Teaching Fellowships: Developing \u27Personal\u27 Touchstones within Broader Institutional Strategies for the Dissemination and Application of the Sotl

Institutional programs for educating and developing academic staff in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) take a number of forms: from the development of teaching philosophies (both personal and institutional), through campaigns to raise awareness of certain key components of teaching and learning, the strategic use of experts such as educational developers and teaching fellows in school fora, to funding projects aimed at particular topics or issues. In this presentation I argue that while the ‘top-down’ model of university-wide educational campaigns and specific projects have an important role in raising academic staff consciousness about the SoTL, the most effective strategy - the one that has the most power to gain recognition within the broader academic culture and thus cause real change to teaching activity in more academic staff - is based upon individual contacts between staff at all levels and a mentor/developer or advisor who can place the SoTL in a personal context