The theme of this year’s forum is Catalyzing Conversations: Energizing SoTL. We will come together to build, sustain, and energize our SoTL community as we reflect on a unique year and plan for the future. This forum will provide space to engage, explore and expedite SoTL projects in various stages of completion ranging from ideas and inquiry to completion. After remote working for over a year, we acknowledge the absence of opportunities for SoTL practitioners and scholars to meet in interdisciplinary, cross-institutional spaces that form the heart of the SoTL movement. To help redress this, the format of the SoTL forum will focus on two core activities for participants to engage in conversation and interaction:
- Pitch rooms: Calls for collaboration, triangulation, and development – multiple 20 minute sessions that share early-stage research questions and findings with a limited group, with the objective of establishing connections with like-minded researchers, receiving feedback on research in progress, and sparking new ideas in both the presenters and audience. These are intended to be more conversational than a traditional presentation. Multiple pitch rooms will run concurrently with opportunities for audience members to switch between rooms every 20 minutes and discuss current works in progress. The Call for Proposals solicits submissions from those interested in sharing their early-stage research. Each presenter would offer their pitch several times (similar to the “cracker barrel” sessions at previous Symposia).
- Thematic discussion forums - 45 minute facilitated conversations that explore, critique, and discuss key lines of inquiry emerging within SoTL(for example, Student as Partners, Equity in SoTL, SoTL in the time of Covid). The goal of these sessions is to catalyze conversations on important and emerging themes within SoTL. The Call for Proposals solicits submissions from those interested in leading these sessions.Leaders of these sessions may briefly present their own work, and present current thinking and literature on a topic, but are encouraged to pose questions and guide the conversation.
Proposals are encouraged from students, faculty, administrators, or community members committed to the systematic scholarly inquiry into aspects of teaching and learning in a higher education setting. We encourage proposals that demonstrate (potential) collaborations with students, with other instructors and among multiple disciplines and contexts.
Scholarship must be at the centre of all successful proposals. Proposals that focus on course or program design or ‘how to’ strategies must describe how this topic will advance SoTL knowledge and/or practice, and refer to current literature. The submission form requires the following information:
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names, titles and affiliations of all proposal participants with contact email addresses for each,
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names of participants attending and presenting at the forum,
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a title,
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a maximum 150-word abstract for the Forum Program which will be published as is,
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a maximum 350-word session description for reviewers:
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Pitch room presentations should specifically describe research goals, sources of evidence and analysis, and incorporate supporting literature,
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Thematic discussion forums will include the topic and why it is of interest to a SoTL audience, how the 45 minute session will engage participants, and why the facilitator/s are well placed to run the session,
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for blind review, ensure that no identifying information is included in the body of the abstract,
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a reference list supporting the work (up to 4 references).
All presenters must register for the Forum and are responsible for their own registration fees.