University at Buffalo (UB)
Empowering Instructors | Supporting Excellence
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
The landscape of teaching and learning is shifting at a pace that demands scholarly attention.
We are bringing the same standards of inquiry, evidence, and public dissemination to learning that we bring to discovery. The SoTL Community of Practice at UB connects faculty across disciplines around questions that matter and infrastructure to pursue them with rigor.
What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?
SoTL is the systematic inquiry into student learning and teaching practices in higher education (Hutchings & Shulman, 1999), scholarly teaching taken a step further, made public, and contributed back to a body of knowledge that advances the field.
Action research is using investigation to solve problems and/or use data to improve practices (not just to publish results of a study).
- Achievement data refers to data that references student success, such as GPA, retention, and assignment and course grades. This data may be collected formatively or summatively throughout the course, at the end of the course, or longitudinally appropriate to the type of data being collected.
- Demographic data refers to data that references information about a student such as their race/ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic status, military/veteran status, and/or educational details (e.g., major, student level, first-generation student status, and//or financial aid information).
- Self-reported data refers to data that comes from a test, measure, or survey that relies on an individual's own report of their symptoms, behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes. It is used in both qualitative and quantitative research.
- Some examples of qualitative self-report data come from interview (both individual and in groups) and open-ended questionnaires.
- Some examples of quantitative self-report data come from closed-ended questions, rating scales (e.g. Likert Scales) and fixed-choice questions (e.g. Yes/No).
Pilot studies are an opportunity to try out a practice, process, or technique with a test group before initiating a launch at full capacity. This test run allows for testing, data collection, analysis, and continuous improvement.
- Qualitative research is naturalistic inquiry and produces qualitative data.
- Qualitative data are measures of 'types' and may be represented by a name, symbol, or a number code. Qualitative data are data about categorical variables (e.g. what type).
- Surveys can be deployed in a qualitive format when using open-ended questioning, allowing participants to comment free-form to the items. Thematic analysis is used between and within the responses.
- Case studies are in-depth examinations of a single circumstance/instance/event.
- Observations are a means of gathering data about a process or technique via watching participants in their natural setting, such as students or teachers in a classroom or experiential learning environment.
- Interviews are one-on-one conversations that collect data from individuals in an open-ended format.
- Focus groups are opportunities, like interviews, to have conversations to collect data, from small groups of people about their perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.
- Quantitative research produces quantitative (numeric) data.
- Quantitative data are measures of values or counts and are expressed as numbers. Quantitative data are data about numeric variables (e.g. how many; how much; or how often).
- Surveys are close-ended (qualitative if open-ended), or Likert rating scale lists of questions that a participant responds to that generate a series of data that can be analyzed in a quantitative manner.
- One common type of survey is course evaluations. You can utilize your end-of-semester course evaluations to ask students up to 3 custom questions (close-ended or open-ended). In addition, UBLearns has both surveys and self-assessments for anonymous surveys.
Higher Education is navigating too complex for any one course, department or institution to solve alone. The SoTL Grand Challenges give those problems a shared name and a framework for pursuing them with rigor, collaboration and the scale they require.
At UB, faculty bring their scholarly inquiry to these questions:
- How we develop critical and creative thinkers
- How we engage students as active learners
- The complex processes of learning itself
- How identity shapes teaching and learning
- The practice, reach, and growth of SoTL as a field
Faculty connect through four areas of scholarly practice where UB is already generating distinctive work, all within a single shared community.
Classroom Inquiry — Studying what happens when teaching changes, and making that knowledge public.
Transformative Research — Scholarship that takes real risk in the service of equity, transformation, and impact.
Connected Scholarship — Networks and partnerships that generate what no single researcher can produce alone.
Engaged Practice — Scholarly engagement beyond the institution that returns as research, visibility, and opportunity.
Each semester the community gathers around one circuit, open to all UB faculty. Not a lecture, but an invitation for engagement, sharing, and emerging collaboration.
Launching fall 2026. Four events across the academic year, each co-produced with a partner office: Sponsored Programs, the UB Foundation, Faculty Affairs, and CATT. Details and registration forthcoming.
Between gatherings, the conversation continues on Viva Engage, CATT's space for dynamic conversation, engagement and emerging collaboration.
UB is committed to continued research on topics including the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Have a project you'd like us to highlight? Reach out — we're always looking to feature UB's SoTL work.
Four whole-community gatherings across the academic year- one per circuit, open to all UB faculty. Launching fall 2026.
Scholarly Infrastructure
- SoTL project design and action research support
- The PEARL project framework for experiential learning
- Opportunity mapping across grants, publications, and dissemination pathways
- Cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional connections
- Grant development support
- ArcGIS tools for scholarship in action- StoryMaps for public-facing dissemination, Survey123 for data collection and community engagement
Isotl
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning Inquiry (TLI)- journal of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Four whole-community gatherings across the academic year — one per circuit, open to all UB faculty. Launching fall 2026.
Scholarly Infrastructure
SoTL project design and action research · The PEARL framework for experiential learning · Grant and publication opportunity mapping · Cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional connections · Grant development support · ArcGIS tools — StoryMaps for public-facing dissemination, Survey123 for data collection
