ICWG 2024

Starting in 2022, ISSOTL’s International Collaborative Writing Group (ICWG) Initiative began a three-year schedule: one year for a cohort focused on public SoTL, one year for a cohort focused on academic writing, and one year reserved for emergent ICWG opportunities.

In early 2023, the ISSOTL Board invited members to form a working group to identify the focus for the ISSOTL24 ICWGs.  They developed and received Board approval for the opportunity below.

To highlight ISSOTL’s 20th anniversary, the 2024 ICWGs will focus on “Reflecting and Reinvigorating: The Past, Present, and Future of ISSOTL.”  Participants will explore who we are, how we came to be, what has worked, what is missing, what could be, and how ISSOTL fits into the broader history of SoTL.

Potential projects include the following:

• A deep dive into The ISSOTL Commons (ISSOTL’s previous newsletter with 16 issues from January 2007 to January 2012) and/or Teaching & Learning Inquiry, which might include data mining, close reading, or other methods
• Building a searchable database or using data visualization tool to analyze past conferences (e.g., through the programs) and creating a process for adding future conference materials
• A digital storytelling project that draws on existing interviews with ISSOTL scholars (e.g., the ISSOTL13 videos, the 2021 interviews of past ICWG members, Indiana University interview project interviews [pending IRB approval]) and collects new interview materials
• An analysis of successful ISSOTL efforts to grow SoTL across contexts, regions, institutional types, etc., reporting on what has worked in these efforts and how ISSOTL can extend these successes to do even better
• An exploration of the pathways by which individuals have “found” ISSOTL, with a critical look at the ways in which some pathways are smoother than others and recommendations for broadening those pathways to make ISSOTL more inclusive
• The development of ISSOTL resources and recommendations for members working within their institutional processes (e.g., how to write about SoTL in applications for tenure and promotion, how to evaluate SoTL in applications for promotion and tenure, how to conduct an external review focused on SoTL and how to find these external reviewers), drawing significantly on ISSOTL resources (e.g., material from the Advocacy Committee, relevant ISSOTL interviews and publications).

As intentional, international collaborations that bring together ISSOTL members of all ranks and regions in focused inquiry, the ICWGs embody both the spirit and the work of ISSOTL.