Scholarship of teaching and learning

Teaching University students can be an extremely rewarding career choice. At times it can be challenging and tasks like marking multiple assignments can be exhausting, but there is nothing that beats the feeling of seeing your students mature, progress and succeed under your instruction and inspiration. Teaching is a real art, full of subtle nuances acquired over a lifetime. It is also a science, with rigorous evidence-based research conducted in the field of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (often called SoTL) that can be used to inform your practice. This chapter is an opportunity to immerse yourself in this exciting world.

Whilst much of The Little Red Book emphasises the regulatory framework and policy context for learning and teaching, this chapter focuses on a different aspect. It is all about our core role as leaders of learning. The sections in this chapter are designed to provide practical support in relation to the actual teaching process. It is particularly written with new academic staff, those who have little experience of teaching tertiary students, in mind, although more experienced staff may find it useful to review the ideas presented here from time to time. We will regularly update this chapter online to take account of new SoTL research.

This chapter includes a number of concrete strategies and suggestions from experienced university educators and covers a range of teaching situations and contexts, including lectures, tutorials and various forms of fieldwork.

Early in the chapter we explore different views of how students learn. This is followed by an overview of the process of planning learning, including consideration of our current teaching and learning priorities at ECU. Next we look at good practice in setting learning outcomes, we explore assessment of learning and we look at effective practice in different learning formats, including lectures, tutorials and fieldwork. Teaching is a multi-faceted process; therefore the penultimate section covers a wide repertoire of practical teaching techniques, strategies and approaches that will enrich the teaching toolkit of any academic. The concluding section focuses on strategies for improving your teaching.

The items within this section, which can be accessed from the menu on the left, include:

  • Introduction;
  • Views of learning;
  • Planning learning;
  • Learning outcomes;
  • Assessing learning;
  • Learning formats;
  • Teaching toolkit;
  • Improving teaching and learning; and
  • Useful references.

Use the left-hand menu to navigate to different sections of this site.  Alternatively, progress to the next section Views of learning.