How do you know if your teaching actually works? And how do you investigate that in a way that helps everyone improve? More lecturers at VU Amsterdam are using the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to explore these questions systematically. During the second national SoTL Day in Leiden, it became clear what those projects set in motion.
How do you translate research towards practice in the lecture hall?
The day focused on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): research into your own teaching practice. Through interactive sessions and so-called research labs, lecturers and researchers shared their methods, uncertainties and findings. Not as an endpoint, but as the start of a broader conversation.
Colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam were prominently present as well. Joris van Wijk (professor Conlict-related crime and post-conflict justice, Criminology), Giulia Sinatti (assistant professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology), Suzanne Boersma (VU alumna and project coordinator at Academie van de Stad) and Cyril Tjahja (assistant professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities) presented VU-funded projects ranging from scenario-based role-play to stakeholder-engaged education and questions surrounding national identity in arts and culture education. Together, their projects show how widely SoTL is now embedded within VU Amsterdam.
The real value of the day was not only in the presentations themselves, but in what followed afterward. Colleagues stayed to exchange ideas and questions. They asked questions, shared doubts and reflected together: how do you translate research into the lecture hall? What works, and for whom?
You can join even without a grant
This year, the VU SoTL sessions are open to anyone interested in educational research. You can join ongoing projects, receive feedback on an idea or simply contribute to the discussion. Interested in joining a session? Email ctl@vu.nl for the dates or contact the facilitators of the session and grant directly: Maiza Campos Pones m.camposponce@vu.nl or Jan Willem Grijpma j.w.grijpma@vu.nl.
In VU EduNews & Stories, we continue sharing examples of VU Amsterdam colleagues working with SoTL and highlighting what is already happening in practice.