An ACUE-certified course designer at Cal State LA shares two keys to success for scaling student-centered teaching strategies.

In any given academic year, there could be upwards of 1,000 students taking the quantitative reasoning courses in the Charter College of Education at Cal State LA. Deborah Oh has a pretty good idea of how each of them is performing at various points during the semester. She knows who’s passing, missing classes, or falling behind on assignments. Equipped with data and evidence-based practices for student-centered course design, Oh and her colleagues get to work.

It’s halfway through the semester, which is one of three checkpoints when instructors update a master Google spreadsheet managed by Oh. She says this data becomes a powerful signal for how to tailor instruction in the second half of the semester. Each semester, there are dozens of students in “the passing zone.” These are students who are making progress but at risk of not passing. Some need gentle reminders about their missed assignments. For others, personal outreach and targeted intervention from faculty can reignite a student’s motivation.

“We jokingly talk about how we are chasing after them, but we’re showing that we care for them and we want them to succeed in our classes,” said Oh.

Since 2018, when Cal State LA launched a comprehensive plan for redesigning its quantitative reasoning courses, Oh says that pass rates in these gateway courses have increased from 79% to 85%. In one summer session, 94% of students passed the course, officially called Early Start Math (ESM) 1090. For a course that typically enrolls upwards of 1,000 students each year in EDFN 1090/1092, the pass-rate improvement equates to hundreds of more students passing these critical courses.

Looking back on her experience with Cal State LA’s successful course redesign, Oh says that building capacity through a core team of instructional rock stars has been a key to success.

Faculty Lead CSU System Reforms

Faculty across the California State University System (CSU) have played a key role in recent strategic initiatives to increase student retention, completion, and graduation. Most recently, faculty have been crucial levers in response to Executive Order 1110, which required the end of remedial math across CSU by fall 2018.

“The efforts are being led by faculty because they are the ones who best understand that [remediation] is not good for students,” said Alison Wrynn the system’s associate vice chancellor for academic programs, innovations, and faculty development. Under Wrynn and Director Emily Magruder, The CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL) has seen its mission and scale expand dramatically in recent years. As part of the CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025, the CSU Institute played a central role in helping campuses redesign entry-level mathematics and writing courses to eliminate pre-requisite remediation.

Cal State LA sprang into action and quickly took a leading role in the remedial education reform. They started with an overhaul of the math curriculum, establishing math pathways that shared common syllabi and assessments. Materials were normed and made more student-centered. students have access to co-requisite “just-in-time support.”

But what Cal State LA believes distinguishes its efforts is an investment in faculty. Oh was one of nearly 60 faculty who received extensive support from their nationally-recognized Center for Effective Teaching and Learning in partnership with ACUE. After Oh earned ACUE’s full certificate in effective college instruction, she co-facilitated the ACUE courses and continues to redesign statistics courses.

“ACUE is all over my course design,” says Oh. “Every assignment has a purpose, and it’s always plugged into the course topic and connected to the course learning outcomes. Guided notes, grading rubrics: Those are all ACUE techniques.”

Cal State LA’s approach has drawn praise for its intentional and strategic approach to incorporating faculty development into student success strategies.

“Cal State LA has been really successful in this work,” said Emily Magruder, who directs the CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning. “They actually incorporated, at scale, parts of the ACUE course, to prepare their math instructors in that preparatory year before implementation.”

In recent years, Oh has focused on building instructional capacity and now works with a team of five ACUE-certified faculty on course redesign.

“Having a team of core instructors who care about the success of their students, who can put our heads together on a consistent basis to look at the data and make informed decisions — that is really, really important.”

ACUE is proud to celebrate the remarkable achievements of four institutional partners that earned the nation’s signature recognition for America’s community colleges this year.

The Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, awarded every two years, is a national recognition from the Aspen Institute awarded for institutions’ commitment to student success and equitable student outcomes. The prize, as President Obama once called it, is “basically the Oscars for great community colleges.” 

Four ACUE partners were recognized by the Aspen Institute in 2021 as part of the prestigious selection process – including the top winner, San Antonio College. Other finalists were Broward College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, and Tallahassee Community College.  

ACUE has been honored to partner with several finalists and prize winners over the years. In 2019, ACUE partners Indian River State College and Miami Dade College, were named co-winners.  

ACUE Celebrates Aspen Prize Award Winners and Finalists

Earlier this year, we had a chance to speak with presidents, provosts, and faculty from the Aspen award-winners and finalists. In interviews, they reflected on their partnerships with ACUE and the role that faculty and quality instruction has played in their success.

Community College Excellence in Action 

The community college finalists were “especially well-equipped” to address even the most unimaginable challenges, including those presented by the pandemic. As the Aspen Institute put it in their 2021 report , these institutions were well prepared “because of the student-centered work they’d been diligently doing for years.” 

Broward College: Faculty at the Center of Student Success 

Broward College, for example, revamped its budget system to require resources to be supported by evidence on how they’ll contribute to improved student success outcomes. In ACUE, they found a perfect fit. 

A “key investment in student success is training new faculty in an evidence-based model of effective online pedagogy, provided by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). An independent study found that the outcomes gap between Black and white students was halved for those in courses taught by ACUE-certified instructors, while the gap for students from low-income backgrounds was eliminated.”

“Our students were more likely to complete and pass their courses when taught by ACUE-credentialed faculty,” said Broward College President Gregory Haile. “Notably, greater outcomes were found for Black and low-income students. These results have helped us confirm the value of addressing equity issues among our students and the difference we can make in student outcomes when faculty have access to the right tools and the right practices.” 

San Antonio College: Equitable Teaching Practices 

At San Antonio College, a data-driven culture extends to the classroom. Faculty review student success data, broken down by student characteristics such as race and ethnicity. Faculty professional development is focused on inclusive teaching practices that advance equitable student outcomes, with the ACUE partnership serving as a key program. 

“Our partnership with ACUE has led to faculty success,” said Sobia Khan, dean for academic success at San Antonio College. “Each and every faculty member who went through that first ACUE cohort has really changed the way they teach. It’s become transformational.”

“It’s important that in our pursuit for excellence at San Antonio College, we bring in the best partners in the country and we believe ACUE is one of our best partners,” added Robert Vela, president of San Antonio College.

Tallahassee Community College: Aspen “tells you what. ACUE gave us the how.”

At Tallahassee Community College, significant resources have been devoted to training faculty members in instructional effectiveness and course redesign. In addition, the faculty senate and leadership convened in 2019 for a workshop focused on equitably advancing a student-centered environment. That event paved the way for the development of a Teaching and Learning Framework and led to a growing partnership with ACUE.  

“Aspen is very clear in their structure about what they want institutions to demonstrate that they are in fact excellent,” said Tallahassee Community College President Jim Murdagh.  “[Aspen] tells you what. ACUE gave us the how. We’ve seen tremendous improvements in the success rates of students in gateway courses at our college.”

Borough of Manhattan Community College

At the Borough of Manhattan Community College, a school in the City University of New York (CUNY) system,  Aspen noted BMCC’s focus on career readiness of its students. Leaders said the role of faculty is critical to any and all student success strategies.

“We try to do everything in our power, both inside and outside of the classroom, to have our students succeed, to persist, to be retained, to graduate,” said Erwin  Wong, BMCC provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “Preparing faculty to teach online through ACUE was instrumental in terms of helping our students to continue to move forward.”

 “The equity gap is of paramount importance to us, and we believe that the ACUE experience has allowed us to really crystallize and reinforce the initiative,” said Anthony Munroe, president of BMCC. 

We applaud our community college partners championing student success! And, we are proud to play a key role in their achievements. 

By Cindy Blackwell 

As one of three people working at my institution’s faculty development center in March 2020, I appreciated the kudos from Cahn, Stellar and Brooks in their recent Inside Higher Ed article Don’t Blame the Technology. We worked around the clock to develop training webinars and create resources to help faculty who had never or rarely taught online. It was exhausting yet also heartwarming to see what some faculty were doing to ensure their students continued to get the education they planned from the start of the semester.    

“Online education departments and teaching and learning centers scrambled to support thousands of instructors in a monumental effort to sustain the continuity of education across the country,” the authors wrote. “Those departments and centers deserve a tremendous amount of credit for enabling faculty members and students to continue their courses during an unprecedented upheaval to the status quo.”  

The recognition is nice. But as the authors note, for all of the resilience, hard work, and great stories on display during the pandemic, we know that too many students have not received the education that they deserve. One only needs to look at the spate of class action and individual lawsuits filed by unsatisfied students to see that the quality of instruction is not where it needs to be to deliver high-quality learning experiences.  

The issue of students frustrated by ill-equipped and unprepared faculty is not a new or unique problem in higher education. For decades, if not longer, subpar college teaching has been an elephant in the room. The pandemic merely put a bright spotlight on it. 

