We reimagine learning

The 2023 competitive grant program will award funding to projects that use innovative educational technology to create more effective, engaging, and inclusive learning experiences that prepare our students to navigate a technology-rich world. We will fund projects that are centered around open educational resources, learning analytics, immersive learning environments, artificial intelligence and machine learning, metaverse, gamification, and other “avant-garde” or “blue ocean” strategies.

Through the 2022 Teaching and Learning Grants, a total of 115 projects have been awarded directly impacting 19,171 students-seats, 296 courses, and 86 academic programs. $2.7 Million has been awarded. Our report on the 2022 initiative demonstrates the program's broad impact, highlights and remarkable accomplishments. Survey data show an overwhelmingly positive response from our students concerning their course experience. This campus story describes some examples of awarded projects.

The update to the General Education diversity requirement specifies that undergraduate students will participate in classroom discussions of systemic racism, power and oppression, and will gain skills related to civic engagement, effective communication across differences and respectful conflict resolution. In Fall 2022, a campus-wide General Education Diversity Implementation committee was formed, including two teams that have begun work on the technical/systems implementation of the required changes and the academic design of these courses, respectively.

The second initiative focuses on incorporating learning outcomes and experiences relevant to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in all undergraduate degree programs. In the multi-year process, guided by the Provost’s Commission on Learning Outcome Assessment, faculty members in each department articulate, map and measure DEI learning outcomes relevant to their field or discipline. Nearly every department has articulated their DEI learning outcomes (LOs) and, now in the second year of this process, has mapped them to the curriculum.

Arts for All works toward three major goals:

• Making the arts more accessible to and representative of our community

• Placing the arts in dialogue with the sciences and technology

• Leveraging the community-building and community-sustaining power of the arts in advancing social justice

Arts for All has launched or assisted in launching four academic programs: undergraduate minors in arts leadership, immersive media design, and creative placemaking, and a post-baccalaureate certificate in arts management. To support these programs, a number of professional and tenure-track faculty have been appointed either directly through Arts for All or in partnership with the initiative.

Arts for All has also helped to fund the purchase of new arts-based technology in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, and the Department of Art History and Archeology. Through its granting program Arts for All has brought together collaborative teams from different colleges, sent students to conferences, supported an international workshop, and supported an art + XR exposition.

New changes to classrooms are expanding opportunities for instructors and students for active and engaged learning. This includes:

• New hybrid-flexible classrooms to allow in-person and remote students to interact seamlessly

• New TERP classrooms that expand collaborative, student-centered, team-based modes of teaching and learning

• New student lounge/informal learning spaces have been created in key academic buildings with high classroom densities

• Several computer lab and classroom technology upgrades

With the establishment of the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), we are strengthening and expanding research opportunities by advancing equitable and inclusive access for students of all backgrounds and levels of experience.

OUR launched in Fall 2023, providing a range of resources and programs including:

• Individualized in-person meetings, campus-based and virtual seminars, Canvas-based modules and courses, and other resources that will help students identify, pursue and succeed in research opportunities on campus and beyond
• Support and coordination for faculty members, academic units, and existing programs for research engagement
• The continued operation of the First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE), a large-scale summer research program available to all UMD undergraduate students

These impactful programs bridge the gap between academics and practice for civically minded undergraduates by combining a fall subject-based policy seminar, with a spring internship for credit. Placements include international organizations, federal agencies, foreign embassies, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations in the Washington, D.C., area. The programs strive to prepare talented and diverse undergraduate students to excel in professional internships and to pursue careers of influence and impact, especially in the public sector.

In Fall, 2022, the Global Fellows program expanded with the addition of one concentration on international intelligence and security and another on economic diplomacy and grand challenges will be added in Fall, 2023.

Interdisciplinary Business Honors, a partnership with the Smith School, challenges students to imagine the future of work and business across fields and in connection with the grand challenges of our time.

Honors Global Communities, a partnership with the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, draws on social data science to critically examine a wide range of global problems, with the opportunity for policy internships in the Washington, D.C., area.