My Engagement with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has become an increasingly important part of my professional identity. While my career began in graphic design, digital media, and eLearning development, my experiences as an educator have encouraged me to move beyond delivering content and towards systematically investigating how learners experience teaching, assessment, feedback, technology, and inclusion.

For me, SoTL involves more than reflection alone. It is a process of identifying challenges in practice, engaging with educational literature, designing evidence-informed interventions, gathering and analysing evidence, and using the findings to improve learning experiences. This approach enables me to move beyond assumptions and develop a deeper understanding of what supports learner engagement, confidence, achievement, and professional growth.

My engagement with SoTL has been shaped by curriculum redesign, learner feedback, evaluation studies, reflective portfolio development, and ongoing professional learning. Through these experiences, I have developed a growing interest in practitioner inquiry, particularly within adult education, creative digital disciplines, online learning, Universal Design for Learning, and authentic assessment.

This portfolio demonstrates how scholarly inquiry has become embedded within my professional practice and how reflection, evaluation, and continuous improvement continue to shape my development as an educator.

My Approach to Scholarship

My approach to scholarship is grounded in four interconnected principles: reflection, evidence-informed practice, continuous improvement, and sharing practice. Together, these principles support a cycle of inquiry where teaching challenges become opportunities for investigation, enhancement, and professional dialogue.

Core Principles

Scholarship Through Inquiry: Assessment Redesign in Adobe Photoshop

Transforming Assessment Through Authentic Learning

One of the most significant examples of my engagement with SoTL emerged through the redesign of the Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop course. The project began with a practical teaching challenge. Learner attendance was low, engagement with assessment activities was inconsistent, and many students struggled to connect course tasks with real-world design practice and Adobe certification outcomes.

Rather than treating these issues as isolated problems, I approached them as an opportunity for scholarly inquiry. I drew on Universal Design for Learning, authentic assessment, assessment for learning, feedback literacy, and adult learning theory to redesign the course around project-based learning, staged submissions, peer review, iterative feedback, and real-world design challenges.

The redesign aimed to make assessment more meaningful, transparent, and supportive. Learners were encouraged to document their process, create drafts, respond to feedback, revise their work, and demonstrate professional judgement. This shifted assessment from a single final product towards a developmental process that mirrored creative industry practice.

The impact was significant. Attendance increased from an average of two to three learners to over twenty participants in live sessions. Learners demonstrated greater independence, engagement, and willingness to revise their work. Evaluation data also suggested improvements in confidence, participation, learner satisfaction, and perceived certification readiness.

Most importantly, this experience reinforced my understanding that SoTL can emerge directly from everyday teaching practice. A challenge identified in delivery became the starting point for curriculum redesign, evidence gathering, analysis, reflection, and further improvement.

Evidence of Impact from the Redesign

The Photoshop redesign generated both quantitative and qualitative evidence of impact. Analysis of learner feedback indicated that 86% of responses were positive, with learners particularly valuing creative freedom, real-world relevance, the opportunity to work with clients, and the experience of developing a design from concept to final outcome.

Learners also reported that the assessment supported certification preparation. In the evaluation, 89% of learners stated that the assignment helped prepare them for the Adobe Certification exam. Many connected this preparation to practical Photoshop skills, including layers, masks, adjustment layers, typography, image editing, export settings, planning, and problem solving.

The analysis also provided useful evidence for improvement. While 78% of learners found the assignment clear and easy to understand, some requested more visual examples, clearer step-by-step guidance, additional workflow support, and more time for creative development. These findings helped me see evaluation not simply as evidence of success, but as a tool for ongoing refinement.

A particularly important finding was the development of learner autonomy. Students addressed challenges by conducting their own research, watching tutorials, testing alternative approaches, creating multiple versions, communicating with clients, and breaking tasks into smaller steps. These behaviours aligned with Knowles' andragogy, Kolb's experiential learning, Universal Design for Learning, and the affective domain of Bloom's Taxonomy, as learners demonstrated persistence, confidence, ownership, and self-regulation.

This evaluation strengthened my confidence in evidence-informed teaching. It showed that authentic assessment, clear structure, flexible pathways, and feedback-rich learning activities can support not only technical competence but also learner agency, resilience, and professional identity.

Inclusive Teaching and Universal Design for Learning

My engagement with Universal Design for Learning has been shaped through formal professional development and practical application. Working with diverse learner groups, including adult learners, multilingual students, learners returning to education, and students with varying levels of confidence and digital literacy, has highlighted the importance of designing learning experiences that reduce unnecessary barriers and support learner agency.

In practice, this means providing multiple ways for learners to access information, engage with content, practise skills, receive feedback, and demonstrate understanding. I use visual examples, video demonstrations, step-by-step guidance, captions, accessible resources, flexible formats, formative feedback, and opportunities for learner choice.

