Greetings Spring 2021 Instructors,
Today, we are reaching out with support available for your spring courses. We will be sending semi-regular emails prior to the spring semester with tips, resources, and reminders. They will be archived here: Instructional Support. Please know that the campus instructional continuity page offers many resources as well. Let us know if we can help you find something.
If you have already been teaching during the pandemic – thank you. We know that new formats, new technologies, and new circumstances have required an extraordinary lift. We also know that School of Education students have expressed a comparatively high level of satisfaction with their fall courses. We know that this is in large part because the School of Education instructors are caring and empathic, and have humanized this exhausting learning experience for our students. We really appreciate your efforts.
There are many resources to support spring instructors: grant funding, one-on-one consultations, Canvas templates, and workshops to assist with in-person or online instruction.
As you plan your course for the spring, keep in mind that campus leadership is interested in improving:
- Improving meaningful instructor-to-student engagement
- Improving meaningful student-to-student engagement
- Making sure that the workload for the course matches the credit hours, neither too much nor too little
Individual Support:
- Campus Innovation Grants – $5,000 (individual) and $15,000 (departmental/disciplinary) for initiatives that support student-to-student interaction. Applications are due by December 30th. Applications that are submitted earlier, are more likely to be funded.
- SoE Teaching Innovation Grants – Up to $1,500 for work on your spring course(s). Applications are due by December 10th.
- Instructional Design Consultations (either with your department or one-on-one)
- Organizing your courses effectively
- Improving student-to-student and instructor-to-student engagement
- Designing activities for a physically distanced in-person course
- SoE Canvas Sandbox for Online Engagement Strategies (self-directed)
- A Canvas site to test/sample student engagement strategies.
- TechTAs
- Apply for a student hourly assistant to support the technology during your synchronous online courses.
Group Training:
- Training for Remote/Online Teaching. For TAs and Instructors. An eight-day online asynchronous training for Teaching Assistants focused on translating their role to a remote environment. We encourage all new spring TAs to enroll. (January 4-13)
- The Discussion Project Virtual. The Discussion Project Virtual is an online training for designing and implementing equitable, inclusive, and engaging online discussion.
- TeachOnline@UW. This comprehensive faculty learning community is intended for instructors who are new to — or who want to explore in-depth best practices for — designing and teaching online courses.
- Preparing to Teach Online Bootcamps (December 15-21, January 5-11)
Course preparation is never an easy task, and course preparation during a pandemic is even trickier. The School of Education Instructional Support Team is committed to helping however we can. Please let us know how we can lighten your load.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at anna.lewis@wisc.edu. Again, these emails will be archived here: Instructional Support.
Our team hopes that you have a safe, restorative holiday week.
Warmly,
Anna Lewis & the School of Education Instructional Support Team
(Maria Widmer, Julie Mead, Julie Collins, Bill Weber, Sandra Taylor Marshall, Amanda Fowler, Jim Jonas, and I-Pang Fu)