Enabling a Learning and Teaching CoP through the SoTL Mini-Lab

Authors and presenters

• Frances Fan, School of Education, CALE

• Bianca Coleman, School of Education, CALE

• David Hicks, School of Education, CALE

• Tracey Muir, School of Education, CALE

• Bill Baker, School of Education, CALE

• Robyn McCarthy, School of Education, CALE

• Tracy Douglas, School of Health Sciences, CoHM

• Stephanie Richey, School of Education, CALE

• Isabel Wang, School of Humanities, CALE

Summary

The School of Education established the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Mini-Lab in September 2022 with a mission to enhance awareness among colleagues regarding scholarly teaching and SoTL through a Community of Practice. Since its establishment, the Lab has involved over 30 colleagues from Education as well as from other Schools in CALE and other Colleges. In February this year, we started with the first workshop, introducing the idea of SoTL and allowing the Mini-Lab members to identify a target question or a problem they wish to address and potential strategies to address these. Following this workshop, our colleagues conducted teaching initiatives to implement the strategies. Semester 1 saw 10 teaching initiatives conducted within and beyond the School of Education. Examples of these initiatives include the adoption of Padlet to support student engagement, using small discussion groups (<10) to foster connections among students and using H5P interactive activities to develop students’ research literacy. The Mini-Lab members supported each other through monthly group discussions during Semester 1, followed by the second workshop in June to share their observations and experiences.

In this session, we hope to introduce the SoTL Mini-Lab and share stories from our teaching initiatives with colleagues from and beyond CALE.