Prepare to Teach

Resources and events to get ready for the spring semester

Pre-semester Checklist

Icon in red of a box being checked offThese 7 steps will help you get organized and ready to welcome your new students. To save time, each step links directly to campus resources.

Help with Canvas

The logo for the Canvas learning management system - eight half circles arranged in a circle with a smaller circle within formed of dots, in redDoIT’s Learn@UW team has a series of drop-in workshops to assist you.

Helpful guides

Navigating Classroom Dynamics & Disruptions

This guide will help you prepare for and respond to in-class conflicts and challenges – everything from inappropriate behavior to impacts from politics and current events.

Generative AI

  • Share your expectations with students via an AI syllabus statement.
  • Check out the AI Prompt Cookbook for a collection of starter prompts to create and organize course content, brainstorm assignments and activities, and more.

Accessibility and Accommodations

Curricular resources

Go Big Read

Discussion guides, sample assignments and more focused on this year’s selection, “Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body.”

Libraries

Reserve course materials, add info to your Canvas course, request library instruction, and more.

Center for Campus History

Teaching guides with primary sources, readings, and discussion questions about historical moments of discrimination and resistance at UW–Madison.

Cross-campus events

Teaching Academy Winter Retreat

Join the Teaching Academy for conversation and community around the topic “Cultivating Students’ Professional Skills and Identities” on Feb. 7 from 9-11:30 a.m. This hybrid event will include a series of short presentations as well as opportunities to consider how to bring what you’ve heard back to your campus context.
Learn more and register