Style Guide

Submission Process

Members may add blog posts to specific groups (e.g., Interest Groups, Committees) or share them site-wide. Once members submit a blog post by clicking save, it may be held for moderation by the Publications Committee or by a group’s chairs, who make every effort to review posts within a week.

Posts should be consistent with ISSOTL’s mission:

The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Inc. serves faculty members, staff, and students who care about teaching and learning as serious intellectual work. Through building intellectual and collaborative infrastructure, the Society supports the associational life that fosters scholarly work about teaching and learning. The Society provides this support by:

• • recognizing and encouraging scholarly work on teaching and learning in each discipline, within scholarly societies and across educational levels,
  • promoting cross-disciplinary conversations to create synergy and prompt new lines of inquiry,
  • facilitating the collaboration of scholars in different countries and the flow of new findings and applications across national boundaries,
  • encouraging the integration of discovery, learning, and public engagement, and
  • advocating for support, review, recognition, and appropriate uses of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Potential posts to the ISSOTL.com blog can cover a range of topics, including but not limited to

• Society news from a board member, committee, or interest group;
• syntheses of recent SoTL research;
• previews of recently published Teaching & Learning Inquiry articles;
• showcases of SoTL research initiatives;
• updates on SoTL innovations in international regions; and
• introductions to SoTL resources that are relevant to ISSOTL members.

Posts will be reviewed by a sub-committee of the Publications Committee to determine if the potential post is timely, relevant to the Society’s members, adheres to the following style guidelines, and supports the Society’s goals. The Publications Committee Co-Chairs, or their designee, may request revisions and edits before the post is accepted.

Guidelines

Posts should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Posts should be 500-750 words long. Longer posts may be considered as a two-part series, if the content merits additional space and lends itself to division into two parts.
• Post titles should be 5-7 words long and descriptive of the post content.
• Posts should be written in active voice, using clear, concise language and short paragraphs.
• Posts should maintain a positive, community-building tone.
• Use ISSOTL-related acronyms consistently:
  • ISSOTL (not ISSoTL) to reference the Society
  • SoTL to reference the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
  • TLI to reference the Society’s journal, Teaching & Learning Inquiry
• Sources should be integrated
  • As in-text links when possible, or
  • As parenthetical citations with corresponding entries in a references list. The preferred citation style is APA, modified to include authors’ full first names in the references list entries.
• Authors should include a relevant image (e.g., a photo of a research site or research team described in the post, an illustrative figure, etc.), when possible. Images should be submitted as separate files (preferably .JPGs), not embedded in the text of the post. Only use Creative Commons images or images that you created or have permission to use, and always credit image authors (e.g. Image Credit: Author Name).
• Authors should include information for a byline: their name, their institutional affiliation, and their preferred email for correspondence about the post