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Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Home

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, or SoTL (pronounced “sō-tul”), is an area of research dedicated to documenting, exploring, and sharing what’s effective in our classrooms.

Defining SoTL

How is SoTL different from educational research? Both fields are concerned with how students learn and how their learning can be improved. The key difference between SoTL and other research in higher education is who performs the research. In SoTL, the researcher is the instructor, and the classroom is the site of inquiry. In other educational research, the researcher is someone other than the instructor.

How is SoTL different from assessment? Both SoTL and assessment are concerned with improving student learning and determining the effectiveness of particular interventions. One primary difference is the intended audience. The audience for assessment projects tends to be internal - the institution, department, or individual instructor. The audience for SoTL is the wider scholarly audience. SoTL research is intended for dissemination to interested readers who can learn from and build upon previous SoTL research. 

- adapted from N. Chick, M. MacMillan, C. Bradley (2017)

For more on the difference between SoTL and assessment, see McKinney, K. (2015). SoTL and assessment: Siblings? The SoTL Advocate.

SoTL Terms