Teaching is a complex, rewarding and dynamic craft.
CTLM believes that we all have the ability to excel in our craft of teaching – especially with a little guidance and practice. Our programs can help you learn and apply new evidence-based techniques, tackle challenges, and connect with peers in a supportive environment. We offer regular programming throughout the year as well as pre-semester and summer opportunities. We can also customize a program to meet the needs of your academic department or other unit.
Our programs
Course Design Institute
This immersive 3-day workshop will guide you through the process of a new course design or existing course redesign. Participants will experience an iterative, dynamic, and scholarly process of learning-focused course design with an emphasis on active learning and inclusive teaching. The institute is co-facilitated by CTLM and campus partners.
Intended audience: Individual instructors and instructional teams who are preparing to teach a new course for the first time or to redesign an existing course
Time commitment: Three days
Upcoming sessions: Click the heading to request information about our May 2024 session.
Enhancing Online Education
This program includes webinars, micro-courses, and self-serve resources to help plan an organized course, design effective assessments, manage courses efficiently, build community, and foster inclusivity in online and hybrid learning environments. You can choose to participate via live webinars, asynchronous micro-courses, or self-serve resources.
Intended audience: Faculty, instructional staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows or trainees currently (or soon-to-be) teaching an online or hybrid course at UW-Madison.
Time commitment: webinars (1.5 hours); micro-courses (8-10 hours)
Upcoming sessions: Register now for fall sessions.
Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence Fellowship
A two-semester program in teaching, MTLE helps early-career tenure-track faculty succeed with personalized support from a cross-disciplinary community of peers and teaching and learning experts. Applications are accepted the semester previous to participation.
Intended audience: Early-career tenure-track faculty
Time commitment: One 2-day kickoff workshop and weekly 90-minute sessions over the course of two semesters.
Upcoming cohorts: Apply by Nov. 15
Teaching and Learning Welcome
Are you starting a new academic staff teaching role? This event will provide resources from across campus and the chance to network with colleagues.
Intended audience: Individuals starting new academic staff teaching roles, including adjunct, clinical, and teaching professors and instructors, lecturers, professors of practice, teaching faculty, teaching specialists, and instructional administrators.
Time commitment: 4 hours.
Upcoming sessions: August 2024
Teaching at UW
Teaching at UW is a set of hands-on workshops and expert panels designed to help you explore and apply evidence-based practices to course design and teaching. Topics vary each semester; past sessions have addressed Challenging Conversations in the classroom and Adapting Your Coursework to a ChatGPT world.
Intended audience: Anyone who is or will soon be teaching or TA’ing at UW–Madison. This includes academic staff, faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows or trainees currently (or soon-to-be) teaching at UW-Madison.
Time commitment: Varies by topic.
Upcoming sessions: Register now for sessions in September and October.
Customize an event
We are available to facilitate workshops, department meeting discussions, or other forms of engagement for your unit at no cost. Below are just a few ready-made workshops we have facilitated in the past. We can also explore new topics together. Interested in customized learning for your department or unit? Contact us!
- Teaching with equity and inclusion
- Inclusive group work strategies
- Facilitating conversations on sensitive topics
Success Story
Fostering shared learning for a growing department
The Department of Mechanical Engineering is welcoming a number of new faculty and saw an opportunity to engage in shared learning related to equity, diversity and inclusion. Prof. Dave Rothamer, who chairs the department’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee, worked with CTLM in collaboration with the Center for Engineering Education and Teaching Effectiveness to plan a workshop on inclusive teaching at a department retreat.
“Doing the training as a department ensures that all faculty have experience in the same area and share a common language for future discussions,” Rothamer says. “It also served as a community-building exercise, particularly when done as part of an all-day retreat.”
Facilitators Julie Hunt Johnson and Lisa Jong worked with faculty to explore a framework for teaching inclusively, including understanding social identities, using active learning methods and adopting an access mindset to course content and assessments.
Feedback from participants “far exceeded expectations,” Rothamer says. Even faculty who recently had participated in similar training reported gaining additional insights and ideas.
The workshop prepared the department to begin taking additional steps to build inclusive teaching practices, including planning regular check-ins during faculty meetings and exploring opportunities via active learning classrooms and tools such as Top Hat.
A faculty-wide event like this “signals that the department values DEI efforts and that these efforts are the responsibility of everyone,” Rothamer says.
Interested in customized learning for your department or unit? Contact us
Check out these additional campus resources
Self-directed
Course Success Self-Review
Get specific, actionable, confidential feedback and recommendations in less than an hour. Improve student learning by enhancing your course design and delivery.
Instructional Resources KnowledgeBase
Searchable by topic and keyword, this site offers techniques, sample activities, and other resources instructors can use.
Strengthen Your Syllabus
A syllabus serves many purposes – crafting one that is thorough yet readable is a challenge. As you create or revise your syllabus, check out these suggestions and examples.
Syllabus Tool and Template
Helps you easily create and use course syllabi.
Campus-wide
The Delta Program
Build your skills and CV as an effective and inclusive teacher and research mentor with offerings designed for graduate students and post-docs. Join semester-long courses (such as Teaching in the College Classroom) or a variety of brief workshops.
The Discussion Project
A free series, The Discussion Project supports UW–Madison instructors and leaders in designing and implementing discussion for groups of 40 or fewer. New courses are now enrolling for August 2023. The course consists of three consecutive days of training with a total of 1.5 hours of outside preparatory work. Course 1 runs August 14-16 and course 2 runs August 21-23. Register now!
Learn@UW
DoIT Academic Technology oversees the Learn@UW suite of supported learning technologies, including Canvas, Kaltura MediaSpace, HelioCampus AC, Top Hat and more.
McBurney Disability Resource Center
Offers online and in-person training about the history, resources, policies and procedures associated with providing access and accommodations to individuals with disabilities at UW–Madison.
Morgridge Center for Public Service
Supports faculty, staff, and students looking to connect their research and teaching with mutually beneficial community engagement initiatives. Their offerings include individual consultations, workshops, grants for community-based learning and research, and the Morgridge Fellows learning community, a yearlong professional development opportunity.
Teaching Academy
Educators who care about good teaching. The Teaching Academy offers opportunities for instructors to connect with each other – from drop-in Meet Ups to Fall and Winter Retreats. Most events are open to all.
WISCIENCE
Offers programs, courses and resources for instructors and mentors at all levels to promote equitable and inclusive teaching and mentoring in STEM. Collaborates with departments on initiatives related to enhancing student success and engagement in STEM.
Writing Across the Curriculum
Helps instructors find creative and effective ways to incorporate writing and speaking assignments into courses at all levels and in all disciplines.
School/College-specific
Collaborative for Engineering Education and Teaching Effectiveness (CEETE)
Partners with faculty, instructional staff, administration, and other areas on campus to support and continuously improve teaching, learning, and the student experience in the College of Engineering.
L&S Guides
Connect evidence-based practices to the College of Letters & Science teaching and learning ecosystem using these guides from the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative.