GENERAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The 2024 SU SoTL conference offers a space for staff to reflect on, showcase, and share innovative teaching, learning, and assessment practices. Stellenbosch University staff members are invited to submit abstracts/contributions in which they reflect on their teaching, learning, and assessment, share what they have learned, and explain how it will impact their future teaching.
You may want to share your experiences of trying something new or innovative in your teaching or assessment practice. Did it work or not? Perhaps you’ve conducted a large-scale needs analysis related to your teaching, or you’ve discovered something interesting while analyzing the results of your students’ assessments. Have you explored a teaching-related aspect in collaboration with colleagues in your department or faculty or even across disciplinary boundaries? Have you conducted research on your teaching or assessment? Or perhaps you have some new ideas that you would like to discuss.
Come and share your results, innovative practices and reflections with us in a presentation or as a poster!
1. How to submit an abstract/contribution
Abstracts must be submitted for all presentations and poster submissions. PLEASE NOTE: To enable quicker reviewing and feedback, submissions will be allocated to a reviewer as soon as they are received. Therefore, please ensure that your submissions are complete and correct before submission, and submit your abstracts sooner rather than later.
- Go to the abstract submission website: Oxford Abstracts.
- If you have used this website in the past, please enter your SU email address. If you cannot remember the password you used to create the account, click ‘Forgot password?’ and follow the steps.
- If you have never used this website, click Create an account.
- IMPORTANT: Click the Continue with email button and sign in with your SU email only.
- You will receive a verification email in your SU inbox. Click on the Verify email link.
- You will be redirected back to the website and the submission form.
- Complete all the fields in the submission form and click on SUBMIT. You will receive an e-mail confirming your submission.
- IMPORTANT: You cannot edit your submission as it will immediately be allocated to a reviewer.
2. Criteria for the abstracts/contributions
| Research |
|---|
| Is there any TLA topic you are currently researching or have recently researched? Would you like to share your research practices, initial findings, or conclusions/results with your peers? If so, consider a research contribution. |
| Innovation |
|---|
| Have you tried TLA approaches you can share with your peers? This can include any idea, tool, or method you have applied. How did it go and how can others learn from your experience? If so, consider an innovation contribution. |
| Reflection |
|---|
| Is there a TLA topic you are currently engaging with and would like to discuss? This could include a broad theme or a proposed study of a specific question, with a basic theoretical exploration of the phenomenon. If so, consider a reflection contribution. |
- Background, rationale, purpose
- Research question(s)
- Theoretical framing with one or two initial references
- Methods
- Results, conclusions, and/or implications from findings
- Originality or significance of research
- Background, context, purpose
- Focus of the presentation
- Description of work done
- Links to similar work
- What can your peers learn from this approach?
- Conclusions
- Background, context, purpose
- Refer to an applied reflective framework (see recommended readings)
- Description of work done
- How will this influence your future teaching and what can your peers learn from your experience?
3. General criteria and allocated time
- The title of the presentation must be no longer than 10 words.
- The abstract/contribution must be between 200 and 250 words.
- The abstract/contribution must be language edited before it is submitted.
- Abstracts should contain in-text references (author and date), but a reference list is not required.
- The abstract/contribution should be understandable to a broad spectrum of readers.
- The abstract/contribution must be submitted by 30 September 2024.
- This document contains information about how the SoTL prize winners are determined by the judging panel’s criteria.
- Please note that the primary investigator is responsible for obtaining the necessary (1) ethical clearance and/or (2) institutional permission and ensuring adherence to the (3) Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). Click here for more information.
4. Focus Areas
What themes or areas can you focus on and align with the conference theme? Here are some suggestions.
- Academic advising (mentoring, tutoring, faculties)
- Academic and digital literacies
- Curriculum / co-curriculum integration
- Decoloniality
- Educational leadership
- Feedback
- Technology in education
- Flexible TLA (Place/Pace/Mode/Scale)
- Graduate attributes
- Innovation and entrepreneurial mindset
- Multilingual mindset
- Programme review and renewal
- Social impact
- Student journeys, pathways and transitions
- Student success
- Transformative TLA
- Wrap-around student support
- Innovative TLA
- Inter / multi / transdisciplinary
