Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Minnesota is housed in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. Billie Wahlstrom is the Vice Provost for Distributed Education and Instructional Technology. Dr. Wahlstrom and the TEL Team are advised by the TEL Council, and the TEL Team is assisted by TEL partners throughout the University of Minnesota system.
The Technology Enhanced Learning group provides strategic leadership in the area of academic technology at the University of Minnesota. Our goal is to enhance teaching, learning, and outreach activities on campus, around the state, and online.
Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) encompasses the broad range of experiences and environments in which technology is used to enhance teaching and learning. Technologies are relentlessly and seamlessly merging, and the lines separating the traditional classroom, the technology-enhanced classroom, and distance learning are disappearing rapidly. TEL initiatives use technology-based resources--video, audio, images, simulations, and library tools--to enrich the learning environment and to extend it from the classroom to the residence hall, the home, the workplace, and the mall.
Collaborating with colleagues across great distances is becoming easier and easier with technology. Faculty at the University of Minnesota are using UMConnect to deliver lectures while traveling to conferences. Teams of staff and faculty write reports together and discuss dissemination techniques for grant projects. Graduate students stay connected with advisers while conducting research abroad. As broadband speeds become ubiquitous in the US, high-speed connections allow close to real time collaboration across great distance.
There are many technologies at the University that can help students, faculty, and staff work together from afar.
