Faculty Development

The College would like to develop a framework for how we define and evaluate student engagement in the classroom. From this framework, we will be able to evaluate professional development opportunities and pedagogical methods to increase student engagement in the classroom. This project will require interdisciplinary collaboration to first define student engagement. Once this is defined, a means to evaluate student classroom engagement will be developed.

Cultivating an institutional infrastructure for meaningful faculty-student interactions is a multi-year commitment, and this initial assessment will focus on product development. Once the professional development options are in place, we can construct assessments that measure the impact on student retention and progression.

“Relationship Rich Education” by Peter Felton and Leo Lambert was selected as a text and framework to support and empower faculty to make meaningful connections with students, both inside and outside of the classroom, to foster student success.

This project aims to equip students with the soft skills (super skills) needed to succeed in the workplace. Savannah State University (SSU) will implement trainings, activities, and programming to teach and reinforce soft skills development

Develop the faculty mentorship program. This program assists students with career exploration, selecting and aligning major electives with their career aspirations, participation with High Impact Practices such as: scholarships, internships, study abroad

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.

The provost is charging all academic departments with a core or gateway class that has a DFW rate above 20% to bring together a faculty committee at both the bachelor’s and associate’s level to develop strategies to improve student engagement, pedagogy and learning outcomes.

Research the ways faculty employ GeorgiaVIEW as well as the ways students view their experience using it in their face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes to determine the usefulness and feasibility of creating a common course experience for students in the learning management system.

The Quality Enhancement Plan seeks continuous improvement relative to two Student Learning Outcomes:

1. Students will demonstrate knowledge and skills that develop their academic perseverance.
2. Students will describe an enhanced sense of belonging within the College.

Interventions are planned and implemented in Perspectives (our first-year seminar), Advising, Campus Resources, and Engagement (PACE).