Imagine sitting around a kitchen table with a group of friends, each sharing their experiences and insights on a topic you’re all passionate about. As you listen, you begin to notice patterns in their stories and perhaps wonder where their ideas came from. You might also consider how your own experiences fit into this conversation and how you can build on what they are saying to make a clear, convincing point.
Just as a lively discussion around the kitchen table helps you understand different perspectives and sparks your interest in a topic, a literature review helps you situate your research within a broader academic and professional conversation. It allows you to identify gaps in what we know about certain topics, guide your methodology, and refine the methods you use in your research.
At Conestoga, we promote a step-by-step process for planning a SoTL research project. The third step is called “Connect.” This step involves investigating scholarly literature to connect it to your own research topic. By doing this, it helps you to consider how prior conversations contextualize your research, and how your research might connect with and extend the ideas of others. It also encourages you to revise your research question (Step 2) based on insights you gain from reading related studies.
What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a comprehensive summary and critique of previous research on a topic. It involves surveying scholarly articles, books, and other sources relevant to a particular area of research. By synthesizing this information, a literature review helps to:
Establish context by situating your research within the broader academic conversation.
Provide credibility through demonstrating your familiarity with your field.
Highlight gaps by identifying inconsistencies and areas for further exploration.
Guide your research methodology through insights into methodologies used in previous studies.
Provide theoretical foundation to help you to articulate research questions.
In the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), conducting a literature review is like joining a conversation among experts, where you listen to various perspectives, identify common themes, and contribute your own insights (Healy, Matthews, Cook-Sather, 2020).
Importance of Literature Reviews
Conducting a thorough literature review in SoTL is essential for several reasons. It demonstrates your familiarity with your topic, including the scholarly conversations that have come before you, and enhances the credibility of your own research. A well-conducted literature review ensures that your research is original to your context and takes into consideration the findings or results from other similar studies. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of previous studies, you can improve the quality of your own research.
Common Challenges
You might feel uncertain about how to start and complete a literature review. One common challenge is the overwhelming volume of literature available, which can make it difficult to identify the most relevant sources. Another challenge is navigating unfamiliar databases and search terms, especially for those folks who have less experience with educational research. Additionally, evaluating the quality of sources can be daunting, particularly if you are not familiar with the criteria for assessing peer-reviewed articles. Finally, organizing and synthesizing information from multiple sources into a coherent review can be a complex and time-consuming task. In the “Next Steps” section below, I offer some guidance on how to get started and avoid some of these challenges.
But Before you Start…Remember Your Research Question is Key!
In a previous post, I looked at how to develop good SoTL research questions as a starting point for any teaching and learning research study. The question will guide your search for relevant literature. So, if you haven’t already, be sure to spend some time crafting a good, clear, focused, and attainable research question.
Next Steps: Read, Discover, Critique, Summarize!
Make a list of terms related to your teaching and learning topic. Examples: “active learning,” “student engagement,” “AI and assessment.” Look at other disciplines for inspiration.
Search for relevant articles, books, and conference papers in databases such as ERIC and Google Scholar. Visit Conestoga’s library for lists of SoTL-specific resources or to access our databases to explore literature related to your topic.
Look for 5-6 peer-reviewed articles and reputable publications about your topic to ensure the quality of your sources.
Using the table below, arrange your findings thematically or chronologically to identify patterns and gaps in the literature.
Highlight areas of agreement, disagreement, and gaps, and discuss how your research will address these gaps. How you do this will depend on how you plan to share your research.
How to Use the Literature you Find
The Project Planning template provided by the Centre for SoTL provides a useful exercise for developing the literature review for your research. A copy of that table is below. The purpose is to offer guidance for each research article or publication that you choose to include in your review. We ask you to read each source critically and answer questions that will help you to contextualize your topic/project.
Paper (authors, year, title, date, source)
Describe how the paper relates to your project (Brief summary of 2-3 sentences that explains how it informs your research question/design.)
Describe how your project differs (Will you replicate the study? Extend its findings? Address a gap? Use an improved design or measurement? Test in a different context?)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
How is a literature review used?
How you use your literature review will depend on how you plan to share your SoTL research project. Typically, a literature review is written as a summary and critique in paragraph form, as part of a proposal that outlines a plan for your research project. It is often also shared briefly in presentations of your research. This demonstrates what you have learned about your topic, helps you to identify a new perspective on existing knowledge, and explains how your research will address these gaps. The literature review helps to convince your audience that there is a strong rationale for your work within your academic discipline or profession.
AI and Literature Reviews: Should you use it?
AI can be a powerful tool to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of conducting literature reviews. AI can assist in various stages of the review process, from searching and organizing literature to summarizing key findings and identifying gaps. Conestoga offers access to a Microsoft CoPilot which you can use to support many of the above steps in your literature search. Before you start using AI, it is useful to check out the information and advice provided by the Conestoga Library on ethical and responsible AI use in research, including the guidance on Gen AI and Copyright.
Below are some limitations of using AI for your SoTL literature review:
AI can help search and organize literature, but it can’t replace the critical thinking needed to interpret and synthesize research. Human judgment is crucial for evaluating the relevance and quality of sources (Arangüena, 2024).
AI algorithms depend on their training data. If the data is biased or incomplete, the AI may produce biased or inaccurate results, leading to irrelevant or low-quality sources in the literature review. (Molopa, 2024).
AI may struggle with nuanced research contexts, potentially missing important distinctions between studies and leading to an incomplete or skewed synthesis of the literature (Thomas, 2025).
AI in research poses ethical challenges like data privacy and misuse. Researchers must use AI responsibly and transparently, deciding when and how to cite its use in their work (Arangüena, 2024).
Over-reliance on AI tools can lead to a lack of engagement with the primary literature. Researchers might miss important insights that come from a thorough, hands-on review of the literature (Molopa, 2024).
The above section, including the list of limitations, was developed using Microsoft 365 CoPilot (Microsoft, 2025).
Additional Supports offered at Conestoga
For more supports on conducting literature reviews for SoTL, check out these resources at Conestoga:
Arangüena, I. (April 5, 2024). AI in Research: Its Uses and Limitations – Research to Action. Research to Action Blog. https://www.researchtoaction.org/2024/04/ai-in-research-its-uses-and-limitations/
Healey, M., Matthews, K. & Cook-Sather, A. (2020). Writing about learning and teaching in higher education: Creating and contributing to scholarly conversations across a range of genres. Elon: Center for Engaged Learning Open-Access Books. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/books/writing-about-learning/.
Microsoft. (2025). Microsoft 365 Copilot (Mar 18version) [Large language model]. https://www.microsoft365.com/?omkt=en-US
Molopa, S. (2024). Artificial intelligence-based literature review adaptation. South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science, 90(2), 1-18.
Thomas, G. (February 12, 2025). AI and literature review: help or hindrance? Sage Research Methods Community Blog. https://researchmethodscommunity.sagepub.com/blog/ai-and-literature-review
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Launa Gauthier
Launa Gauthier, Ph.D. (Education) has been an educator for over 20 years. Over this time, she has worked in K-12 international schools and in post-secondary contexts in several different countries. She completed her PhD at Queen’s University. Her research areas focus teaching and learning development and student-faculty partnerships in higher education/post-secondary. Launa specializes in developing and supporting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research initiatives.
