SoTL Research

1) Start broad and narrow down from there. Begin by searching using keywords related to the aspect of teaching/learning before narrowing down to specific populations or methods.  It's easier to narrow down, but harder to refine if you start with a restrictive search string. 

2) Give Google Scholar a try to see what is coming up - it will search beyond published lit and looks across disciplines. Mine cited by lists to find related sources. Check out the Google Scholar page of this guide for Google Scholar search tips. 

3) Pay attention to the resource that you're in.

Is the word "STEM" a redundant search term while exploring a STEM journal? Probably.

However, if you're in a general database like "Academic Search Complete" that is multidisciplinary, "STEM" is probably a required term to focus the results of your search

4) Refine search after looking at results, and repeat. Be sure to consider synonyms. "ORing" gets you more results, "ANDing" reduces the number of results.

Sample search:

"virtual reality" OR "VR" OR "augmented reality" OR "AR"

AND field trip* OR survey* 

AND learn* OR teach*

AND undergrad*

5) Check your discipline's literature - SoTL research exists across disciplines. Try adding SoTL related keywords to your search to narrow your results. 

6) Try "SoTL", "higher education", "postsecondary" if your results are primarily focused on K-12 education. 

7) Search beyond academic journals. SoTL research is shared through dissertations, podcasts, magazines, conferences and more.

Credit: University of Calgary SoTL libguide and Taylor Institute Research and Writing Literature Reviews for SoTL

What search terms work best will vary from database to database.

In ERIC for example, you might find you're getting results related to K-12 teaching and will  need to add terms to narrow to higher education.

The following list is a starting point to help you find SoTL research. 

• sotl OR "scholarship of teaching and learning"
• "teaching methods" 
• learning 
• "higher education" 
• instruction
• "instructional improvement" OR "effective teaching" 
• "college teachers" 

The following tools can be useful when searching for grey literature, including dissertations, open access articles, conference presentations and more:

• BASE indexes content from open access journals, dissertations, course materials, manuscripts, conference presentations, repositories and more. It's operated by Bielefeld University Library, and 60% of the content is available as open access. 
   
• OpenDOAR is a global directory of open access repositories, which you can browse by country or by doing an advanced search and specifying what criteria you're interested in. You can browse the Canadian listings and find links to numerous university repositories. 

SoTL Repositories

Certain institutions have also created SoTL specific repositories. The easiest way to find them is to do a Google search for SoTL repository. Here are three examples:

• SoTL Bibliography by Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at Indiana University Bloomington (bibliography only)
• Learning and Teaching Repository at Universities Australia
• ISoTL (UBC)

The following guides provide additional search tips for locating SoTL research:

The search tips on this guide are adapted with permission from The University of Calgary's Scholarship of Teaching & Learning guide, and from The University of Connecticut's Scholarship of Teaching & Learning guide, shared under a Creative Commons 4.0 License.