Mission
We foster and champion effective teaching, grounded in sound pedagogy and enhanced by innovation, to promote successful learning for our diverse student population. To realize this mission, we collaborate with faculty and other campus partners, drawing on our wide range of expertise in pedagogy, educational technology, assessment, learning spaces, and curricular research.
Scope and Organization
UCLA’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) provides multiple services, resources, and programs to enhance and support teaching excellence, innovation, and inclusivity. These include a grant program for curricular innovation; pedagogical development of faculty and graduate students via workshops and learning communities; strengthening of TA training campus-wide; educational technology software and lecture capture; classroom technology and furnishings; and analytics and assessment for curricular and institutional improvement efforts. We also work to enhance the valuation of teaching in the academic personnel process and foster a culture of effective teaching and learning as institutional priorities.
Our efforts are organized into four main areas:
Center for Educational Assessment
The Center for Educational Assessment (CEA) provides comprehensive institutional support to help faculty identify workable assessment strategies that facilitate the development of academic programs, enhance the quality of instruction and student learning, support internal and external grant funding, and result in research publications. Core to CEA’s mission is providing consultative support to faculty as they develop and implement meaningful, sustainable assessment initiatives to evaluate educational programs and the university experience more broadly.
Instructional Improvement Programs
The Instructional Improvement Programs are designed to enhance curricular experimentation and development and to improve instruction through grant funding, consultation, and workshops for both faculty and TAs. We also offer curriculum development and teaching opportunities for graduate students.
Learning Spaces
The mission of Learning Spaces is to ensure that faculty have the best possible resources in the classroom to support teaching. This mission is accomplished through a commitment to high quality customer service, renewal and expansion of the installed technology base, and measured infusion of innovation in both technology and service models.
Teaching and Learning Technologies
The mission of the Teaching and Learning Technologies unit is to enable instructors to use technology to augment and facilitate the teaching and learning that happen both inside and outside the physical classroom. To achieve this mission, we provide services related to instructional media and instructional technology.
History
For more than four decades, UCLA has made an explicit commitment to the development of programs and activities that enrich university instruction. The process of developing a campus plan began in 1975 when The Regents and the legislature allocated special funds for UC-wide instructional improvement. In 1978, the Office of Undergraduate Affairs was reorganized and the newly formed Office of Instructional Development assumed primary responsibility for instructional improvement activities.
The organization underwent a series of reviews beginning in 2015 by a campus-wide faculty review committee and by the Academic Senate, and a renewed commitment to effective teaching innovation and excellence was launched. On March 6, 2019, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching was announced as the new name for the Office of Instructional Development to underscore the mission to foster and champion effective teaching.