Genevieve Newton, Chris Ostrowski, Monica Sanago, Janice Miller-Young
SoTL Canada is a constituency of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and we are part of the SoTL Canada executive team, elected by its membership. Formed in 2012, SoTL Canada strives to provide “a targeted opportunity for SoTL scholars to form a community to share findings and challenges, engage in opportunities for broader dissemination of SoTL work, and consider ways to catalyze SoTL initiatives at the institutional, regional, national, and international levels.” Past projects include pre-conference workshops, a special issue of New Directions in Teaching and Learning about the history and impact of SoTL across Canada, and collaborative writing groups which resulted in a special issue of the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In a 2014 membership survey, SoTL Canada members expressed interest in writing support, peer mentoring, and methods workshops.
Before initiating a peer mentoring program, we wanted to discover who is engaged in SoTL and what SoTL activities are taking place across Canada. An online survey was distributed to SoTL Canada members and liaisons at Canadian institutions, who invited colleagues engaged in SoTL (i.e., snowball sampling). In addition to demographic and institutional characteristics, participants were asked about the type of SoTL work they are involved in; if they have collaborated with students; the integration of SoTL into job descriptions at their institutions; the level and type of funding they received for SoTL; and their dissemination methods of SoTL.
Across Canada, 257 faculty and staff from higher education institutions participated in this study. Interestingly, nearly half of the participants indicated SoTL was part of their job description or expectations, suggesting wider recognition of SoTL as a valuable use of institutional time and resources. At the same time, almost 40% of participants did not receive any funding to do SoTL, suggesting misalignment between available funding infrastructure and positive institutional sentiment for SoTL (Felten, Gardner, Schroeder, Lambert, & Barefoot, 2016). In addition to these, we will discuss insights and details from the survey responses to map the terrain of how SoTL is being taken up in Canada.
Together with the audience, we will discuss how similar surveys might be conducted elsewhere, and how such knowledge could be used to yield positive outcomes such as advocating for support, facilitating collaborations, and leveraging expertise.
