Editorial note: This article is written for educators, faculty developers, academic leaders, and curious readers who want a clear, practical understanding of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning without needing three cups of coffee and a decoder ring.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, usually shortened to SoTL research, is one of higher education’s most useful ideas with one of its most suspiciously acronym-heavy names. At first glance, SoTL can sound like another campus committee, another professional-development workshop, or another folder on the shared drive that everyone promises to read “after grades are submitted.” But at its best, SoTL is much more alive than that.
SoTL asks a deceptively simple question: What is happening when students learn, and how do we know? Instead of treating teaching as a private performance behind a classroom door, SoTL turns teaching into public, evidence-informed inquiry. Faculty members, instructors, librarians, graduate students, and academic staff examine real questions about student learning, collect evidence, analyze what they find, and share the results so others can adapt, critique, or build on the work.
That sounds powerful because it is. But SoTL is not a magic vending machine: insert one classroom problem, press B7, and receive “student engagement” wrapped in cellophane. It gives educators insight, vocabulary, patterns, and tested possibilities. It does not give universal recipes, guaranteed outcomes, or permission to stop thinking. Understanding both sides is the difference between using SoTL wisely and treating it like an academic horoscope.
What Is SoTL Research?
SoTL research is systematic inquiry into teaching and student learning, especially in higher education. It often begins with a real teaching puzzle: Why are students struggling with a concept after lecture? Does peer review actually improve writing quality? How does alternative grading affect motivation? What happens when students use generative AI in a structured way instead of sneaking it into assignments like a raccoon in the pantry?
The key word is inquiry. A SoTL project is not merely “I tried something and liked it.” It involves a clear question, relevant evidence, thoughtful methods, ethical attention to students, and some form of public sharing. That sharing might be a journal article, conference presentation, campus showcase, teaching portfolio, open resource, workshop, podcast, or discipline-specific report.
SoTL Is Not Just Good Teaching
Good teaching matters, of course. But SoTL goes a step further. A great teacher may revise assignments based on experience, intuition, and student feedback. A SoTL scholar documents the question, studies student learning evidence, compares findings with existing literature, and shares the results in a way that others can examine. In other words, good teaching may improve one course. SoTL can improve one course and contribute to a broader conversation.
SoTL Is Not the Same as Traditional Education Research
SoTL overlaps with education research, discipline-based education research, learning analytics, and teaching-as-research. Still, it has a distinct flavor. SoTL is often grounded in local classroom contexts and conducted by educators studying their own teaching environments. It values disciplinary diversity: what counts as strong evidence in chemistry may look different from what counts as strong evidence in creative writing, nursing, history, or engineering.
This flexibility is a strength, but also a complication. SoTL does not always look like a large randomized trial. Sometimes it looks like assignment analysis, student interviews, reflective journals, rubric scores, concept inventories, classroom observations, or mixed-methods studies. The evidence is real, but it must be interpreted carefully.
What SoTL Research Gives Us
1. A Better Way to Ask Teaching Questions
One of the biggest gifts of SoTL is that it helps educators turn frustration into investigation. Instead of saying, “Students just do not read,” a SoTL-minded instructor asks, “What barriers keep students from completing or using the reading effectively?” That shift may sound small, but it changes everything. The first statement blames. The second invites evidence.
For example, an instructor in a large introductory psychology course might notice that students perform well on vocabulary quizzes but poorly on application questions. A SoTL approach would not stop at “They memorized but did not understand.” It might examine assignment design, study strategies, examples used in class, question wording, prior knowledge, or opportunities for practice. The problem becomes researchable rather than merely irritating.
2. Evidence About Student Learning in Real Classrooms
SoTL gives us evidence from actual learning environments, not just idealized laboratory conditions. That matters because classrooms are gloriously messy. Students arrive with different backgrounds, work schedules, languages, motivations, responsibilities, and levels of confidence. A teaching strategy that shines in a controlled study may need adjustment in a Friday afternoon class where half the room is thinking about lunch and the other half is thinking about overdue lab reports.
By studying real courses, SoTL helps educators see how learning works under authentic conditions. It can reveal whether a new discussion format increases participation, whether scaffolded assignments reduce confusion, or whether transparent rubrics help students produce stronger work. These findings may not be universal laws, but they are often practical, grounded, and immediately useful.
3. A Public Conversation About Teaching
Teaching has historically been treated as private. Research is public, peer-reviewed, debated, and cited. Teaching, meanwhile, has often happened behind closed doors, with student evaluations serving as the world’s most emotionally chaotic weather report. SoTL changes that by making teaching visible, discussable, and improvable.
When instructors share SoTL work, they give colleagues something better than vague advice. Instead of “My students loved group work,” they can say, “Here is how I structured peer roles, here is the evidence I collected, here is what improved, and here is what completely flopped like a pancake in a wind tunnel.” That honesty helps teaching communities mature.
4. More Respect for Teaching as Scholarly Work
SoTL also gives teaching intellectual weight. It argues that teaching is not merely delivery, personality, or classroom charisma. Teaching involves design, evidence, interpretation, revision, and professional judgment. In that sense, teaching can be studied with the same seriousness as other scholarly problems.
This matters for faculty careers and institutional culture. When universities recognize SoTL in promotion, tenure, awards, grants, or faculty development programs, they signal that student learning is not a decorative side quest. It is central to academic work. That recognition is especially important for instructors whose labor has often been undervalued, including teaching-track faculty, adjunct faculty, clinical faculty, librarians, and graduate instructors.
5. Practical Improvements in Course Design
SoTL can help instructors make better decisions about course design. It can inform how assignments are sequenced, how feedback is delivered, how participation is evaluated, how students practice difficult skills, and how assessments align with learning goals.
Consider a writing instructor who notices that final essays show weak source integration. A SoTL project might test whether students improve when source-use practice is broken into smaller steps: annotation, summary, quotation framing, paraphrase comparison, and synthesis paragraphs. The instructor could compare drafts, analyze student reflections, and examine rubric scores. The result may not be a universal cure for source confusion, but it provides a clearer path than simply writing “use sources better” in the margin and hoping the comment sprouts legs.
6. Stronger Equity and Inclusion Questions
Good SoTL research can help educators investigate whether learning environments work equitably for different groups of students. It can examine who participates, who feels belonging, who benefits from a teaching method, and who may be unintentionally left behind. This is one of the most important contributions of modern SoTL.
For example, a STEM instructor might study whether structured group roles reduce participation gaps in lab teams. A faculty member in a first-year seminar might examine whether transparent assignment instructions help first-generation students navigate expectations. A nursing program might investigate how simulation feedback affects student confidence and clinical reasoning. These questions are not just pedagogical; they are ethical.
What SoTL Research Doesn’t Give Us
1. It Does Not Give Universal Formulas
SoTL does not give educators a single guaranteed formula for learning. There is no sacred teaching spell that works for every student, discipline, institution, and semester. If someone claims, “This method always increases engagement,” the correct response is to raise one eyebrow in a scholarly manner.
Context matters. A strategy that works beautifully in a 16-student honors seminar may not transfer directly to a 220-student introductory biology lecture. A reflective journal may deepen learning in a social work course but feel awkward or irrelevant in another context unless carefully adapted. SoTL gives us patterns and possibilities, not plug-and-play miracles.
2. It Does Not Replace Professional Judgment
Evidence matters, but it does not eliminate judgment. Instructors still need to interpret findings in relation to their students, goals, constraints, and disciplines. SoTL can suggest that frequent low-stakes practice helps learning, but the instructor must decide what kind of practice fits the course. A law professor, art instructor, and statistics teacher may all use low-stakes practice differently.
SoTL is a compass, not a self-driving car. It points toward better questions and more informed choices, but educators still have to steer.
3. It Does Not Always Prove Causation
Many SoTL projects are small, local, and classroom-based. That is part of their value, but it also means they may not establish causation in the strictest sense. If student exam scores improve after a new assignment design, the assignment may have helped. But other factors could be involved: a different cohort, clearer lectures, more office-hour attendance, easier exam questions, or the mysterious motivational power of snacks.
This does not make SoTL weak. It means readers should interpret findings with care. Strong SoTL researchers acknowledge limitations, avoid overclaiming, and explain context clearly. The goal is not to pretend every classroom project is a national policy trial. The goal is to build useful, credible knowledge one well-designed inquiry at a time.
4. It Does Not Remove the Need for Larger Evidence Systems
SoTL is valuable, but it is not the only source of educational evidence. Broader education research, cognitive science, discipline-based education research, institutional data, and evidence reviews also matter. Large-scale studies and research clearinghouses can identify stronger general patterns across many contexts.
The best educators do not choose between SoTL and larger research evidence. They use both. Large-scale research may suggest that retrieval practice supports learning. A SoTL project can then ask how retrieval practice works in a particular course, with particular students, assignments, and constraints. The big map and the local street view belong together.
5. It Does Not Automatically Change Institutions
SoTL can improve teaching, but it does not automatically change campus culture. A brilliant SoTL project may still sit quietly in a conference program unless departments, centers for teaching and learning, promotion committees, and academic leaders make room for the work to matter.
Institutional change requires incentives, time, funding, mentoring, ethical guidance, publication support, and recognition. Without those structures, SoTL risks becoming one more unpaid labor of love performed by educators who already have full plates. And those plates are not charming appetizer plates. They are Thanksgiving plates with gravy approaching the edge.
How to Use SoTL Research Wisely
Start with a Real Learning Problem
The strongest SoTL projects usually begin with genuine curiosity. Choose a problem that matters to students and to the course. “Do students like my new slides?” may be mildly interesting, but “Do annotated examples help students transfer problem-solving strategies?” is more likely to produce useful insight.
Match the Method to the Question
A survey may help explore student perceptions, but it may not show whether learning improved. Assignment analysis may reveal performance changes, while interviews may explain why students made certain choices. Mixed methods can be especially helpful because numbers and narratives often answer different parts of the same question.
