The Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL) facilitates innovative teaching and student-centered active learning by providing instructional support, campus resources, and educational technology in multi-use learning spaces on the UW-Madison campus.
WisCEL is a UW-Madison Educational Innovation and Madison Initiative for Undergraduates (MIU) initiative, involving multiple units on campus: College of Engineering, College of Letters and Science, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Division of Information Technology, General Library System, and the Office of the Provost. These cross-campus collaborations support high-quality, technology-enhanced, innovative education for undergraduate students. By combining assets, resources, and a collaborative funding model, WisCEL is able to put student-centered learning at the forefront, meeting the university’s mission.
WisCEL enables increased student engagement, student achievement, academic mastery, performance skills, and self-efficacy by providing opportunities on campus that support learning community and prepare students for life-long learning.
The WisCEL center is located in College Library. The center operates in partnership with the libraries in order to encourage both informal and formal learning and full-capacity space usage.
Strategic Framework
WisCEL has four core areas that serve as the framework for our current work and future growth:
WisCEL provides a technology-enhanced active learning environment as an alternative to traditional campus classrooms and instruction. WisCEL supports face-to-face, active-learning instruction that includes a wide variety of instructional strategies and models such as blended, flipped, hybrid, and collaboration.Active learning in WisCEL enables student engagement, student achievement, academic mastery, spontaneous peer collaboration, group learning, performance skills and self-efficacy in campus-based learning environments that create learning community and prepare students for life-long learning.
WisCEL serves as a campus model for change by reinventing the use of campus infrastructure in ways that reconsider where and how teaching and learning occur, integrating the latest instructional technology, nurturing exploration and implementation of new teaching models, and creating high-quality learning experiences for students campus-wide.WisCEL performs an incubator role by providing space, resources, support and opportunity for instructors to experiment with instructional technology and implement new and innovative teaching models, such as blended learning and active-learning.
WisCEL supports new teaching models and strategies, integrates and enhances instruction with technology, and nurtures teaching and learning innovation by providing a range of implementation resources and support services.
WisCEL contributes to the universities’ teaching and learning mission, active-learning priorities, and Educational Innovation initiative by working closely with the Provost’s Office and in partnership with academic units and the libraries. WisCEL collaborates campus-wide (with schools, colleges, and departments; the campus library system; and academic support units) to facilitate innovation and to provide quality teaching and learning options for faculty, staff and students. The library partnership affords efficient use of space, staff and resources in learning spaces that synergistically serve both formal and informal learning.