SoTL at Seneca Program | Scholarship of Teaching and Learning | Seneca Polytechnic

Academic Quality offers a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning program at Seneca. The aim of the program is to provide professors with an opportunity to study their teaching practice enabling them to better meet the learning needs of their students.

In addition to offering a community of practice, Seneca supports SoTL projects each year.  The next call for proposals will be in January 2027.

All faculty are invited to attend our community of practice meetings which will resume in September 2026.

Quick Links 

• Design Proposal Form*
• Impact Proposal Form*
• Proposal Evaluation Rubric

*You may choose one form to submit. Please submit to sotl@senecapolytechnic.ca

1-2-3 to find out more!

1. Add your name to our Expression of Interest Form to receive more info.
2. Learn about the proposal submission and research processes in our SoTL info sessions, and join the Community of Practice.
3. Submit a proposal to sotl@senecapolytechnic.ca on March 30th and bring your idea to life!

What does the program offer?

• Funding includes a Fall and Winter course release or nonteaching contract to the Principal Investigator and a nominal amount for research expenses (e.g., research assistants, incentives, equipment, etc.)
• Optional workshops on research methods, ethics, collaborative inquiry and more.
• A Community of Practice of SoTL researchers at Seneca.

What is expected of me as a SoTL researcher?

• Submit your final project plan for Ethical Review.
• Join the SoTL Community of Practice and build support for researchers to come.
• Share and celebrate your research story at a Teaching & Learning Day or similar event.

What might I study?

• Prior knowledge, recall, understanding
• Critical thinking, problem solving
• Skills in application or performance
• Self-awareness and metacognition
• Engagement and motivation
• Focus, attention and processes of memory
• Study skills, strategies and behaviours
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Student outcomes beyond the classroom
• Authentic assessment and alternative grading strategies

Tools of the Trade

• Collaborative inquiry in a team
• Secondary analysis of existing data
• Content analysis of text/project
• Observational research
• Questionnaires and surveys
• Interviews
• Case studies
• Focus groups
• Reflection and analysis
• Pretest / post test
• Quasi-experiments
• Experiments (with control group, an intervention and random assignment)
• Not sure about any of this? No problem, we can support you in designing a study to explore your idea!