Since 1995, UWM has made significant improvements in the area of resources that support student learning and effective teaching. Specifically, the UWM Libraries, campus technology, classrooms and laboratories, and residential life experiences provide strong facilities and services.

Significant improvements have been made in the upgrading of labs and performance spaces (e.g., purchase of the Zelazo Center). Course scheduling has been revised to make better use of existing classrooms. Long range campus facilities planning, described earlier, includes aggressive strategies for increased opportunities for technology-enhanced classrooms, state of the art laboratories, expansion of the library, and on-campus residential life experiences for more students including living-learning communities similar to those planned for the Peck School of the Arts. Distance education course offerings have expanded, as have “hybrid courses” that mix on campus meetings with online learning.

UWM has made a concerted effort to improve the physical spaces and support services needed to create more effective learning environments. This has included increasing the number of mediated classrooms, upgrading existing classroom technologies, enhancing student computer labs and improving access to web and e-mail resources. There were 432 instructional spaces scheduled for credit courses for the fall 2004 semester. Of those, 153 were General Assignment classrooms, 279 additional rooms were under academic department control. A total of 122 of the 432 teaching spaces (28%) are classified as mediated. Sixty-one of those are supported by the Information and Media Technologies Division. The remainder is supported by the departments that schedule the rooms. Projects are underway to increase the number of General Assignment mediated classroom with one large lecture hall and a new Macintosh computer classroom scheduled for early 2005 completion.

One of the I&MT Campus Computer Labs (CCLs) is open on a 24-hour basis. In addition, there are more than 50 discipline-specific computer labs that are managed by various academic units. Every classroom has at least one wired Internet connection, and an increasing number are also equipped with instructor computer consoles and projection equipment to enable live Internet access, use of Library resources and D2L. Instructors can call the Classroom Hotline to quickly resolve problems in classrooms involving environmental, scheduling, or multimedia issues.