File: Scholarship of Teaching
How to Start: Identifying a Problem and the Questions It Raises
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If you have an idea for a SoTL project but are struggling to articulate your interests as a concrete research question, this guide provides one possible approach: Asking questions about a problem you observe.
Often the most difficult yet important stage in a SoTL project is the initial phase, choosing a "problem" (Bass) to investigate and then developing your research question(s). First, you want to choose a "problem" that
- is meaningful and significant to you,
- is possible to research with the time, resources, and students you have, and
- is deliberate, narrow, and focused, so that your project will adequately answer your research question.
Take time to reflect on your problem, and consider how it is contextualized within your specific student body, institution, and discipline. Writing a page about these issues will help you in the future as you think back on your beginnings and prepare to go public.
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