SoTL
Whether you're new to SoTL co-authorship or refining your approach, this collection offers resources to help you navigate collaborative writing. You'll find resources on authorship expectations, productive workflows, and models for structuring your work together.
Navigating SoTL Ethics and the IRB
Navigating ethical considerations and institutional review board (IRB) processes is a critical part of SoTL. This collection offers practical guidance and examples on what qualifies as research, how to prepare an IRB application, and how to uphold ethical standards in classroom-based research.
Gathering SoTL Evidence
Gathering evidence in SoTL requires careful choices about what kinds of student learning to make visible. This collection offers practical resources—from survey design tips to a compendium of validated scales—to help you plan for and collect the right data to answer your SoTL research questions.
What is SoTL?
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is the systematic study of teaching and learning made public, such as through publication in an education research journal or at a conference. This collection will introduce you to this type of classroom-based research.
Developing SoTL Research Questions
Developing a strong research question is a critical first step in conducting a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project. This collection offers guiding frameworks and practical strategies to help you move from a general topic of interest to a well-defined SoTL inquiry.
Making Teaching Matter: Student Perspectives on Cultivating Character in Higher Education
The Making Teaching Matter for Civic and Intellectual Life project started in 2024 at UVA's School of Education and Human Development. This collection features essays from students involved the project with advice for instructors on cultivating civic engagement, ethical decision-making, and more.
In-Class Polling for Student Engagement
Instead of asking our students "Any questions?" and hoping for a response, we can use polling technologies to enable and invite all of our students to share their questions and respond to ours. The resources in this collection will help you use these technologies intentionally for student learning.
Teaching as Inquiry, Not Advocacy
A professor is not a politician or a preacher. An instructor may know that their teaching is rooted in academic inquiry, not advocacy, but how can they make this clear to students and others? These resources help instructors answer this question and establish themselves as honest brokers.
Compassionate Online Course Design
Discover how compassionate online course design can help you put flexibility, peer support, and motivation at the heart of the online learning experience.
Standards-Based Grading
These resources provide an introduction to Standards-Based Grading, an alternative grading philosophy in which students' grades are based primarily on the number of content standards they demonstrate mastery of at any point in the term.
Leveraging WordPress for Student ePortfolios, Blogs, and Websites
This collection considers the research on and reasons for having students create ePortfolios, blogs, or websites. It also features guidance on using WordPress at UVA, including instructions for integrating the tool into UVACanvas.
Reciprocal Peer Teaching Observations
Peer observation of teaching need not happen only as part of faculty evaluation processes. Observing each others' classes with the purpose of reflecting and providing feedback to one another benefits instructional quality as well as collegial connection.
Emotions and Learning
We often think of learning as a purely cognitive activity, one characterized by cold intellect and impartiality. This collection offers a counterpoint, presenting theoretical grounding, data, and practical suggestions for centering emotional and motivational aspects of teaching and learning.
Teaching for Democratic Engagement and Civic Learning
Across the disciplines, instructors can support students’ development as citizens and voters. These resources explore ways to incorporate this work in your courses, design engaging activities for civic skills building, and prepare for high-stakes discussions in polarized times.
Getting Started as a Graduate Student Teacher
First time teaching your own course? In this collection, you'll find foundational resources to begin your teaching journey. Each resource is from my own bookshelf that I use over and over again!
Assessment as Learning
How can we transform assessment from a summative event to one that actively engages students in learning? This collection explores approaches to assessment that foster self-regulation, reflection, and evaluative judgment, and that support students in becoming life-long learners.
Improving Students' Feedback Literacy
When students receive feedback on their work, what do they do with it? Feedback literacy encompasses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students need to appreciate the value of feedback, engage in feedback processes, and take responsibility for their own learning and development.