Stanford
Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

SGSI 2026: Scholarly Teaching: Leverage Your Skills as a Scholar to Improve Your Teaching

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  • Full attendance is expected.
  • Some additional reflection and work may be required outside of our time together. Students should expect no more than 1-2 hours of work per day outside of class.
  • During the academic year, students may implement their scholarly teaching project and attend cohort meetings to support their progress.

Brief Course Overview

Are you curious about what influences student learning and experience in the classroom? Join this community to ignite your curiosity, utilize and develop research skills, and discover pedagogical literature that will guide your design of a scholarly teaching project centered on understanding and ultimately improving student outcomes. Designing this project will help you become a more reflective instructor that can use classroom evidence to improve and inform your teaching. Completing the project afterwards will fulfill a significant portion of the requirements for the Practitioner level of the Stanford CTL + CIRTL certificate program and may also help with future job applications and interviews.

Course Format

The course will be highly active and interactive and include a mix of workshops, peer interaction and feedback, and other group and individual work. We will provide some in-class working time but there may be some days where you will need time outside of class time to complete work.

Intensity Level 🔥🔥

A variety of topics are covered at a quick pace, with in-class activities that require moderate out-of-class preparation and active in-class engagement. 

Audience

Open to all graduate students (ideally later-stage PhD students) in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. Postdoctoral scholars will be invited to apply during the final/postdoc application period starting July 6th. 

We will prioritize enrollment for those more advanced in their teaching careers or who have started or completed the Associate level of the Stanford CTL + CIRTL certificate. In your application, please briefly describe any prior teaching experience (ex: TA for 2 undergrad courses) and any pedagogical training you have completed (workshops, courses, etc.).

*MSx Class of 2027 and first year MBA students are ineligible to participate due to mandatory program requirements.

Detailed Course Description

How do we know what influences student learning and experience in the classroom? How might research skills be applied in a classroom context? Join this community to ignite your curiosity, utilize and develop research skills, and discover pedagogical literature that will guide your design of a project centered on understanding and ultimately improving student outcomes. Designing this scholarly teaching project will help you become a more reflective instructor that is confident using classroom evidence to improve and inform your teaching. 

Stanford is a member of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) Network, whose overall mission is to improve the quality of undergraduate education. One of the core principles of CIRTL’s approach is “Teaching as Research”, a deliberate and systematic approach towards investigating, reflecting on, and improving one’s own teaching. 

This process follows an inquiry cycle consisting of the following stages: 

  • Identifying a challenge within the context of teaching and learning
  • Exploring the relevant scholarly literature
  • Designing and implementing (a) a project to elucidate why the challenge occurs, and/or (b) a teaching intervention to address the challenge
  • Collecting, analyzing, and interpreting classroom data
  • Reflecting on the experience from the perspective of scholar/researcher

By the end of the course, participants will present a project plan that could be implemented in future teaching or other academic contexts. You will also build a community that will support you in the implementation of your project in the coming year. Completing the project designed in this course will provide evidence of reflective, professional practice and fulfill a significant portion of the requirements for the Practitioner level of the Stanford CTL + CIRTL certificate program, which may also help you in future job application and interviews.

Objectives

By participating in this course, you will…

  • Practice asking questions that can inform how you approach teaching and learning; select one question as a focus for your scholarly teaching project
  • Explore scholarly literature in teaching and learning to identify prior work that informs and guides your project
  • Increase familiarity with methods to collect and analyze data in an education context and apply relevant options to your project design
  • Draft a written plan for your project, informed and improved by colleague feedback, that uses feasible sources of evidence to analyze project impact on student learning and experience

Instructors