The STEMx Educational Scholarship Community is a professional development program that supports instructors in transforming teaching problems and questions about teaching and learning into scholarly work. Whether your goal is to improve your teaching, conduct a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study, develop a discipline-based education research (DBER) project, or disseminate your work through presentations and publications, this community provides the support, resources, and collegial network to help move your project forward. Our programs are designed to support instructors at different stages of their educational scholarship journey.
Steps to Getting Started with Education Scholarship
Introductory Reading and Resources
Explore foundational resources that introduce the principles of educational scholarship and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). These readings provide a starting point for understanding how systematic inquiry can improve both teaching practice and student learning.
Articulating Research Interests
Educational scholarship begins with authentic questions arising from your own teaching practice. Learn how to identify meaningful teaching and learning challenges, refine your research interests, and develop focused, scholarly research questions.
Worksheet: Articulating Research Interests
Designing Your Study
Consider study design, data sources, assessments, ethical issues, and plans for data collection and analysis.
Worksheet: Study Design
Conducting Your Study
Note: If you plan to disseminate research findings, you may need Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. UT's IRB website has resources to help you get started.
Implement your study by collecting and analyzing data on student learning. Reflect on your findings to iteratively improve your teaching and prepare your work for scholarly dissemination.
Looking for more? Want a guided introduction to education research? Enroll in our Foundations of Education Scholarship course below.
Foundations of Educational Scholarship Course
The FES course is self-paced Canvas course, using the SoTL framework to help participants transform their teaching problems and ideas in their teaching practices into a scholarly inquiry and provide guides of data collection and analyses, dissemination and publication resources. Course topics include: developing your research question(s), designing your study, preparing an IRB, conducting your study and data analysis, and disseminating your work.
The Foundations of Educational Scholarship Course will launch Fall 2026. Please check back soon.
Whether you are just getting started or preparing a manuscript for publication, the Scholarship Community offers individualized support to move your educational scholarship project forward. We welcome faculty, instructors, and graduate students at any stage of the scholarship process, from refining research questions and study design to data collection, dissemination, and responding to reviewer feedback.
To request a consultation, please complete the consultation request form (Quatrics form), which will request a brief summary of your project and the questions you would like to discuss.