Frequently Asked Questions

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects student education records. Before accessing any student data (including student grades and any data from Brightspace), you must complete your annual FERPA certification.

The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) provides an online training program on regulations and ethics for human subjects research. Anyone who is working on a research project which involves human subjects (even just accessing human subjects’ data) must complete the appropriate CITI training program (which for SoTL projects is generally the Social Behavioral Research for Investigators and Key Personnel Learner Group training).

The Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) is a department at Purdue that ensures that all human subjects research at Purdue is conducted ethically by managing and reviewing submissions to Purdue’s Institutional Research Board (IRB). All research studies which involve human subjects must receive approval from the IRB

Any research that involves collecting data from people is considered human subjects research so the vast majority of SoTL studies will require IRB approval. Occasionally studies which use only historical deidentified datasets may not be considered human subjects research. If you are unsure whether your study is considered human subjects research, consider attending IRB office hours.

Because SoTL is such a broad, multifaceted field which allows for a wide range of research questions. To help get started, we recommend checking out Pat Hutchings’ Taxonomy of Questions which provides four categories of inquiry research questions including: “what works,” “what is,” “visions of the possible,” and “formulating new conceptual frameworks.” For more info, check out this website.

SoTL research uses many different types of research designs so often, SoTL researchers apply methodologies from their own fields to their SoTL research. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies are very commonly used in SoTL research. Ultimately, the research design should be determined based on what would best answer your research questions.

One of the benefits of SoTL is that we already collect a lot of data from our students which can be used to help answer our research questions. These data include demographics and grades (which we can request from the registrar), assignments and exams (from Brightspace), and course evaluations. Other types of commonly used data collection methods include student surveys, interviews and focus groups.

There are many university resources to help with your SoTL project! For IRB questions, we recommend checking out the IRB office hours. To request registrar data or other data-related questions, IDA+A is a wonderful resource. If you would like a SoTL consultation, please feel free to email CIE or Emily Bonem, the Assistant Director of SoTL.

One great starting point for sharing your SoTL project is with your colleagues in your department. Some departments have brownbags or workshop series where you can talk about your SoTL project. There are also occasionally campus-wide events such as the Teaching & Learning Festival where you can share your project with a larger Purdue audience.

Many disciplines have teaching-specific conferences which are great venues for disseminating your SoTL projects. Other disciplines welcome SoTL-related projects at their main discipline conferences. Additionally, there are many general SoTL conferences; some of the ones we recommend as first-time SoTL researchers are the Lilly Conferences, the SoTL Summit (which is entirely virtual), and the SoTL Commons. For other conferences including discipline-specific conferences, check out Kennesaw State’s Teaching Conferences Directory.

Similar to conferences, many disciplines have specific journals dedicated to teaching in the field which can be a great place to start publishing SoTL work. There are also many general SoTL journals which are good venues for publishing your projects. We recommend picking a journal prior to writing your manuscript as it can be very helpful to tailor your paper to best fit the journal you are aiming for. For a comprehensive list of SoTL journals, check out Kennesaw State’s Teaching Journals Directory.