Navigating Research Ethics and SoTL

Facilitators:    
Jayne Baker, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream & Associate Chair, Academic Sociology, and Chair of the Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Research Ethics Board  
Cora McCloy, PhD, Faculty Liaison Coordinator, SoTL, CTSI   

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) allows educators to systematically examine their teaching, preventing what Shulman (1999) described as “pedagogical amnesia,”—the tendency to forget valuable insights about our teaching from one term to the next. By engaging in SoTL, instructors can capture and revisit their teaching experiences, fostering continuous improvement.  

This interactive session, Part IV of the 2024-2025 SoTL Series, will focus on research ethics processes and planning at U of T. This session will emphasize that the ethics process itself can serve as a valuable tool for kick-starting one's research and to develop a clear protocol that will serve for all research stages moving forward.  

By the end of this webinar, you will:     

• Gain an overall awareness of key research ethics and SoTL considerations at U of T 
• Explore the concept of classrooms as sites to conduct scholarly enquiry on your teaching     
• Identify whether your inquiry is research or reflective practice     
• Gain insights on how to protect students as research participants  
• Discuss the importance of negotiating and acknowledging our dual roles as Instructor-Researcher 
• Participate in building a community of teaching and learning researchers at U of T  
• Learn about the upcoming CTSI-SoTL programming and other supports

Faculty of varying SoTL experience levels are welcome. The last 30 minutes of the session will be devoted to Q & A. Those who are available only for the first 90 minutes are welcome to attend. Please email cora.mccloy@utoronto.ca with any questions about this webinar. 

*NOTE: In advance of this webinar, you might consider reviewing research on teaching general topic areas by accessing the October 17th webinar: Introduction to SoTL: From Curiosity to a Research Question. To access all SoTL programming, ensure you are enrolled in the SoTL Quercus Hub.