Lessons About SOTL Support from Two Institutions

The John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaii recognized that their teaching faculty needed scholarly work to be eligible for promotion/tenure. They also sought research-supported evidence for the efficacy of the approaches they use themselves and advocate to an international audience. Beginning in January 2010 they engaged the support of an experienced researcher/consultant in medical education from another university. Eight studies were initiated and others moved forward resulting in two conference submissions and one manuscript accepted for publication. JABSOM will also host an annual local conference on medical education beginning in 2012 and a small regional conference by 2016. JABSOM has initiated monthly half-day “work bees” where faculty gather to work on scholarly projects and seek the consultant’s support. At the University of Saskatchewan the Centre for Discovery in Learning was launched in 2009 to help faculty from all programs engage productively in SoTL. Activities included a series of workshops on SoTL, small research grants, a local SoTL conference, monthly research seminars, and hosting a national conference on teaching and learning. The internal funding and SoTL workshop series resulted in several conference presentations and publications. Another local conference is being planned for the spring of 2012. The seminar series was not successful and is being recreated as a community of practice event with time for sharing and relationship building. During the conference session most of the time will be spent in discussion of important lessons learned from these experiences and possible application to other sites.