Mission

The Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL) improves teaching and learning by providing resources, removing barriers, promoting evidence-based practices, and building partnerships to cultivate a culture that values and rewards teaching for all members of Dartmouth’s scholar-educator community.

DCAL's Vision

Dartmouth's teachers will have the resources and recognition necessary to engage fully as scholar-educators, employing evidence-based practices to advance learning and elevate Dartmouth as a national leader in liberal arts education.

DCAL’s Values and Objectives

In pursuing its mission and vision, DCAL serves all who engage in teaching at Dartmouth, including faculty in all ranks, schools and disciplines, along with librarians, educational designers, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, deans, and directors.

DCAL helps all educators at Dartmouth to practice learner-centered course design, implementation and assessment.

DCAL aims to shift the culture of teaching and learning at Dartmouth from one that regards its mission as delivery of knowledge to one that sees its task as facilitating learning. Knowledge cannot be delivered; it must be constructed anew by each learner.

DCAL promotes ongoing reflection and assessment as essential components to effective learning both for teachers and learners.

DCAL pays special attention to matters of diversity, focusing on the benefits, challenges, opportunities, and obligations such matters present in a learning community.

How We Pursue Our Mission

  • Building a community of informed conversation about learning and teaching practices.
  • Promoting collaboration and discussion between faculty members, future faculty and support services for teaching at Dartmouth.
  • Collecting, selecting and distilling published scholarship on teaching and learning and making it available to the Dartmouth community.
  • Orienting new faculty members and postdoctoral fellows to teaching at Dartmouth.
  • Promoting the purposeful use of new media and information technology for teaching and learning at Dartmouth.
  • Helping faculty members and future faculty, individually and in peer groups, assess the effectiveness of their teaching in order to promote continuous improvement.
  • Encouraging and supporting research about teaching and learning.