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Focus Areas

Explore the future of learning & teaching.

Staying at the forefront of emerging trends in learning and teaching, we have identified seven interconnected areas of focus as top priorities. We center diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in all our work.

Choose a Focus Area to Explore

We organize our work at the Searle Center through seven interconnected focus areas. These areas highlight Searle’s priorities when supporting instructors at all stages of their careers, as well as our commitment to being at the forefront of emerging trends in learning and teaching. We place diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice at the center of our work, which is why all the other focus areas overlap with it in the image on the right.

Each focus area page includes an overview and a curated list of books, resources, guides, and programming suggestions relevant to the focus area.

In addition to the main focus area pages, you can identify which focus areas you are interested in when searching for programs, Learning & Teaching Guides, and more.

Venn diagram visualizing the connectedness of our seven focus areas. 6 circles labeled Course Design & Delivery, Community & Solidarity, Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, Pedagogy, Assessment & Curricular Change, and High-Impact Practices surround and overlap a central circle labeled Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice.

Pedagogy

Learner-centered approaches to learning and teaching that engage lived experiences and social identities in meaningful ways throughout the curriculum.

Course Design & Delivery

The course design process is a systematic, iterative, and evidence-based approach to developing or revising a course by aligning course objectives, teaching strategies, assessments, and course materials to reach learning outcomes and create a student-centered environment.

Community & Solidarity

Collectively challenging systems that perpetuate oppression through the cultivation of campus partnerships and a keen awareness of privilege and power dynamics signals that we align with our students and educators who experience multiple forms of oppression, inequality, and stigma.

High-Impact Practices

A set of eleven learning and teaching practices that have been empirically demonstrated as educationally beneficial for engagement, learning, and persistence with especially significant gains shown for students whose demographic backgrounds have been historically underserved by higher education.

Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Instructors conduct a research study to answer questions about student learning in their course/program and share the findings via conferences or publications.