LessonShare in the News

February 22, 2008 by Doug Worsham

L&S LessonShare, our online tool to help communities of instructors in L&S departments share, organize, and collaboratively improve their lessons, handouts, and other teaching materials, was recently featured in the January 28th edition of Wisconsin Week. The article, TAs drive development of a teaching tool, describes the grassroots development of LessonShare by LSS staff in collaboration with German and Italian language instructors.

Sharing and organizing teaching materials has been a long-standing challenge in many departments, and the article shows how LessonShare has evolved from previous attempts to meet this challenge - from the departmental "treasure box," a plastic milk crate filled with folders, to early efforts at sharing materials online. An improvement on the "treasure box" approach, LessonShare is more than just an online file cabinet. It provides flexible, department specific organization allowing instructors to find the materials they need quickly. It handles any digital file, from a PDF of a lesson plan, to an audio, video, or PowerPoint file. It also provides a platform for workflow management, collaboration, and discussion.

We're happy to see LessonShare in the news and growing! In the coming months, we'll be working on expanding the use of LessonShare within the College of Letters and Science, and helping others on campus get started with their own LessonShare platforms. For more information on LessonShare, please contact Sue Weier (sue@lss.wisc.edu) or Doug Worsham (doug@lss.wisc.edu) with L&S Learning Support Services.