2017 discussion Winter Retreat

Retreats: Building and Maintaining the Teaching Community

Winter Retreats

The Winter Retreat is a half day event, sponsored by UW-Madison Teaching Academy, and its partners, the Vice-Provost Office for Teaching and Learning, Office of Professional & Instructional Development, Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence Program, and DoIT Academic Technology. Right before the Spring semester starts, we meet for a morning to share ideas on teaching and learning topics that have been creating a buzz on campus. If you are interested in helping to plan or facilitate the Winter Retreat, please contact dan.pell@wisc.edu.

Recaps of Past Winter Retreats

Less-Recent Winter Retreats

Details pulled from less-than-perfect archives—

2016: Beyond Rate My Professors: The Future of Course and Instructor Evaluation. Thursday, January 21st from 8–1:00pm in Union South. At a time of increased accountability, universities are under pressure to build effective methods for evaluating courses and instructors and to make data available to faculty, academic planners, students, and other stakeholders. The UW Teaching Academy 2016 Winter Retreat will tackle these thorny issues. A white paper authored by David Baum and the Teaching Academy Executive Committee for developing a supplemental course evaluation system built around the established UW-Madison Essential Learning Outcomes was presented, and a panel discussed broader issues of the design, implementation, and interpretation of evaluations of student learning, including departmental course/instructor evaluations.

2015: Identifying Communities of Practice. Friday, January 16th from 8:30–noon in Union South.

2014: RELATE: Rethinking Effective Learning and Teaching Engagement. Friday, January 17th, 8:00–1:00 in Union South. Program.

2013: Learning to Notice Professor Richard Halverson, from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, gave a keynote on Learning to Notice in a College Classroom,  sharing strategies for constructing peer groups for ongoing teaching improvement, and using data about student learning and behaviors to inform changes in our teaching. Mr. Christopher Carlson-Dakes also gave a talk on The Peer Review Process: What’s in it for me?

2012Using Community Service Learning to Integrate the Wisconsin Idea into Our Teaching and Learning. Wednesday, January 18, 2012

2011Keeping academic integrity alive and well 

2010: Internationalizing the Curriculum, January 14

2009The Performance Gap at UW-Madison

2008What’s Right in Teaching? Exercises in Appreciative Inquiry to enrich teaching and learning. 

2007The Heart of a Teacher