Since their inception in 1993 at an Australian university, the workshop tutorials in physics have evolved and grown beyond the initiating department. In this paper, we adopt an interpretive perspective to: (i) reflect on why the tutorials continue to be successful; (ii) use models from literature to understand that success; and (iii) abstract key features that can inform scholarly inquiry into teaching and learning in higher education in other contexts and discipline areas. Practitioner (action) research and design-based research not only provide useful methodological frameworks that support the success of the workshop tutorials, but they also offer a worthwhile methodological strategy for fostering scholarly inquiry into university teaching and student learning. (Contains 3 tables.)