Different Genres of SOTL
-Reports on Particular Classes
-Reflections on Years of Teaching
-Larger Contexts/Comparisons
-Formal Research
-Meta-Analyses

What constitutes “formal”?

Does “formal” reside in the lower right quadrant of Rice’s diagram? Not necessarily. We use “formal research” to mean forms of scholarship in which the principal goal is research. Usually such scholarship will incorporate one or more features of conventional research paradigms. Formal research can still be classroom-based and related to active practice (see the last three examples below).

Formal Research

Experimental Analyses C. M. Steele. 1997. A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist 52:613-629.

Classroom Incivilities R. Boice. 1996. Seminal study on incivilities. Identifies and counts perceived incivilities committed by faculty as well as students and investigates relation between them. Journal of Research in Higher Education 37: 453-485.

The Impact of One Minute Papers on Learning in an Introductory Accounting Course E. D. Almer, K. Jones, & C. Moeckel. 1998. Four hypotheses investigated simultaneously in one class using a fractional factorial design. Issues in Accounting Education 13:485-497.
The One-Minute Paper: Some Empirical Findings J.F. Chizmar & A. L. Ostrosky. 1998. Four teachers each taught control and experimental sections. Data were analyzed using a multiple regression model.

Journal of Economic Education 29:3-10 This study like the one above on incivilities could also be categorized under “Larger Contexts (Unit 3a, page 6)” The last two studies of one-minute papers are good examples of formal research at the classroom teacher level. They are also important contributions to the structure of evidence that one-minute papers improve student learning.