Published: Sep 19, 2025

As instructors, we constantly experiment with our teaching practices. We adjust an assignment to increase engagement, redesign a discussion format to draw out quieter students, or try new technologies to support collaboration. Often, these choices are guided by intuition, experience, and the immediate needs of our students. But what if those same teaching decisions could also form the basis of rigorous research? What if our everyday practice could generate scholarship that not only improves our own courses, but also contributes to the broader conversation about pedagogy in higher education?

This is where action research and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) come in. Both approaches treat the classroom as a site of inquiry. Action research encourages us to identify a question, intervene thoughtfully, observe the results, and reflect, and then repeat the cycle, refining as we go. SoTL builds on this by embedding our teaching inquiries into scholarly frameworks, making them systematic and publishable. In essence, teaching and research stop being two separate silos and become mutually reinforcing: research improves teaching, and teaching generates research.

Imagine, for example, that you redesign a course project to emphasize collaboration rather than individual output. You might notice higher participation or richer student reflections. Instead of leaving those observations at the level of anecdote, you could frame them as a research question: Does collaborative project design improve depth of learning in online LIS courses? From there, you gather evidence, e.g. student work, surveys, perhaps a pre- and post-assessment, and analyze the outcomes. What you learn not only informs your next iteration of the course, but also becomes a potential conference paper, journal article, or a T3 workshop.

Of course, there are challenges. Faculty already juggle heavy teaching loads, and designing research projects can feel daunting. Yet action research doesn’t require massive overhauls. Small, carefully framed questions, such as comparing two versions of an assignment or examining the impact of a new discussion tool, are both manageable and publishable. Collaborating with colleagues, graduate assistants, or even students themselves can also lighten the load. The key is to treat your classroom as a laboratory of ideas, while maintaining ethical care around student consent and privacy.

For those ready to take the first steps, two resources are especially useful. Cathy Bishop-Clark and Beth Dietz-Uhler’s book Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offers a clear, practical roadmap from formulating a question to developing a project. It is approachable and filled with examples that resonate with faculty across disciplines. Another valuable resource is Michelle Yeo, Janice Miller-Young, and Karen Manarin’s SoTL Research Methodologies, which dives deeper into the conceptual and ethical dimensions of this kind of work, helping scholars frame their projects with rigor and integrity. Together, these works can guide you from inspiration to publication.