BRIDGING THE BOW:
CONNECTING CALGARY'S SoTL COMMUNITIES

Ideas Lounge | Morning Session 1

Panel Discussion: Moving SoTL Into Everyday Practice

Facilitated by Erika Smith (University of Calgary)

How can we move SoTL research beyond journals and into everyday teaching practice? This collaborative session, led by panelists from Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, explores practical strategies for translating Scholarship of Teaching and Learning findings into meaningful classroom change. Participants will discuss approaches for making scholarly insights accessible, actionable, and relevant, bridging the gap between research and practice. Whether you're new to SoTL or looking to amplify your work, join us to build connections and discuss strategies for mobilizing knowledge across teaching contexts in ways that can transcend traditional boundaries.

Panelists: Leda Stawnychko (MRU), Sreyasi Biswas, Austin Ashbaugh (University of Calgary)

Flexible Learning Lab | Morning Workshop

Inspire, investigate, and translate: Building an ecosystem of student-faculty partnerships to enhance teaching and learning.

Facilitated by Cherie Woolmer (MRU)

This workshop introduces the idea of student-faculty partnership ecosystems as a framework for supporting teaching observations, curriculum redesign and co-creation, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and knowledge translation practices in post secondary education. Grounded in the concept of “disruptive ecosystems,” the session invites participants to reconsider traditional assumptions about expertise, authority, and knowledge production in higher education, and to explore how partnership practices can reshape teaching and learning cultures in meaningful and sustainable ways.

Drawing on emerging models and examples from practice at Mount Royal University, the workshop will examine how students can move beyond consultation roles to become collaborators, co-researchers, and knowledge mobilizers within institutional teaching and learning initiatives. Participants will discuss the opportunities and tensions that emerge in this work, including questions of power, reciprocity, institutional resistance, labour, scalability, and the risk of partnership becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

Participants will engage in a series of interactive activities designed to help them identify possibilities for implementing partnership practices within their own contexts. Through collaborative dialogue, participants will critically examine both the promise and complexity of partnership work while developing practical strategies for fostering more participatory and connected approaches to teaching and learning.

Participants will leave with a conceptual framework, concrete examples, and actionable ideas for building partnership ecosystems within their own institutional settings.

Ideas Lounge

Coffee Break

Ideas Lounge | Morning Session 2

Where Do I Start? Navigating Entry Points into SoTL

Facilitated by Charissa Lee (SAIT)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) often begins with a simple question: What am I noticing in my teaching, and why does it matter? This interactive workshop invites participants to explore accessible, curiosity-driven entry points into SoTL, particularly for those who are new to or exploring scholarly inquiry in teaching and learning (Hutchings, 2000; Felten, 2013). Rather than positioning SoTL as a formal research process from the outset, this session engages participants in active reflection and small-group dialogue to surface moments of curiosity, uncertainty, or challenge in their own teaching practice. Through guided activities, participants will begin to shape these moments into potential lines of inquiry.

Drawing on examples from applied and teaching-intensive contexts, the session introduces practical, low-barrier strategies for getting started, including ways to refine questions, identify existing sources of insight (e.g., student work or feedback), and take small, manageable first steps (Bishop-Clark & Dietz-Uhler, 2012). Emphasis is placed on collaborative sense-making, peer feedback, and iterative exploration.

Participants will leave with a draft area of inquiry, initial ideas for action, and increased confidence in engaging with SoTL in ways that are practical, relational, and immediately applicable to their teaching (Huber & Hutchings, 2005).

Flexible Learning Lab | Morning Workshop

Students as Partners project (continued)

Facilitated by Cherie Woolmer (MRU)

Ideas Lounge

SoTL Networking Lunch

Flexible Learning Lab | Afternoon Session 1

Approaches to SoTL Research

Facilitated by Michelle Yeo (MRU), Karen Mannarin (MRU) and Janice Miller Young (University of Alberta)

This session will focus on common approaches to conducting SoTL inquiries. We will begin by thinking about sources of research questions and data in SoTL, and a brief consideration of research paradigms. We'll outline some things to think about when doing quantitative/mixed methods, qualitative empirical, and interpretive methods research. Participants will have the opportunity to consider where their assumptions fit on a SoTL spectrum and which methodologies and methods align with those assumptions.

Ideas Lounge | Afternoon Workshop

Going Public: DORA and SoTL

Facilitators: Erika Smith (University of Calgary) and Richard Hayman (MRU)

How we assess scholarship shapes what scholarship gets done, how it is shared, and who benefits from it. This workshop connects the scholarship of teaching and learning with one of the most significant global movements in research assessment reform, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, 2012). DORA challenges the dominance of narrow, metric-driven measures of scholarly worth by devaluing journal impact factors, citation counts, and similar proxies, in favour of more meaningful, contextual evaluation of research contributions. With over 26,000 signatories across 172 countries, including many post-secondary institutions, DORA is reshaping how universities think about hiring, promotion, and the public value of scholarship.

SoTL is uniquely well-positioned to answer DORA's call. Its commitments to "going public" (Boyer, 1990; Felten, 2013; Friberg & Chick, 2023), to non-traditional dissemination, and to participatory, qualitative inquiry already embody many of DORA's core values, but this alignment remains underexplored. Drawing on knowledge mobilisation (KM) and knowledge translation (KT) frameworks, this hands-on workshop invites participants to examine how SoTL's practices connect with broader movements in open scholarship, narrative CVs, and community-engaged research. We ask: How can DORA's principles help SoTL scholars advance public-facing work? How do we translate SoTL insights for audiences beyond the academy (ISSOTL Grand Challenge #5, Sharff et al., 2023)? What collaborations might bridge institutional and disciplinary divides? 

Participants will leave with resources and strategies to inform their creation of more accessible, publicly engaged scholarship.

Ideas Lounge

Coffee Break

Visualization Classroom | Afternoon Session 2

Ethics in SoTL: Data, Consent, and Responsible Inquiry

Facilitated by AnneMarie Dorland (MRU)

What does ethical data collection look like in the context of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)? This one-hour workshop focuses on the practical and procedural dimensions of ethics in SoTL, with particular attention to how we gather, use, and interpret student data in classroom-based research.

Together, we will explore key considerations including informed consent in dual-role contexts, minimizing coercion, privacy and confidentiality, data management and storage, and the boundaries between teaching practice and research activity. We will also examine how institutional ethics processes (e.g., REB requirements) intersect with the realities of classroom inquiry.

Through applied scenarios and guided discussion, participants will surface common challenges, compare approaches, and develop strategies for conducting SoTL work that is both methodologically sound and ethically robust.

This session is designed for those beginning SoTL projects as well as experienced practitioners seeking to strengthen their approach to ethical data collection and use.

Ideas Lounge | Afternoon Workshop

Going Public: DORA and SoTL (continued)

Facilitators: Erika Smith (University of Calgary) and Richard Hayman (MRU)