About

OPID serves as a systemwide professional and instructional development resource for University of Wisconsin System institutions. Established in 1977 as the Undergraduate Teaching Improvement Council (UTIC), it was first led by a council of campus representatives who focused primarily on teaching improvement. In 2000, the program became OPID, expanding its emphases to meet the broader professional needs of faculty and academic staff with programming on topics such as faculty development in all learning environments, the systematic assessment of student learning through the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), inclusive excellence, leadership, and faculty retention. The OPID Advisory Council serves both as an advisory council and as a liaison between UW System Administration and all of the UW System institutions.

MELT: Ratcheting-Up Student Thinking in the Era of AI (Hybrid)

Dates & Times:  Thursday, June 27th from 9am-3pm  and Friday, June 28th from 9am-3pm
Location: Sorensen Hall, room 205 or Online

Join instructors from the Universities of Wisconsin in a two-day workshop designed to examine characteristics of student thinking in today’s AI Era. Explore ways to facilitate students’ sophisticated thinking and prompt their learning autonomy using the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT) framework through this hybrid event! Lunch will be provided for in-person participants registering by the deadline. Day one of the workshop focuses on understanding student cognition using the MELT framework. Adapting MELT to your own context, empowering learning autonomy, and considering students’ attitudes toward learning. Day two of the workshop provides time for you to work with peers to review and refine your adapted MELT and design associated learning or assessment tasks. The workshop concludes with redesigning learning tasks and assessments using MELT that is AI savvy. The two days lay the foundation for creating a viable action plan for your courses that rachets-up student thinking in the AI era.

Registration is required by June 24th, 2024!

For more information and to register, click here.

2024 Hybrid Conference: Foundations for the Future

This year the International Conference on Improving University Teaching celebrates its fiftieth gathering. Over the past half century, IUT has held yearly conferences in 42 cities and 25 countries.

The half century mark provides an opportunity to look back and take stock. What ideas and approaches to improving university teaching and learning have proven most effective over these five decades. How could they continue guide us in the future? How have education, students, and/or teaching changed and what foundational principles remain intact? Looking to the future, what are ways we could leverage new techniques and technologies to improve learning, guided by these foundational concepts?

Over three days in late July and early August, the 2024 conference will explore these and related questions under the broad theme of “Foundations for the Future.”  As was true the past two years, this conference will be a hybrid event. Our in-person host is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, one of thirteen schools in the University of Wisconsin System and a major research university with 1,600 faculty serving 23,000 students, located in the city of Milwaukee on the shores of Lake Michigan. Other sessions will be held within the live but remote 72-hour format we have successfully used since 2020. We hope many participants will attend the conference in person in Milwaukee, but also warmly welcome those who choose to participate remotely.

For more information, click here.