Be Ethical and Transparent
Because SoTL often involves students, ethical care is essential. Students should not feel pressured to participate in research because their instructor controls grades. Researchers must consider consent, privacy, institutional review requirements, and responsible use of student work. Ethical SoTL protects students while making learning visible.
Share the Messy Parts
SoTL becomes more useful when educators share not only what worked, but also what did not. A failed intervention can still teach the field something valuable. Maybe the assignment was unclear. Maybe students needed more practice. Maybe the timing was terrible. Maybe the technology behaved like it had been raised by raccoons. Honest reporting helps others avoid the same potholes.
Examples of SoTL Questions That Matter
Strong SoTL questions are specific, evidence-friendly, and connected to student learning. Examples include:
- How does structured peer feedback affect revision quality in first-year writing?
- Do short retrieval quizzes improve long-term retention in an anatomy course?
- How do transparent assignment instructions affect student confidence and performance?
- What kinds of feedback help students improve clinical reasoning in simulation labs?
- How do students use AI tools when assignments require reflection on process?
- Does role assignment in group work increase participation among quieter students?
Notice that these questions do not ask, “What is the one best way to teach?” That question is too big, too vague, and probably hiding in a faculty meeting waiting to derail the agenda. Better SoTL questions are focused enough to investigate and meaningful enough to improve practice.
Experience Notes: What SoTL Feels Like in Real Teaching
In real classrooms, SoTL often begins with a small irritation. Not a dramatic crisis, not a cinematic moment with thunder outside the lecture hall, but a repeated pattern that makes an instructor pause. Students submit weak introductions. Lab reports show the same misconception. Discussion boards become a museum of “I agree” posts. Group projects produce one exhausted leader and three professional passengers. The teacher senses something is happening, but sensing is not the same as knowing.
That is where SoTL becomes useful. It gives educators permission to slow down and investigate instead of simply redesigning everything at midnight. One instructor might discover that students are not ignoring the rubric; they do not understand the language of the rubric. Another might learn that students are not unwilling to participate; they need time to prepare and a clearer structure for entry into discussion. A third might find that feedback arrives too late to influence the next assignment, making it feel less like guidance and more like a receipt.
The most valuable experience in SoTL is often humility. A teacher may begin with one explanation and end with another. For instance, suppose an instructor thinks students are performing poorly because they “lack critical thinking.” After collecting evidence, the instructor may find that students can think critically in conversation but struggle to show that thinking in written form. The solution changes. Instead of lecturing students about effort, the instructor builds a bridge between discussion, outlining, drafting, and revision. The classroom problem becomes more precise, and therefore more solvable.
SoTL also changes conversations among colleagues. Without evidence, teaching discussions can become a friendly exchange of preferences: “I like essays,” “I like quizzes,” “I like projects,” “I like anything that does not require grading on Sunday night.” With SoTL, the conversation becomes richer. Colleagues can compare learning goals, student work, feedback timing, assessment design, and context. They do not have to agree on one perfect method. They can ask better questions together.
There is also a practical emotional benefit. Teaching can feel lonely when something is not working. SoTL reframes struggle as inquiry. A confusing assignment is not a personal failure; it is a research opportunity wearing a fake mustache. Student misunderstanding is not proof that teaching has failed; it is data asking for interpretation. That mindset does not make teaching easy, but it makes improvement more possible.
Still, experience teaches one caution: SoTL takes time. Collecting evidence, reading literature, seeking ethical review, analyzing student work, and writing results cannot be squeezed effortlessly between office hours and committee meetings. Institutions that want better teaching must support the labor behind it. SoTL thrives when educators have mentoring, reasonable timelines, research support, and recognition. Without support, even enthusiastic instructors can burn out before their best questions become shareable knowledge.
Ultimately, the experience of SoTL is not about proving that one teacher has discovered the holy grail of pedagogy. It is about becoming more attentive, more evidence-minded, and more generous with what we learn. The best SoTL practitioners do not say, “This worked for me, so everyone must do it.” They say, “Here is what I asked, what I tried, what I found, what I still wonder, and what you might adapt.” That is a much better gift.
Conclusion: SoTL Gives Us Better Questions, Not Easy Answers
SoTL research gives higher education a disciplined way to study teaching and learning from the inside. It helps educators move beyond hunches, document student learning, improve course design, support equity, and share knowledge with colleagues. It respects teaching as serious intellectual work and invites instructors to treat classroom problems as worthy of investigation.
But SoTL does not give us universal laws, instant fixes, or context-free teaching commandments. It does not replace professional judgment, large-scale evidence, ethical care, or institutional support. Its power lies in its balance: practical but scholarly, local but shareable, evidence-based but humble.
The best way to use SoTL is not to ask, “What does the research tell me to do?” A better question is, “What does the research help me notice, test, adapt, and understand?” That is where SoTL shines. It does not hand educators a script. It hands them a better flashlight.