Campus Connection

Are you teaching with research-based strategies UWL’s long-term science of learning guru would suggest? 

When Bill Cerbin started teaching nearly 40 years ago he was a “true novice,” he recalls. Over the years he got better at engaging his students and his evaluations were good, but student performance was still mediocre at best. If only he had access to some of the educational research and easy-to-digest books available to teachers today. They provide answers on how teachers can make the best decisions to support learning in their classrooms.  

With this growing body of research available and a UWL center dedicated to turning this kind of research into practice, there is no reason a novice UWL teacher should feel alone in goals to improve teaching and learning at UWL.  Over the last decade, UWL’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning has helped instructors improve the design and implementation of instructional materials, teaching practices, and assessment of student learning. [Take the quiz below to see if you are using the latest teaching strategies].

The center started after Cerbin, recently retired director of the center, had asked many of UWL’s past provosts for a central “teaching center” that would unite the efforts across campus to provide faculty development opportunities. That call was answered under UWL’s former Provost Kathleen Enz Finken who asked Cerbin to start and lead UWL’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning in 2009. 

The center has grown to provide opportunities for instructors to improve their practice through workshops, conferences, seminars, training courses, programs, grant projects and individual consultation. It now includes online instruction, including instructional support for the new learning management system, Canvas, this academic year.   

Cerbin retired in August and gave a farewell address to campus as part of the 21st Annual UWL Conference on Teaching and Learning, “Taking Learning Seriously.” 

Cerbin, a former psychology professor, explained his position has allowed him to explore and share his educational research interests. Meanwhile, he has become a resource to not only UWL’s campus, but the entire UW System.  

During the CATL conference, Fay Akindes, director of Systemwide Professional & Instructional Development, presented Cerbin with a commemorative plaque honoring his years of dedication and distinguished service to UWL and the UW System. He has served as chair and on the executive committee of the UW System Office of Professional and instructional Development Advisory Council and provided numerous presentations and workshops throughout the UW System. 

"He leaves a legacy teaching and learning not only at UWL but throughout the System,” says Akindes.  

A teacher at heart, Cerbin used the majority of his farewell address to share some of the hallmark teaching and learning strategies he has learned about and promoted — many he would have appreciated as a novice teacher himself, including the value of test-enhanced learning.  

With this in mind, here is a short test covering a few of the studies he shared.

Take the quiz: Are you using research-based strategies?

[wp_quiz id="55393"]