This article builds upon current research to understand the value and limitations of teaching and learning design thinking (DT) in higher education. We implemented a mixed-methods study with faculty and students across 23 diverse courses in four higher education institutions in the United States. Findings showed that following structured learning…

The adoption of digital technologies in higher education offers new opportunities for student learning but also adds complexity to course design and development processes. Although practice varies across institutions and nations, a common response is that teams of people are now involved in the development and creation of blended and online…

Arts-based pedagogy has the potential to reimagine "traditional" research to engage learners in expanded and innovative methods, while also creating space for student voices. Grounded in a Deweyan experiential framework informed by arts-based pedagogy, this reflective dialogue revolves around a pedagogical reframing of a data analysis…

In this paper, we seek to contextualize our work in SoTL-focused educational development and those who work to support others in SoTL, as interstitially spaced across the 4M Framework, re-envisioned as a flexible but formalized professional continua. The establishment of a model for educational development SoTL-related activity allows for the…

In this paper, we present and reflect on using scenarios and role-plays as an effective approach to engaging in the often complicated conversations about student-faculty/staff partnerships, particularly those involving the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Students as co-developers of pedagogical processes, as well as co-researchers in…

What is active learning? While active learning has been demonstrated to have positive impacts on student learning and performance, defining the concept has been elusive. Previous research examining active learning definitions in STEM fields found that the vast majority of published articles did not define active learning, and those that did…

Because university campuses are microcosms of broader political and social climates, the increasingly polarized climates outside universities can permeate the classroom, challenging faculty who teach topics characterized by controversy and discomfort. We conducted a lesson study project at a college in the southeastern United States in three…

A key debate in higher education is how assessment and feedback can be constructed to maximize opportunities for meaningful student learning. In this paper, we explore how a learning-focused model of feedback, teacher-student dialogic feed-forward, is enacted in practice, exposing many affordances but also some challenges. Adopting a small-scale…

Amongst a range of changes that have taken place within tertiary education, perhaps the most revolutionary has been a shift to student-centred approaches focused on lifelong learning. Accompanying this approach to holistic higher education (HE) has been a growing interest in, and understanding of, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).…

What do grades mean? What purpose do they serve? What role do they play in the learning process? Teachers and scholars have recently begun to re-examine these questions central to our current grading system. As a result, many have started to re-assess how grades are assigned in their classes. In this case study, I examine the effectiveness of…

This essay considers how the current age of multiple crises is leading to changes in questions we ask of teaching and learning, questions we ask in SoTL, and the role of SoTL scholars.

Educators increasingly extol failure as a necessary component of learning and growth. However, students frequently experience failure as a source of fear and anxiety that impedes risk-taking and experimentation. This essay examines the dissonance between these "generative" and "stigmatized" paradigms of failure, and it offers…

Though academics and employers have demonstrated increasing interest in the skills learned by university students, less is known about student perceptions of the skills developed during a degree. In the current study, we examined students' and working adults' beliefs about the skills learned and not learned during their first degree. We also…

Increasingly, academics are engaging with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). However, within United Kingdom higher education, the definition of and activities that constitute SoTL remain open to debate. In this article, we explore SoTL through four career histories that give insight into how SoTL has developed and played a role in…

Professional development offerings for current and aspiring educational developers can be sparse and neither fully contextually appropriate nor personally relevant given the range of experiences people bring to the field. In the absence of suitable professionalization programs, we created a self-defined professional development approach to support…