1 Framing the Possibilities: Educational Technology and SoTL in Action

The role of educational technology in higher education has expanded to its current state of ubiquity. Yet, the COVID-19 global pandemic beginning in 2020 revealed the necessity of developing an increased understanding of how modern technologies are, can, and should be used to best support student learning. Additionally, the rapid development of artificial intelligence tools has placed technology at the forefront of many educator’s minds. Scholars of teaching and learning have spent the past few years asking important questions about the opportunities, barriers, challenges, and ethics of educational technology use during this time of uncertainty, as well as drawing upon established areas of research on related topics such as online education.

We (the editors) believe now is a good time to pause, reflect on the use of technology in higher education, and pull together insights from multiple areas of scholarship and practice in order to ask new questions. As Luehrmann originally argued in 1971 (2022) argued long before technology was ubiquitous in higher education, technology needs to be seen “as an intellectual tool with applications to the subject matter being taught” (para. 31) and not solely as an add-on. This leads to questions such as, what does the literature tell us about the impact of technology on learning, learning experiences, and learning environments? What technology-supported strategies should we keep in our classes? What technology-supported strategies do we no longer need? What learning opportunities are created or enhanced through the use of technology? How can we address issues of equity and technology access which have been raised by remote or online teaching environments? The chapters in this book don’t answer all these questions, but they provide exemplars of how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can be used to do so.

SoTL is broadly understood as pedagogical research conducted in the higher education context and/or a venue for educators to reflect on their practices. Conducted by higher ed instructors themselves, this form of inquiry creates, by definition, a multidisciplinary field which consists of multiple disciplinary and multidisciplinary communities within a landscape of practice (Miller-Young 2024). In other words, SoTL may be conducted by an instructor from any discipline and they may bring their disciplinary research methodologies, traditions, and contextual problems to the research. Also, they may choose to disseminate to either a disciplinary or multidisciplinary audience, depending on the nature of their findings and where they might have the most impact beyond their own teaching practice. Traditional educational research on educational technology, on the other hand, is either approached through the lens of education using social science methods or approached using quantitative methods based in the sciences and typically disseminated to others in the field of education, and unfortunately, there is often a lack of rigorous research beyond the educational technology products themselves (Digital Promise, 2015; Keiding & Qvortrup, 2018). The unique benefit of SoTL is that it can have an immediate impact on the instructor’s teaching practice. The unique approach of this book is that it emphasizes the range of research approaches used by SoTL scholars to investigate and envision the efficacy, implications, and possibilities afforded by educational technology.

We, the editors, have diverse and complementary areas of expertise when it comes to these topics. Lauren Hays is an associate professor of educational technology and has focused much of her teaching and research on practitioner approaches to using technology effectively in education. Brett McCollum has explored SoTL as a meeting place for scholars of diverse disciplinary traditions and as a scholarly community that celebrates methodological pluralism while maintaining disciplinary traditions of methodological rigour. Janice Miller-Young has focused a major portion of her work on exploring SoTL methodologies and the experiences of faculty learning to do SoTL. When we first met to discuss the vision for this book, we started by looking for other sources that discussed SoTL and educational technology. We quickly realized that a gap exists in this area and there was little published on this topic. Therefore, this book is intended to serve as a foundational text on educational technology and SoTL, and aims to support both educators and SoTL scholars in (re)examining their practices with a scholarly lens.

Our primary goal for this book is to fill a gap in the SoTL literature related to educational technology. The higher education literature includes many studies where researchers have studied the use of various educational technology tools in classrooms, but literature on how SoTL scholars should think about their use of educational technology or study their use of educational technology does not exist. Once the gap was identified, we sent a call for proposals to solicit chapters in the areas of theory, designing and conducting SoTL on educational technology-supported practices, and scholarly teaching with educational technology. We received numerous proposals and selected chapters based on our vision for the book and how they aligned with the three sections we outline below. We accepted research articles as well as other genres of SoTL, including conceptual articles and scholarly and reflective essays (Miller-Young & Chick, 2024). We also wanted a diverse set of scholars contributing to the book, as SoTL is an international movement. Authors come from six countries and work in disciplines ranging from history to statistics.

This book includes three sections: SoTL Foundations, Reflections on Methodologies and Methods, and Research and Scholarly Reflections on Educational Technology. From beginning to end, we take the position that no research question or method is better or worse than another, but that all SoTL research benefits from explicit alignment and communication of questions, methodology, and theory. Thus, before diving into the rest of this book, we recommend developing a basic understanding of the breadth of types of research questions and associated research paradigms, methodologies, and theories that can be useful to a SoTL researcher by reading the foundational chapters. SoTL Foundations focuses on the importance of methodological design, theory and communication when conducting SoTL work on educational technology. The fourth chapter in this section is focused exclusively on theory and provides an example of how theory impacts the questions we ask about educational technology in our teaching and students’ learning. Next, the section Reflections on Methodologies and Methods is focused on the methods and methodologies used in SoTL work. The chapters include examples of qualitative and quantitative methods and include reflections from the authors about the lessons they learned from designing a SoTL study focused on educational technology. The final section, Scholarly Reflections on Educational Technology, focuses on reflections authors have about their use of educational technology for teaching and learning. Chapters include reflections on how they developed projects, how they used educational technology in their classes, and lessons learned. This section includes examples from different subject areas and examples of different types of educational technology. What holds this section together is the focus on using educational technology to improve teaching and learning.

By emphasizing the importance of aligning research questions, methodologies, and theories in SoTL work, this book not only contributes to the existing body of knowledge but also provides a path for future SoTL research in educational technology. It invites readers to reflect on their own practices, engage in scholarly inquiry, and contribute to the ongoing dialogue about the role of technology in shaping the future of higher education

References

Luehrmann, A. (2002). Should the computer teach the student, or vice-versa? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 2(3), 389–396. https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles/should-the-computer-teach-the-student-or-vice-versa/

Keiding, T. B., & Qvortrup, A. (2018). Higher education journals as didactic frameworks. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(1), 72–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1342606

Miller-Young, J. (2024). Complex journeys and theory as scaffolding: An illustrated guide to the SoTLscape. In J. Miller-Young & N. L. Chick (Eds.), Becoming a SoTL scholar. Elon University Center for Engaged Learning. https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa6.

Miller-Young, J. & Chick, N.L. (2024). Developing sustained SoTL journeys and identities. In J. Miller-Young & N. L. Chick (Eds.), Becoming a SoTL scholar. Elon University Center for Engaged Learning. https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa6