Supporting teachers in doing SoTL: Development and effect of an interdisciplinary course at Utrecht University

Establishing and sustaining a culture of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as part of a professional approach to teaching and learning offers many challenges. Careful introduction of SoTL is needed with many aspects to be considered such as the development of support structures like pedagogical courses.
Recently Educational Scholarship, including SoTL, became one of the cornerstones of the new Utrecht Centre for Academic Teaching (CAT) of the Utrecht University (UU), the Netherlands, with the aim to make SoTL part of the learning culture of the UU. UU is therefore at the starting point of integrating SoTL as part of the professional development of academic staff. Based on our experiences with two explorative pilot courses for teachers, literature research and a theoretical framework, a new pedagogical course for science teachers that want to get engaged in SoTL was developed. A community-based approach, with plenty of room for peer-discussion and feedback, was chosen to make it able for participants to share their projects and to collaborate. Other main principles for the development of the course were mentoring by experts, relevant workshops, guided discussions, financial support, dedicated time for the participants, and the encouragement of participants to work together on (shared) projects in theme groups. The course is aimed at teachers from the faculty of Science and was given from October 2018 until September 2019.
In this study the theoretical framework of the design of the course will be illustrated. The first results of a mid-term evaluation show that the participants appreciate being part of a community with plenty of opportunity for peer discussion, reflection and structured support for their SoTL-project. It is expected that most of the participants will successfully finish the course by executing a SoTL-project and sharing the results.
The final study contributes to the quality of teaching and student learning, and the academic development of teachers, by formulating design principles for SoTL-courses. In addition, success- and failure factors of SoTL-courses and support programmes will be identified.