• Call for proposals opens: February 6, 2025    
• Call for proposals closes: March 31, 2025
• Notification of decisions: May 1, 2025  
• Participation confirmation for inclusion in the program: July 1, 2025   
• Preconference workshops: November 3, 2025   
• Conference sessions: November 4-6, 2025   

Exploring the Changing Landscapes of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 

Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury welcomes you to submit a proposal for ISSOTL25 to be held in Ōtautahi Christchurch on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Our theme, Exploring the Changing Landscapes of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, reflects the world-renowned landscapes of our South Island home. It also symbolises the upheavals, steady change, and standing landmarks that we encounter in our teaching and learning practices in tertiary education. As ISSOTL delegates come together to share their scholarship, works in progress, and innovative pedagogies, the conference theme provides a guiding framework and powerful metaphor for how we collectively engage with our own stories and accomplishments as scholars of our teaching and learning practice. 

Conference Program Strands 

Within the conference theme, we identify four metaphors to capture the dynamic nature of  SoTL, each serving as a conceptual strand for the conference program. 

Creating paths toward the horizon: Horizons provide context and orientation to our future destination spaces. Our journey to the horizon has direction, but it is not rigid nor predetermined; it is shaped by landmarks that stand constant and new paths that must be forged and navigated depending on the changing conditions. Our landscapes hold memories within these landmarks and structures, making the context of our journey incredibly important. We invite delegates to look ahead to the horizons they seek to visit and to share their journeys toward their horizon through narrative and visual representations. 

Discovering through disruption: Landscapes are sometimes created through a process of disruption. In 2010 and 2011, Ōtautahi Christchurch experienced devastating earthquakes that brought down buildings, ended lives, changed the seabed, and shifted waterways. The people and the region have slowly recovered from this massive disruption to lives, and the city has been rebuilt. The Te Pae Convention Centre, the home for ISSOTL25, is one testament to the long-term recovery that the city has accomplished. Globally, we are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, another event which has disrupted and transformed our educational practices. This strand encourages delegates to explore disruption as a metaphor, offering theoretical insights and lived experiences as tertiary educators that deepen our engagement in explaining and theorizing its transformative role in and of SoTL. 

Braiding the rivers of knowledge: The Canterbury Plains of Aotearoa New Zealand are known for their braided rivers. They are a weaving of water, silt, and stone; carved into the land and deposited by the waters that descend from the Southern Alps. Braided rivers are dynamic and ever-changing depending on the energy of the water flow, the contours of the land, and the sediment deposits that constantly change the channels. We use the Māori concept of he awa whiria | the braided river to describe how the streams of knowledge may flow independently or come to confluence, thereby strengthening the combined knowledge streams. Recognizing the braided rivers of our landscape, this strand highlights collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and the interconnectedness of our scholarly community, while also allowing members to share their streams of knowledge when they stand alone. 

Building up and emergence: Within our landscapes, there are easy-to-see remnants of erosional processes in carved riverbeds and dramatic left-behind landforms. It can be harder to detect the slow accretion and uplifting processes that build mountains and raise plains to higher levels. We can observe the Canterbury plains that rise dramatically to the Southern Alps, but we seldom think about the steady process of building up and emergence that created these landforms. These processes take millennia and can go unobserved unless carefully described and acknowledged through historical accounts and meta-observations. This strand invites proposals that step back from the present, to examine carefully the history of SoTL while also illuminating the emerging structures we are building toward.  

Presenting at ISSOTL25 

Reflecting the diversity of our work and our scholarly strengths, we encourage contributions from individuals at all stages of their careers, including emerging scholars and students. We also welcome a range of scholarship including empirical studies, philosophical reflections, historical analysis, critical reviews alongside narratives of journeys toward improvements and navigation of disruptions while engaging in SoTL. Presentations are based on abstract submissions and do not require formal papers to be submitted. For all presentation types, presenters are expected to integrate ISSOTL’s conference pedagogy including active engagement of participants and inclusive and accessible approaches.

To promote broad participation in the conference and streamline the organization of the conference program, we ask that individuals limit themselves to no more than two primary presenter roles. Primary presenters are individuals with a speaking role listed for a paper presentation, roundtable, workshop, and/or pre-conference workshop. This limit of primary presenters does not apply to poster presentations and keynote addresses. While individuals may appear on more than two proposals, only primary presenters will be accommodated during the scheduling of sessions to avoid clashes. 

We invite presentations in the following formats: 

• Inquiry / Paper Presentations (20-minute presentation with 10-minute follow-on discussion) provide an opportunity to share the results of SoTL projects on teaching or inquiry practices. These sessions allow presenters to share knowledge and facilitate dialogue with session participants. Three presentations will be combined into each themed session. 
• Workshops (90 minutes) provide participants with a highly engaged and interactive opportunity to explore or work on a SoTL question, research method, or topic. Proposers are encouraged to 1) work with a team of presenters if possible; 2) identify specific audiences for the workshop; 3) identify the desired outcomes for the workshop session; and 4) explicitly describe the interactional approach that will be used.  
• Roundtables (25 minutes) provide a working space to bring a work-in-progress or a budding idea and provide a forum for feedback and generative thinking. Proposals should describe the work-in-progress and identify the feedback that would be helpful to advance the idea to its next stages. Three ideas will be combined in a themed table and a moderator will be assigned to the table to open and close the working session.   
• Panel Sessions (90 minutes) 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. Time within the session should be dedicated to robust interaction among panelists and with the audience. 
• Poster Presentations (90 minutes) are a highly engaging opportunity to share both finished and preliminary work through one-on-one interactions and discussions with conference participants. All posters will be presented in a single session and at least one author must be present during the poster session. 

Preconference Workshops (3 hours) 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, or SoTL publishing. Sessions should be highly engaging, have clear participant outcomes, and be targeted at specific audiences. These sessions are held before the Conference Welcome presentation. 

Proposal Review Process and Criteria 

The anonymous version of each proposal will be reviewed by 2 to 3 reviewers and the ISSOTL25 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.  We strongly encourage you to 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. 

• How well the content relates to important, relevant, and thought-provoking question(s) related to SoTL;  
• How well the proposal aligns with the conference theme and/or the conference strands;  
• How well the proposal demonstrates an understanding of SoTL as a field of study and/or existing scholarship in the field;  
• The potential for the proposal to advance SoTL through new or novel knowledge or practice, and/or extend and build upon current knowledge or practice; 
• The explanation of how presenter(s) will apply ISSOTL’s conference pedagogy.

High-quality submissions to ISSOTL conferences often outnumber what the venue and schedule can accommodate. To build a robust program and be as inclusive as possible, conference organizers may need to ask some proposed sessions to shift formats (e.g., shift from a paper format to a poster presentation). 

Submitting Your Proposal 

Watch our virtual session on developing an ISSOTL Proposal>>

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

• Name and contact information of submitter and fellow presenters only (i.e., those who will attend ISSOTL25). ISSOTL needs to track the expected number of actual presenters. You can acknowledge collaborators who won’t be presenting with you at the conference in your abstract and/or in-session materials. 
• Your ISSOTL region (i.e., Africa, Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, United States, or Another Location Not Listed). This information helps ISSOTL track participation.   
• Indicate if this is your first ISSOTL conference. This information will help the conference program committee understand the range of experience represented in the program.
• Indication of whether the proposal is from an ISSOTL Interest Group: 

Advancement of Teaching-Focused Roles 

Arts & Humanities 

Decoding the Disciplines 

Dual Professionals 

General Education 

Information Literacy

The Grand Challenges for SoTL 

Online Pedagogy and Research 

Problem-Based Learning SoTL 

Scholarship of Leading 

Student Engagement & Co-Inquiry 

• Indication of the conference strand to which the proposal aligns 
• The proposed presentation format for the proposal 
• Your anonymized proposal for review, includes two parts:  

1. an anonymized version of your abstract (no more than 300 words, excluding references) and 
2. an explanation of *how* the work will be presented (no more than 100 words) based on the ISSOTL’s conference pedagogy 

• Your abstract for the conference program (no more than 100 words; this will be used only if the proposal is accepted)  
• Up to 10 references 

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

Other ways to engage in ISSOTL25 

We strongly encourage all members and conference participants to also engage in ISSOTL25 by being a proposal reviewer, being a Roundtable moderator, engaging in interest groups, and signing up to be a mentor for the buddy program.