UDL has helped me move from thinking about accessibility as an additional support to viewing it as a central design principle. This shift has influenced how I design assessment briefs, rubrics, learning resources, feedback activities, and digital learning environments. It has also strengthened my commitment to creating inclusive learning experiences that recognise learner diversity as a normal part of education.

Digital Storytelling and Dementia Education

My Master’s final year project, Forget Me Not, explored the use of digital learning technologies to support dementia education. The project was informed by my professional experience as a Digital Life Story Coordinator, supporting individuals with Down syndrome who were at risk of developing dementia.

This work deepened my understanding of person-centred learning, digital storytelling, accessibility, ethical design, and the emotional dimensions of learning. It also helped me recognise that educational design is never neutral. The way information is structured, represented, and experienced can influence dignity, inclusion, memory, identity, and participation.

Although this project began within an academic context, it continues to inform my professional practice. It reminds me that learning design should not only communicate information but also respect the lived experiences, needs, and identities of learners and communities.

eLearning Design for Creative Education

Throughout my teaching practice, I have designed multiple eLearning resources and interactive courses to support learner engagement and self-directed learning. Projects such as the Graphic Design Movements eLearning course emerged from observing learners struggle to engage with theoretical content through traditional methods.

By integrating multimedia learning principles, interactive activities, visual storytelling, games, animations, and project-based learning, I sought to create more meaningful and accessible learning experiences. These projects helped me explore how digital learning design can support motivation, comprehension, and learner independence in creative education.

This work also connects to my broader SoTL development because it reflects a recurring pattern in my practice: identifying a learning challenge, designing an intervention, evaluating its value, and using the findings to inform future teaching and resource development.

Reflection on Impact

One of the most significant lessons I have learned through scholarship is that meaningful change often begins with small observations. A learner struggling to engage, a decline in attendance, a challenging feedback comment, or a successful classroom activity can all become starting points for inquiry.

Through systematic reflection and evaluation, these observations become opportunities for deeper professional learning. Scholarship has helped me move beyond asking whether students completed a task towards exploring why particular approaches work, for whom they work, what barriers remain, and how learning experiences can be improved.

This process has strengthened my confidence as an educator and encouraged me to view teaching as an ongoing cycle of inquiry, reflection, and growth. It has also helped me recognise that evidence does not need to be perfect to be useful. Attendance data, learner comments, survey responses, submission patterns, peer feedback, and tutor observation can all contribute to a richer understanding of teaching impact when interpreted critically and ethically.

Presentations, Dissemination and Future Directions

My recent teaching portfolio and reflective practice work have provided opportunities to engage with wider professional conversations about teaching and learning. Following the completion of my Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Higher Education, I was invited to present my portfolio and experiences at a Community of Practice event.

This invitation was important to me because it demonstrated that reflective practice and portfolio development can contribute to shared professional learning. It also encouraged me to see dissemination as a key part of scholarship. When teaching innovations are shared, they move beyond individual practice and become part of a wider conversation about educational enhancement.

Looking forward, I hope to further develop my engagement with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning through Communities of Practice, teaching and learning conferences, collaborative curriculum design projects, practitioner case studies, and possible publication. My strongest current area for development is the Photoshop assessment redesign, as it includes a clearly identified teaching challenge, a theory-informed intervention, learner feedback, statistical analysis, qualitative themes, reflection, and implications for practice.

My goal is to continue developing as a reflective practitioner and possible practitioner-researcher who contributes to educational enhancement through evidence-informed practice, collaboration, ethical inquiry, and scholarly dialogue.

My Emerging Identity as a SoTL Practitioner

Through this work, I have begun to see myself not only as a teacher, mentor, and learning designer, but also as a practitioner-researcher. Everyday teaching challenges have become starting points for inquiry, and evidence from practice has become a foundation for reflection, redesign, and improvement.

This emerging identity is important because it connects my creative background with my educational values. As a designer, I am used to researching, prototyping, testing, receiving feedback, and refining ideas. As an educator, I now apply a similar process to teaching and learning. I design learning experiences, evaluate their impact, listen to learners, revise my approach, and share what I learn.

This has helped me understand SoTL not as something separate from teaching, but as a way of teaching with curiosity, evidence, and care.

Conclusion

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become an integral part of my professional identity. Through reflection, evaluation, educational research, and continuous improvement, I have developed a deeper understanding of how teaching can support learner engagement, inclusion, confidence, autonomy, and success.

The redesign of the Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop course has been particularly important in shaping this understanding. It demonstrated how a practical teaching challenge can become a scholarly inquiry when it is approached through literature, evidence, analysis, reflection, and dissemination.

While my scholarship continues to evolve, it is grounded in a simple belief: meaningful learning experiences are created when educators remain curious, reflective, ethical, and committed to understanding the impact of their practice. By continually examining and refining my work, I aim to create learning environments that are accessible, authentic, inclusive, and transformative for all learners.

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References

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