Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Badged Open Course on the OpenLearn platform

1st September 2021

eSTEeM, The Open University’s Centre for STEM Pedagogy, has launched a new Badged Open Course titled Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in STEM which is available on OpenLearn from the 5th August 2021. OpenLearn is The Open University’s free learning platform. This one-of-a-kind course, designed and developed by Diane Butler and Shailey Minocha of the Faculty of STEM, provides a toolkit for conducting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). 

The aim of this Badged Open Course (BOC), designed around the stages of a SoTL inquiry or project, is to help colleagues to systematically design, conduct, reflect on and evaluate an ethically reasoned SoTL inquiry focused on student learning and engagement. They will also learn to disseminate the outcomes of SoTL and to assess the impact of a SoTL inquiry. 

SoTL is often carried out collaboratively involving educators, learning designers, educational researchers and students. Although this course uses the term ‘educator’ for a researcher conducting a SoTL inquiry or project, the course is designed for anybody interested in conducting SoTL.  

The case studies in this course are from STEM but the course has been designed for colleagues from all disciplines across the university who are interested in integrating SoTL in their academic practice and in gaining professional recognition such as Advance HE Fellowships. 

To find out more about this free ‘SoTL in STEM’ BOC and to enrol, please visit ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in STEM’ on OpenLearn. 

Enrolling on the course will give colleagues the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University, UK but they're a great way to demonstrate interest in the subject, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development. The page ‘How to get a badge’ on the course’s website describes the process for getting a badge for this BOC.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning course image. The digital badge is given on successful completion of this course. Acknowledgement: Course image: JohnnyGreig; Getty Images