Leading Academic Change

The Center for Academic Innovation is playing a critical role in bringing together leaders in academic change from across the country to collaborate, share ideas and best practices, and receive professional development. 

Spring 2025 SoTL Showcase Call for Proposals

The Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation invites faculty across the University System of Maryland (USM) to participate in a spring 2025 showcase celebrating the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This system-wide event will provide a platform to share research findings and innovative teaching practices. This event is an extension of the Kirwan Center’s Elkins Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Fellows Program that has been ongoing since 2023.

Inaugural Cohort of Faculty from Five USM Institutions Named SOTL Fellows

The William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the University System of Maryland (USM) welcomes Dr. Kelly Elkins of Towson University as a Senior Fellow, to lead system support of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This will include working with an inaugural cohort of faculty selected as 2023-24 Elkins SoTL Fellows from across five USM institutions.

USM OnTrack

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted how courses and programs are being offered and how faculty and students are engaging in teaching and learning. Moreover, the pandemic is likely to have a far-reaching impact on student mobility and institutional operations going forward. To be prepared for the fall 2020 semester as well as the post-COVID-19 world, USM institutions must adapt both their technology infrastructure use and teaching methods to produce optimally effective learning environments—whether online, face-to-face, or some combination of both.

Dr. MJ Bishop delivers keynote address at CELDA 2015 in Dublin, Ireland

(Adelphi, Md., Oct. 26, 2015) – William E. Kirwan Center Director MJ Bishop set the direction for the 12th annual International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age, revisiting instructional message design’s objectivist learning theory and transmission-oriented communication theory foundations, discussing current trends and issues being raised in the literature, and exploring ways the field might continue to serve as a “linking science” between learning theory and instructional practice. In her keynote address, Dr.

Leading Academic Change: An Early Market Scan of Leading-­edge Postsecondary Academic Innovation Centers

Academic change is the term being used increasingly to describe universities’ efforts to improve student success by creating optimally effective learning environments that simultaneously increase access, affordability, and quality of higher education for all those who want a postsecondary degree. Institutions are starting to see the vast potential of hybrid classrooms, shared courseware initiatives, open educational resources, competency-based education, learning analytics, and adaptive learning environments and they are seeking ways to scale and sustain these innovations.

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