Rebecca Stein and Bruce Lenthall

Education at Penn – how and what we want to teach, how and what we want our students to learn, who our students are – is constantly changing. In just the span of our current seniors’ undergraduate experiences, those of us who teach and support learning have had to repeatedly think anew about how we educate our students amidst a pandemic, Zoom classes and remote teaching, the reminder of the need for racial inclusion and equity in our courses, difficulties re-engaging students in person, the emergence of generative AI, and struggles to support open inquiry in our classes. These past four years have been a dramatic reminder of the new challenges and opportunities in education.

To better meet those continually changing challenges and opportunities, now and in the future, Penn is also changing some of the ways we support teaching and learning. This year, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and the Online Learning Initiative (OLI) have merged to form the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Innovation (CETLI).

For instructors – from senior faculty to new graduate students – staff, programs, and offices across Penn, CETLI is a resource to help promote teaching excellence and innovation. The center does this by:

• Supporting all instructors in realizing their teaching aims and developing as teachers
• Bolstering the people, processes and technological infrastructure needed to make possible outstanding teaching on, and beyond, Penn’s campus
• Helping to lead Penn through an evolving educational landscape, and advancing teaching initiatives informed by changes to our student body, technology and pedagogy
• Fostering a culture of inclusive and excellent teaching

That mission, of course, builds on the overlapping as well as distinct aims of its precursors, CTL and OLI. Nothing either center did will go away. By merging the two groups, though, CETLI can do more than either did alone. It can better respond to the reality that pedagogy and technology, while not always, are often entwined. The combined center will offer improved support for connecting the pedagogical and the digital, working both with instructors and with school-based staff  to help make sure Penn’s instructional technology systems best meet our needs and aspirations. As a single organization, CETLI will also more seamlessly center considerations of teaching in discussions of new digital initiatives, with instructional design support for those initiatives.

We have already begun implementing this enhanced support. For instructors, CETLI offers regular workshops and individual consultations on teaching with technology – everything from teaching with Canvas, to polling, to using generative AI in teaching. CETLI supports instructional design projects and instructional designers across campus. And CETLI is actively partnering with the many instructional technology professionals around Penn to review, improve, and make legible for instructors the various instructional technologies available at Penn. As we take on the opportunities and challenges of teaching and learning, we need to consider where pedagogy and technology may connect.

The goal in creating CETLI, however, is not to suggest all of teaching and learning is about instructional technology. Excellent teaching may be cutting edge – or make outstanding use of practices as old as a seminar discussions or problem sets.

The combined center will provide all Penn instructors, staff and schools with better access to supports for their teaching, whether they seek to use technology or not. CETLI offers a wealth of web resources for instructors looking to develop their teaching or address specific questions and for staff supporting online programs. CETLI can provide workshops upon request, for faculty, lecturers, graduate students and staff in all 12 Penn schools. These sessions run the gamut from inclusive and equitable teaching to teaching for active learning, from effective mentorship to discussions across difference, from teaching with generative AI to curricular mapping on a program level.

CETLI continues to support faculty and lecturers across Penn, helping instructors pursue their own aims and creating space for them to come together to reflect on and discuss their common teaching concerns and interests. CETLI discussions and workshops bring instructors together to learn from one another and to explore both new and long-standing teaching concerns. Many of these sessions are one-time discussions, but some – such as CETLI’s several year-long seminars, multi-day Course Design Institute and Introduction to Teaching at Penn for new faculty – allow instructors to hold sustained conversations on particular topics. And instructors with large or small teaching questions can consult with CETLI staff confidentially; if desired, CETLI can observe classes and provide feedback.

For graduate students and teaching assistants, CETLI offers programs to prepare them for teaching at Penn and to launch them into future careers teaching on the college or university level. All schools or departments may have their doctoral students new to TAing participate in our 3-day TA Training program. For undergraduate or master’s students acting at TAs or learning assistants, CETLI offers a much-abridged orientation. For graduate students interested in further development, we offer over a hundred workshops a year, including both single-session discussions and multi-session mini-courses. Many of these programs are open to postdocs as well. These groups are also welcome to consult with CETLI regarding teaching and CETLI staff and graduate fellows are available for class observations.

With CETLI’s digital innovation team, the center continues to support schools and programs in experimenting with, developing and offering online programs. These may include degree programs, for-credit classes, non-credit offerings, and exploring other educational modes. In this, CETLI consults with and connects school teams to share best practices at Penn, again fostering a culture of shared reflection. CETLI supports the infrastructure, both technological and procedural, needed for such programmatic experimentation. This includes providing guidance related to strategy, state and federal compliance requirements, and marketing, as well as supporting external partnerships, managing related data, and coordinating with campus partners around services for online students. Further, CETLI provides the Online Learning Platform: an externally facing system that enables non-credit, online Penn programs and courses to collect payment and registration, and create and review custom applications while also providing detailed enrollment reporting and learner support. And for instructors and program teams considering creative approaches to teaching and learning–whether in the digital space or not–CETLI also provides support through its Spark Grants program.

It isn’t only the past four years that have challenged us to think differently about teaching and learning. Regardless of circumstances, all of us regularly consider how to bolster all of our students’ learning experiences. CETLI represents a new organization, designed to be nimble in supporting teaching and learning amidst changing circumstances. But it also represents a long-standing ideal: that when we come together and learn from one another, we can improve education for all.

More information about CETLI can be found at https://cetli.upenn.edu. To find out how to make use of any of CETLI’s resources, to consult with CETLI staff, or to be added to the listserv of events, write to CETLI-info@upenn.edu. To join the celebration of CETLI’s opening, February 12, from 4:30-6 p.m., register online.

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Rebecca Stein and Bruce Lenthall are co-executive directors of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CETLI).

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This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.