“Engaged learning” is a common term at the University of Michigan and a growing movement nationally. What does it mean? U-M’s working definition conceives of engaged learning as providing students with opportunities for practice in unscripted, authentic settings, where stakeholders (including the students themselves) are invested in the outcome. This pairs nicely with Grant Wiggins’s concept of “authentic assessment,” whereby students closely practice and demonstrate the type of work they will be doing after graduation: it is public, involves collaboration, and engages students in representative challenges of a field or subject, which are often ill-structured -- rather than having “right or wrong” answers. A more thorough exploration of engaged learning at Michigan can be found in a forthcoming series of Occasional Papers (more on these below). 

Here are a few of the many ways that students already experience engaged learning at U-M:

As an instructor at U-M, how can you contribute to a campus climate where all students feel valued and fully supported as members of our academic community? This is the key question behind the upcoming Inclusive Teaching @ Michigan workshop series, which will be held for the first time this May. 

U-M instructors in all disciplines are invited to register for one or more of these workshops focused on concrete strategies for inclusive teaching, through classroom practices, course design, and both formal and informal interactions with students.  Held during the first three weeks of May, and led by staff and faculty from CRLT, IGR, and LSA, this series of workshops will include opportunities to:

GSIs across campus are being recognized for their excellent teaching. CRLT warmly congratulates winners of Rackham's Outstanding GSI Award and the College of Engineering's Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding GSIs. Selected from large pools of nominees, all of these instructors have demonstrated extraordinary commitment, creativity, and overall excellence in their teaching.

The four Towner awardees were honored at the College of Engineering's Student Leaders and Honors Brunch on Sunday, March 20. Rackham will be hosting a public awards ceremony to honor its twenty prize-winners, along with outstanding faculty mentors, on April 14. For more information, including the names and departments of all of the winners, see this Rackham page and this College of Engineering page. 

In recent years there has been a growing emphasis on education that crosses disciplinary boundaries and teaches students to work on teams. In the health sciences, this is due to an increased awareness that collaborative care is a reality for students after they graduate from any number of health science programs. Interprofessional education (IPE), as defined by the World Health Organization and adopted by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative,

"occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes."

In January 2016, the University of Michigan’s Center for Interprofessional Education launched a new Interprofessional Leadership Fellows program. This program was developed so that health science professionals with a strong interest in interprofessional education and practice might become change agents for IPE efforts on campus and beyond.  The sixteen IPE fellows making up the inaugural cohort represent the following U-M health science schools: