2023 SoTL Grant Recipients

Congratulations to our 2023 SoTL Grant recipients Anne Jewett and Jennifer Kastello!

The grant will help Jewett with the dissemination of her SoTL project, which looks at how onboarding instruction influences students’ confidence in navigating the virtual classroom. She joined our SoTL Scholars program in 2021-2022 and will use the money to attend the Lilly-Asheville Conference, to which a presentation proposal has already been accepted. She also plans to submit a journal article, create a professional learning module, and share the findings with her UVA colleagues.

Kastello was in our inaugural 2018-2019 SoTL Scholars cohort. The grant will support her and her colleagues with their SoTL collaborative project. The funding will help them continue the work to establish the validity of a checklist they developed that aims to ensure a standardized approach in the promotion and development of clinical simulations rooted in equity, diversity, and inclusion. The collaborative plans to submit abstracts to discipline-specific conferences and seek publication in various journals.

Read more about our grantees below.

The CTE's SoTL Grants program is designed to support evidence-based research that contributes new knowledge related to teaching and learning at UVA. During the 2022-2023 grant cycle, $17,200 in funding was awarded to four grantees.

Anne Jewett

Assistant Professor, Department of Curriculum, Instruction & Special Education in the School of Education and Human Development; 2021-2022 SoTL Scholar

Grant Type: SoTL Dissemination Grant

Funding Awarded: $3,000

Project Title: Understanding the Impact of Onboarding Instruction for Online Graduate Students

Abstract: Using a learning management system and teaching online in some capacity are proliferating in higher education. The context for my current Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research project is a course for adult learners that serves as the entry point for a fully online, asynchronous graduate degree program. The purpose of the project is to understand how onboarding instruction may influence, if at all, students’ confidence in navigating the virtual classroom. A secondary aim of the project is to identify ways, if any, that students report onboarding instruction influencing their confidence. An immediate next step for the project is to complete the data analysis. Then, the findings can be disseminated to multiple stakeholders including practitioners at the Lilly-Asheville Conference, colleagues connected to the course and its associated programs at UVA, a submission to a journal, and the creation of a professional learning module to share with others. Contributions will be made to both the online learning literature and SoTL literature by disseminating the project findings coupled with the SoTL experiences and reflections as a researcher-practitioner to faculty, instructors, student affairs staff, administrators, and instructional designers.

Jennifer Kastello

Assistant Professor, School of Nursing; 2018-2019 SoTL Scholar

Grant Type: SoTL Collaboration Grant

Funding Awarded: $5,000

Project Title: Development of a Standardized Tool to Evaluate & Design Equitable, Diverse, & Inclusive Healthcare Simulation Learning Experiences

Abstract: Despite the increased use of clinical simulation in healthcare education and training equipment, simulation scenarios are often not fully representative of the general patient population. Preparing students to provide equitable care for all patients requires learning opportunities that consistently promote ideas of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Failure to address the absence of EDI in clinical simulation may contribute to continued racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to validate a tool that can be used to standardize EDI simulation teaching strategies to ensure that students are prepared to provide equitable care.