We invite submissions for InSight’s reflective section, InStruct, that focuses on practical teaching strategies accompanied by short essays associating the instructional material to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). The purpose of InStruct is to showcase the innovation of all higher education faculty (full-time, adjunct, distance, online, undergraduate, graduate, etc.), and to provide a repository of research-based teaching and learning materials that could be used or adapted by instructors from a wide array of disciplines. The goal is to provide a space to celebrate and share pedagogical content that demonstrates the practical application of SOTL principles.

Pedagogical materials might include but are not limited to innovative assignments, lessons, classroom activities, course designs, or service-learning projects. Submissions should include the relevant teaching artifacts such as prompts, lesson plans, any audiovisual materials, etc.

Teaching and learning content needs to be accompanied by or embedded in a short reflective essay (1500-2000 words) that situates the instructional materials in the scholarship on teaching and learning. Given InSight’s interdisciplinary audience, teaching material should be useful or easily adaptable to other disciplines.

Any inclusion of student artifacts or examples will require proof of IRB approval or exemption by your institution (and we strongly encourage getting student consent to publish student work).

Editorial Process

All submissions to InStruct will be blinded, then peer-reviewed by editorial board members based on relevance, significance, originality, clarity, practical utility, generalizability to other disciplines, and grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

More detailed information on our review criteria can be found at: https://insightjournal.net/peer-review-guidelines/

InStruct uses rolling submissions. Accepted pieces will be published online as soon as they are prepared for final publication. Articles accepted on or prior to April 30, 2024 will be included in Volume 19 of InSight for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Submission Requirements

• STYLE – All manuscripts must be formatted in APA style.
• LENGTH – Reflective essays may range from 1500-2000 words (not including abstract, references or accompanying instructional materials).
• ABSTRACT – Summarize your submission in an abstract of 50 to 100 words.
• AUTHOR – Each author should provide their full names, title and departmental affiliation, campus address, telephone number, and email address. Each author must also include a brief biography (no more than 100 words per author).
• FORMAT – Reflective essays should be submitted in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format. Do not include personal identifiers within the manuscript. For teaching artifacts, examples, or activities, please stick with non-proprietary or easily accessible formats, for example, mp3/mp4 for audio/video, jpeg, gif, or png for images, PDFs /Word documents. For submission of web or other kinds of digital content, contact the editors to discuss the best form of submission. 

Submission Process

Manuscripts will be submitted via InSight’s updated submission/editorial platform, Scholastica. Click on the “Submit via Scholastica” button, or submit via the Scholastica website at https://submissions.scholasticahq.com.

When submitting your manuscript, please place the word “InStruct” as your first key word to let us know this is a teaching strategies submission. 

Copyright

Manuscript submissions are accepted with the assumption that they neither have been nor will be published elsewhere. Authors retain the copyright in the article and have explicit rights to use the article in future research, teaching, and other projects.

Contact

All inquiries should be directed to: innovate@park.edu.