The OTLT Center for Teaching invites you to a virtual 25th anniversary celebration. Randy Bass, vice president for Strategic Education Initiatives and professor of English at Georgetown University, will present the keynote, "What's the Problem Now? The Future of Teaching and Learning.” 

The anniversary of the Center for Teaching—and the events of the last two years—arrive in the middle of a 50-year transformation of higher education toward what we might call the “new learning paradigm.” This new paradigm emerges from the convergence of two global revolutions: digital and human. As such, the new paradigm puts the full range of human abilities, mindsets, and skill sets at the core. It demands an increasingly central role for experiential and unscripted learning as well as heightened attention to community and an ethic of care and inclusion.  

The keynote will explore this shift and ask: What will the world need from the University of Iowa in the second half of this arc? What will the University of Iowa ask of its Center for Teaching to help see the challenges ahead as complex problems to be embraced and addressed? How might we all think about the future of teaching and learning as a ‘problem’ of democratizing access to a transformative education and the pursuit of a sustainable human future?