Take Note: April Roundtable Event: Revitalizing Space and Pedagogy
The April Delta Roundtable, “Revitalizing Space and Pedagogy: Creating Learning Environments of the Future,” will be held on April 17, 2012, from 12-1:15pm in Tripp Commons, Memorial Union. The event will be facilitated by Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL) Director, Dr. John Booske; and WisCEL Associate Director, Suzanne Smith.
The Roundtable will feature discussion surrounding the newly-opened WisCEL Centers. WisCEL Centers combine deliberate choices of physical environment including multi-use spaces, inviting and functional furnishings, and mobile whiteboards with innovative classroom technologies to create a learning commons of the future. A critical design principle was to envision a space that students would embrace as "their own" place to engage in informal learning, and marry it with an infrastructure that enabled 21st-century, best practices for formal classroom instruction. WisCEL supports pedagogies which include spontaneous peer collaboration, instructor-as-coach models, self-pacing opportunities, frequent and immediate learning progress feedback, increased instructor time with students, and international connectivity.
Registration for the Roundtable, which includes a complimentary lunch, is required and will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis through the registration deadline of Tues April 10. You may register at go.wisc.edu/uw4b68.
What is WisCEL?
The Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL) is an innovative approach to learning that combines deliberate choices of physical environment including multi-use spaces, technology that supports both peer-collaboration and self-paced learning, and software which provides immediate feedback to students on assignments and exams and allows increased instructor time with students.
In part, the goals of WisCEL include:
- Maximizing learner time on task.
- Providing immediate learning progress feedback and building fundamental competencies through the use of technology.
- Supporting peer-collaborative learning.
- Reducing the achievement gap.
- Increasing access and reducing schedule conflicts.
- Building life-long learner skills and confidence vs. teacher-centered dependency
- Supporting "inverted paradigm" instruction (flipped classroom)
- Supporting assessment based on competency standards rather than relative comparison to other cohort peers. (Personalized learning vs. "one size fits all" learning)