We reimagine learning
We reimagine learning and teaching as inclusive, experiential, publicly engaged, creative, integrative, holistic, and empowering.
Fearlessly Forward Initiatives
Teaching and Learning Grants
In Spring, 2022, The University of Maryland launched the Teaching and Learning Grants to support innovative educational projects that focus on expanding active and experiential learning. A new call for Teaching Innovation Grant proposals was announced in September, 2023, for projects exploring the intersection of education and technology.
Teaching and Learning Grants
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.
Undergraduate Curricular Initiatives in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The University of Maryland has launched two distinct but related updates in undergraduate education to continue forging an inclusive and diverse community committed to the pursuit of equity.
Undergraduate Curricular Initiatives in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
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
The Arts for All initiative calls upon artistic and creative thinking and leverages the combined power of the arts, technology, and social justice to address grand challenges.
Arts for All
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.
Learning Environment Modernization
The University of Maryland is accelerating the expansion and development of accessible, smart, and learner-centered environments to support innovative pedagogical practices, foster students’ creativity, and enable collaboration.
Learning Environment Modernization
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
New Honors College Programs
The Honors College is expanding its living-learning programs to provide more opportunities that foster learning inside and outside of the classroom.
New Honors College Programs
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.
Global and Federal Fellows
The Global Fellows and Federal Fellows programs are expanding to equip more undergraduate students from all majors with the knowledge, skills, outlook, and experience necessary to collaborate across disciplines and lead efforts to solve humanity’s grand challenges.
Global and Federal Fellows
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.
Strategic Commitment Goals
Goal 1
Lead in the development of innovative and inclusive approaches for teaching and learning.
Goal 1
Lead in the development of innovative and inclusive approaches for teaching and learning.
Objectives
- Expand accessibility of our educational programs through equitable, flexible, inclusive approaches to instructional design and delivery.
- Rethink and reconfigure our learning environments to balance, integrate, and leverage universal design, technology-rich education, and human connection.
- Unlock the potential of our campus as a green, connected living-learning environment that is open and accessible to the global community.
- Imagine new possibilities for advancing lifelong learning with technology and new forms of engagement for learners of all ages.
Goal 2
Expand the use of high-impact experiential learning to ensure every student has the opportunity to learn through public service, civic engagement, internships, and project-based experiences.
Goal 2
Expand the use of high-impact experiential learning to ensure every student has the opportunity to learn through public service, civic engagement, internships, and project-based experiences.
Objectives
- Provide opportunities throughout the educational journey for internships, research experiences, and other applied learning experiences.
- Develop and coordinate volunteer and civic engagement opportunities and encourage undergraduate and graduate students to engage in work in support of the public good.
- Grow events and programs that enable students to connect with local community members, organizations, and businesses for civic development, employment, and other forms of learning.
Goal 3
Create opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration that fosters creative expression, discovery, and critical thinking.
Goal 3
Create opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration that fosters creative expression, discovery, and critical thinking.
Objectives
- Build partnerships among the arts, humanities, science, technology, and other disciplines to develop new curricular and experiential offerings that nurture different ways of thinking to spark dialogue, understanding, problem solving, and action.
- Support indoor and outdoor spaces on campus to advance learning, inspire discovery, and activate creativity.