Faculty Development

The Mindset Student Workshops series, known internally as the “Boost” Mindset project, is entering its fourth year as an institution-wide initiative designed to enhance student motivation, metacognition, and academic self-efficacy. Originating from a Chancellor’s Learning Scholar Faculty Learning Community on Mindset in 2018 and supported by the USG STEM Grant Initiative, this work has evolved from a pilot project into a sustained element of SGSC’s student success strategy.

KSU aims to take full advantage of data gathered through the LMS, D2L, for a faculty audience. Our online learning unit, Digital Learning Innovations, has revised their mission to support faculty in using the LMS to manage learning in all modalities and using the data to identify problems, diagnose root causes, and take targeted actions during the semester to impact student success within the semester. The learning analytics solution, uHoo Analytics, is available to all faculty. Additionally, faculty are provided professional development in tool use and data interpretation.

This initiative will expand the utilization of an academic chatbot in core courses.  The chatbot provides basic academic information, utilizes intelligent agents in the LMS to monitor student engagement and prompts as necessary, evaluates readiness for quizzes and reminds students about assignments and deadlines. GSU received a $7 million Post Secondary Student Success grant from the Department of Education to launch this technology in introductory English and Math courses in Fall 2024.  Chatbot technology is already used in American Government, Macroeconomics and Chemistry.

East Georgia State College joined Quality Matters in May of 2023 and introduced it to the faculty at the fall 2023 workshop. Quality Matters is being used as a professional development tool for Faculty to improve their teaching and student learning.

The Office of Leadership Programs maintains institution-wide responsibility for management, coordination, and development of all Georgia College leadership programs and initiatives. Beyond Georgia College’s core leadership programs, which are directed and administered by the Office of Leadership Programs, the staff works collaboratively with members of GC's faculty and staff to develop affiliate programs.

Students are required to sign up and complete an approved internship experience for academic credit at GCSU. These may be supported by the academic department or may be secured with assistance from GC’s Career Center. The Career Center advises students to begin their internship search at least 4 – 6 months before their desired start date.  The Career Center uses Handshake software to promote local, regional, and national internship opportunities to students. 

The Mentored Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (MURACE) program connects teaching excellence with learning beyond the classroom in providing unique undergraduate research experiences for students. The campus follows the best practices outlined in the newly released Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR) 2.0 by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) in providing support for highly effective undergraduate research contexts.  

The Capstone is the final embedded experience built into GC Journeys. To “Complete Your Journey” for Capstone, students must successfully complete the capstone course for their program/major. Experiences will be determined by the requirements of the department/major.

The First Year Experience is one of three embedded experiences that is built into the GC curriculum. To “Complete your journey,” for First Year Experience, students need to complete their GCSU 0001 (FYAS) and GC1Y courses.

Having researched the ways in which faculty employ GeorgiaVIEW and students view their experience using it in their face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes, we plan to work toward improving the GeorgiaVIEW experience for faculty and students through more consistent usage of the LMS. Additionally, we will continue to research the possibility of incorporating a common course experience (i.e., course templates or shells to streamline the instructional design).