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Teaching & Learning in the 21st Century

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Through the Teaching & Learning in the 21st Century initiative, the UW is systematically addressing how we approach teaching and learning in the digital age. These efforts put learning first, using technology as a tool to enhance and enrich student engagement and free up valuable class time for richer interaction. They meet the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse and digitally savvy UW community by anticipating and responding to developments in cutting-edge pedagogy, and the omni-presence of transformative, integrated technologies.

UW Teaching & Learning in the 21st Century:

  • serves an increasingly diverse UW community
  • involves more innovative pedagogies and experiential learning
  • is more collaborative
  • is supported by technology
  • is aware of changing student expectations

See the visioning document Teaching & Learning in the 21st Century for details.

Selected accomplishments

UW-IT and collaborators on all three campuses continue to develop and support tools for teaching and learning:

  • Negotiated contract language to protect the intellectual property of faculty creating courses using Canvas. The UW agreement supersedes the standard Canvas terms of use and was negotiated through the Internet2 consortium to provide very specific protections for faculty and student intellectual property and data privacy. See an explanation of the legal language here.
  • Guided development of new technology-enhanced active learning classrooms in Odegaard Undergraduate Library.
  • Developing ways to use learner-based analytics to send personalized support to students; UW Tacoma has received national attention for a pilot program.

The Teaching with Technology Fellows (TTF) program redesigned 40 face-to-face UW courses to online or hybrid formats that have enrolled over 5,000 students, to date.

UW-IT and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), in collaboration with partners on all three campuses support faculty as they teach using new technologies:

Near-term goals

  • Implement recommendations for campus learning spaces.
  • Create resources and pilot tools for evidence-based teaching/active learning.
  • Support teaching and learning around career readiness and collaboration.
  • Support implementation of the Diversity Requirement.

Campus partners

Leadership

Steering Committee and Working Groups