Editor's Comments
Volume 2, Number 2
July 2008

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (IJ-SoTL) aspires to be an agent and catalyst for SoTL’s transforming work for a renewed awareness of and attentiveness to teaching and learning, for questioning assumptions and thinking about teaching, and for systematic and effective ways to improve learning and teaching in higher/tertiary education.  IJ-SoTL’s goal is to serve as a crucible or nexus for creating international contacts, conversations, contemplation, and collaborations in connection with SoTL.

Please support IJ-SoTL, its vision, and SoTL as an attitude, process of inquiry, research, application, dissemination, way of transforming higher education by informing colleagues in your departments, colleges, professional organizations and conferences, professional listservs, etc. about IJ-SoTL.

Readers can request email notification when each new issue of IJ-SoTL is published by going to: http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/email_notification.htm   As of the publication of this issue, over 4,000 people from 114 countries have requested email notification about new issues (twice a year).

The foundation for IJ-SoTL is its Editorial Review Board composed of members from 38 countries and 6 continents.  I want to thank those members for giving IJ-SoTL their time, knowledge, experience, and reputations.

And a special thank you to all our authors whose work is the substance of IJ-SoTL.  In this issue those contributors are from Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States.  While English is the language of the journal, authors from various parts of the world are encouraged to send their work to IJ-SoTL so that it becomes increasingly international in scope. 

Very importantly, I also want to thank all the people who submitted manuscripts that were not accepted for publication. I hope the review process and the reviewers' comments have been of benefit to their SoTL work.  Those submissions came from:

Australia Brazil   Canada     Czech Republic

Egypt Nigeria Pakistan Peru

Philippines Turkey    United Arab Emirates United Kingdom

United States

The acceptance rate for Volume 2, Number 2 was 20%.

This issue contains:
1) 3 Invited Essays by people with international and prominent reputations for advocacy of SoTL,
2) 11 Research Articles that demonstrate the research-led, evidence-based nature of SoTL and its applications for improving learning,
3) 4 Essays About SoTL that focus on various roles and potentials for SoTL in academic contexts and communities,
4) 9 Book Reviews of key books about SoTL,
5) 2 Personal Reflections,
6) 1 Readers’ Response, and
7) ways for readers to join the reflections and conversations about SoTL.

Those ways include contacting authors via their email addresses to discuss their articles and essays; writing critical responses to articles or essays for possible inclusion in the “Readers’ Responses” section of the subsequent issue; joining the IJ-SoTL listserv for asynchronous conversations about SoTL (currently 465 international subscribers), and sending your suggestions for improving IJ-SoTL to aaltany@georgiasouthern.edu.

The 5^th issue of IJ-SoTL will be published in January 2009. The deadline for submitting articles and essays for that issue is November 15, 2008. See 
Call for Papers and Submitting Manuscripts for details.

Thank you for reading this issue, and future issues, of IJ-SoTL.  If IJ-SoTL fulfills
its vision, it will be because of you and others like you around the world who seek improvement, even transformation, of student learning in higher education today.

Alan Altany, Editor

P.S.  Please note a SoTL companion to IJ-SoTL, the annual SoTL Commons: A Conference for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning.  The inaugural SoTL Commons Conference was held November 1-2, 2007 at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia, USA.  See the Conference Proceedings.