Call for Proposals

Indiana University—host of the inaugural ISSOTL conference in 2004—welcomes you to join us at the French Lick Resort in southern Indiana for the 20th anniversary ISSOTL conference, October 28-31, 2024. The setting’s rich history as a place of rejuvenation and inspiration will serve as an ideal location for the work we will do reflecting on our scholarship, building community, and setting direction for our organization’s future.

Since the founding of ISSOTL and its first conference in 2004, the SoTL community has worked to advance scholarly approaches to teaching and learning with the steady accumulation of evidence-based pedagogies and models of reflective inquiry and practice. As we head into our third decade, let’s take time to consider ISSOTL’s past, present, and future by reflecting on the impacts we’ve had, examining our current practices, and looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead.

Conference Theme and Foundational Questions

We seek perspectives from SoTL practitioners at all career stages as we examine important questions about how our models and practices have emerged, how they are helping us address current challenges in higher education, and how they might evolve to meet future challenges. As we explore these questions, we encourage presenters to draw on the 2000 taxonomy of SoTL questions laid out by Pat Hutchings—with the addition of a reflective “what was” question. (Read her taxonomy starting on page 4 of Opening Lines here, or watch her explain it during an online component of ISSOTL13.)

We invite proposals about the scholarship of teaching and learning, about teaching and learning more broadly, and about our own SoTL work, which address our theme and these foundational questions:

What was? (Inquiry into the ways things have changed over the past 20 years in teaching, learning, and SoTL)

• What have been some key inflection points in teaching and learning, and what role has SoTL played in their development?
• How have specific SoTL models or movements evolved over the past 20 years?

What works? (Inquiry into the effectiveness of teaching practices and pedagogical approaches)

• What evidence do we have to support new teaching innovations and their impact on student learning? 
• How effective are our SoTL inquiry approaches and our promotion of SoTL and scholarly teaching within our institutions and disciplines? What evidence do we have to support these approaches?

What is? (Inquiry that describes something meaningful about students’ learning, students’ prior knowledge, characteristics of a pedagogical approach, a problem a teacher has encountered in a classroom, etc.)

• What are the key descriptive questions that matter most in our current challenges around teaching and learning? What contexts or characteristics of student learning do we need to learn more about in order to address these challenges?
• What do we know about the ways SoTL practitioners engage in their work, and what descriptive frameworks can we apply to understand our practices? What is the interrelationship between SoTL and other educational development initiatives?

What might it look like? (Inquiry focused on what might be, or what Hutchings calls “visions of the possible”)

• How might we envision the impact of new instructional approaches on student learning and success, or new perspectives on the student experience? What new pedagogical approaches are emerging that might address challenges in higher education?
• What new approaches to SoTL inquiry might prove valuable in understanding teaching and learning, and in examining the effectiveness of new instructional practices?

What new conceptual frameworks can we build? (Inquiry that leads to new models and frameworks that support, explain, or advance teaching, learning, or SoTL )

• What emerging theories or models provide useful frames for our teaching practices?
• What new theories or models can structure our inquiry approaches and help us enhance our SoTL work, or the field of SoTL?

Presenting at ISSOTL24

Reflecting the diversity of our work and our scholarly strengths, we encourage contributions from individuals at all stages of their careers, including emerging scholars. Participants in the ISSOTL24 conference may contribute to the program in a variety of ways, and presentations may either be SoTL research itself, or research into the inquiry approaches of the SoTL field. 

We invite presentations in the following formats:

• Paper presentations 
• Panels
• Posters
• Concurrent workshops
• Pre-conference workshops

Within all presentation types listed above, presenters will integrate ISSOTL’s conference pedagogy including active engagement of participants and inclusive and accessible approaches.

In addition to these presentational roles, the conference will also have opportunities for participant engagement in other ways, such as proposal reviewers, session moderators, interest groups, and mentors for the buddy program.

Presentation Types

• Paper Presentations provide an opportunity to share results of SoTL projects on teaching or inquiry practices. These sessions allow presenters to share knowledge and facilitate dialogue with session participants. Each individual presentation will be a maximum of 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of questions/discussion. Three presentations will be combined into each thematic session. Note that a formal paper is not required.
• Panels are ideal for topics benefiting from multiple perspectives and an active exchange of ideas. Proposers are encouraged to seek out diverse participants for panels, with relevant combinations of disciplinary, institutional, national, and career level perspectives. Panels should include a minimum of three panelists. Of the 60-minute session, at least 20 minutes should be dedicated to robust interaction among panelists and with the audience.
• Poster sessions at ISSOTL are highly engaging opportunities to share both finished and preliminary work, with the goal of both sharing insights and fostering critical engagement through discussion with conference participants. At least one author must be present during the poster sessions, and presenters are encouraged to make relevant resources available in print and/or online.
• Concurrent Workshops provide participants with hands-on opportunities to work on a SoTL question, research method, or topic. Proposers are encouraged to identify specific outcomes and audiences for their proposed sessions. Workshops are highly interactive and engaging, and plans for this engagement should be explicitly described in the proposal. Workshops are 90 minutes.
• Pre-Conference Workshops are extended opportunities to engage participants in hands-on explorations of topics such as evidence-based teaching and learning methods, SoTL inquiry practices (e.g., specific methodologies), educational development approaches to SoTL, SoTL program development, SoTL publishing, etc. Sessions should be highly engaging, have clear participant outcomes, and be targeted at specific audiences. Pre-conference workshops last three hours.

Proposal Review Process & Criteria

All proposals (the anonymous versions) will be reviewed by 2 to 3 reviewers and ISSOTL24 Program Subcommittee.  Reviewers – like ISSOTL conference attendees – come from a range of disciplines, geographical and institutional contexts, and languages, so please be as clear as possible.  (You may also sign up to be a reviewer, which is a fantastic experience and a way to inform the field!)

Proposals will be assessed on how well they meet the following criteria related to the content and presentation plans:

• Identify and explain how the content relates to important question(s) related to SoTL, the conference theme, and/or the conference threads 
• Demonstrate an understanding of SoTL issues and/or existing scholarship in the field (A brief bibliography may be provided at the end of the proposal.)
• Describe how the work contributes to the understanding or practice of SoTL 
• Advance SoTL through new or novel knowledge or practice, and/or extend and build upon current knowledge or practice
• Explain how presenter(s) will apply ISSOTL’s conference pedagogy 

Submitting Your Proposal

Submissions will be accepted through this link only.  All submissions must include:

• Name of submitter and fellow presenters only (i.e., those who will attend ISSOTL24;
  • ISSOTL needs to track the expected number of actual presenters.  You can acknowledge collaborators who won’t be presenting with you in Indiana in your abstract and/or in session materials.
• Your ISSOTL region (i.e., Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, United States, None of the Above)
  • Why?  This information helps ISSOTL track participation.  ISSOTL will soon expand its member regions, but that requires a change in bylaws, so for now, please identify your region according to the list above.
• You abstract for the conference program, if accepted (no more than 300 words)
• Your anonymized proposal for review, which includes two parts:
  1. an anonymized version of your abstract above (no more than 300 words) and
  2. an explanation of *how* the work will be presented (no more than 100 words).
• You may also include up to 10 references.

Please consult the proposal review criteria above as you prepare your proposal.

Submission deadline: April 1, 2024