Welcome to the 2024 Workshop on Scholarly Teaching and SoTL in Linguistics (WoSTaSiL 24)!!

This week, we'll be introducing some basic concepts in scholarly teaching and reflecting on them as we begin drafting our TRILL submissions. There are a few tasks we'd like you to complete prior to attending your synchronous cohort meeting (Tuesday, Wednesday, OR Thursday), so make sure that you read the following page carefully. 

In this week’s introductory text, we wanted to provide you with some context for TRILL and WoSTaSiL. We hope that by reading about it here, you will be ready to begin drafting your TRILL submission in preparation for this week’s synchronous meeting. 

What is TRILL?

The Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Linguistics is being developed in partnership with the Linguistic Society of America and will be the first peer-reviewed venue for the sharing of high quality, evidence-based linguistics teaching resources. Because TRILL submissions are subject to peer-review, they are therefore scholarly documents building our disciplinary capacity for improving the teaching and learning of linguistics. 

What does a submission to TRILL look like?

TRILL submissions comprise a pedagogical resource, accompanied by a short narrative contextualizing its use. What distinguishes TRILL from other repositories of teaching materials (e.g. the Linguistic Academic Depository; LAD) is that TRILL resources (assignments, class activities, etc.) are accompanied by a short narrative that helps contextualize the resource and ensures that it can be useful in a broader variety of pedagogical contexts. 

Moreover, TRILL resources are expected to engage substantively with considerations in the spirit of making ethical use of data, and increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion in service of greater justice in teaching linguistics.

Why TRILL?

TRILL is motivated by both annotated resource libraries in other disciplines and our experience discussing teaching and learning with linguists in a variety of venues, both formal and informal.  These discussions invariably become most useful and interesting when they move beyond simply sharing resources: no matter how interesting a syllabus or classroom activity is, it can be difficult to use that resource in a different pedagogical context; conversations contextualizing a resource are a bridge that allows for such resources to be fruitfully used by other educators.

While we have been inspired by the resource libraries in other disciplines, we benefit from TRILL’s late inception because we are able to incorporate not only pedagogical concepts from literature in the area of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), but are also able to build TRILL from the ground up with concerns for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI).  

What is the role of WoSTaSiL 24?

In order to ensure that TRILL meets the needs of the broader linguistics community, WoSTaSiL has two main goals: 

• Guide and mentor participants through the creation of their TRILL submissions

• Develop and pilot a peer-review process for TRILL

What will we be doing in the next 5 weeks? 

During our 5-weeks together, you will draft a submission and play an active role in piloting a peer review system for TRILL. We will do this through:

• Weekly asynchronous modules on some core principles of scholarly teaching in Linguistics and the development of TRILL resources (portions to be completed prior to each weekly meeting)

• Weekly 2-hour Zoom workshop sessions during Weeks 1, 2, 3, and 5

• Optional individual consultations with organizers and/or peer review in Week 4

Why WoSTaSiL?

WoSTaSiL is being organized by the Faculty Learning Community (FLC) on Scholarly Teaching in Linguistics. Building on our experience over the past few years, we have found that there are great benefits to working in community when doing teaching-related work. WoSTaSiL builds on several activities, and sessions we have hosted over the last 4 years, and we are thrilled to have a group of 30 dedicated linguists joining us this year. We hope that you’ll take a look at our webpage and check out some of the resources we have developed. 

• Save your file as “LastName CohortDay Week1” (e.g. Hiramatsu Tuesday Week1)

• LINK to submitting assignment summary and  reflection on Google Drive