August 18, 2025

SoTL: The Foundation for College-Wide Success

Imagine the college as a site of inquiry, where the systematic study of what works to improve student success is the goal. The concept of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), with roots in Ernest L. Boyer’s 1990 work, “Scholarship Reconsidered,” provides the framework for this. Boyer recognized that scholarship is more than just research in an academic discipline. SoTL builds on this idea by applying the procedures of research to the study and improvement of student outcomes through teaching and learning and across the entire institution.

SoTL is the deliberate, systematic investigation of teaching and learning, and other factors in an educational environment, with the intent of improving outcomes and of sharing findings with peers. It is an evidence-based approach that creates and shares new knowledge about what helps students succeed.

By engaging in SoTL, you can improve outcomes like course success and degree completion in a way that involves the entire college. For example, you might not just study an active learning strategy in a single classroom. Instead, a department might collectively investigate the impact of a new cohort model on student retention. An institutional committee could use SoTL methods to examine the effects of a redesigned student support service on graduation rates. The understanding gained through these types of projects allows you to make informed adjustments, refining instruction, support services, and institutional practices to lead to better outcomes for students and the college as a whole.

SoTL transforms your college into a laboratory for educational innovation, where every question asked and every piece of evidence collected helps to build a more effective, impactful, and successful learning experience for your students.

If you would like to explore how to apply SoTL to improve student success outcomes, contact us at the Center for Innovation.