As Cahn, Stellar and Brooks write, “this pandemic-induced emergency was avoidable.” In The Amateur Hour, Jonathan Zimmerman shows that poor teaching is a century-long theme in higher education, in which “most students insisted that they had learned in spite of the instruction they received, not because of it” (p. 24).  

One of the questions raised by Cahn, Stellar and Brooks is, what now? What needs to change to ensure faculty are prepared to teach effectively online and in-person? The authors offer worthy recommendations, such as requiring graduate students to study teaching and learning, beefing up onboarding programs, and investing in ongoing high-quality professional development.  

In my role as an academic director for the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), our team has the privilege of seeing these recommendations in action through working with our institutional partners.     

One of those partners is the Texas A&M University System, which partnered with ACUE after being awarded one of four grants offered by a collaboration between ACUE, the National Association of System Heads and the Charles Koch Foundation. The grant-supported endeavor was so successful across the Texas A&M University System that the System extended and expanded the partnership for three more years through the Instructional Excellence for Student Success Project. This initiative is to encourage excellence in teaching at the eleven Texas A&M University System schools. After just one year the ACUE and Texas A&M University System partnership assisted two nursing faculty at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi in making much needed changes to the Doctor of Nursing Practice program.  

Another example is the ACUE Faculty Development Institute at The University of Southern Mississippi, where I was an associate director in the Center for Faculty Development. This professional learning community has created a space for hundreds of faculty to gather, learn from each other, and improve their instructional practice.    

Strategy, culture, and approach, are just a few of the domains established in Success & Equity Through Quality Instruction, a toolkit published collaboratively by Strong Start to Finish, ACUE, and SOVA. The toolkit provides core principles, practical resources, and rubrics for how colleges and universities fully engage faculty in the student success movement. It includes dozens of recommendations for policies and strategies for institutions to consider if they are serious about preparing and supporting faculty to be effective in the classroom.   

As a faculty member, I was lucky enough to be in a doctorate program that emphasized teacher preparation. As a new faculty member, my dean stressed the importance of quality teaching and provided professional resources for use to develop. And most recently, I was able to earn ACUE’s Certificate in Effective College Instruction.  

I am grateful to have had these opportunities in my own teaching career. I was proud to have played a small role in helping faculty at Southern Mississippi successfully transition to online courses at the start of the pandemic. At ACUE, I am inspired every day in the work I do with our institutional partners that are working to ensure every student has access to effective instructors. That is what it’s going to take to move the needle on student success. It won’t be enough until good teaching is systematically developed and rewarded for what it is – the foundation of every institution of higher education.  

Dr. Cindy Blackwell is an Academic Director at ACUE. 

“It is you, our faculty, who can dismantle the barriers and create the pathways to student success — no work is more important,” Dr. Penny MacCormack, ACUE’s Chief Academic Officer, said to an audience of 122 newly ACUE-credentialed faculty who were joined by their chief academic officers and other administrative leaders. “You used practices that created community, you made sure students were actively involved in their learning, and you made efforts to reach and engage with all of your students, so that no one felt invisible or unseen.” 

Thanks to a partnership between the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) and ACUE, faculty members across nearly all of Ohio’s community colleges—22 colleges in total —had the opportunity to refine their teaching skills and learn how to apply evidence-based practices in the classroom, both virtually and in-person.  

Made possible by a grant from Every Learner Everywhere in partnership with Achieving the Dream, the program kicked off at the start of 2021. As demand for the program quickly exceeded capacity, in September 2021, OACC and ACUE expanded their partnership to launch an additional seven cohorts of instructors.

Now, as the year comes to a close, faculty who completed ACUE’s 25-module Effective Online Teaching Practices program in the first wave of cohorts were honored in a pinning ceremony, receiving their certificate in effective college instruction endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE). At the ceremony, they reflected on their experience. 

“I really felt validated as an instructor,” said Sara Burke, Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Health

Professions at Owens Community College, who served as both a course facilitator and participant.  

Burke talked about experiencing imposter phenomenon in her teaching before the course. “I felt like there was something missing. But taking this course empowered me. I felt like now I had the research to back up what I was doing and new techniques and tools… to do what I love to do.” 

She added that her students enjoyed sharing the perspective of learning together and were eager to offer feedback, too. 

Burke is among the vast majority of OACC course takers who found the ACUE program pivotal to improving their teaching. Ninety-nine percent reported that the modules were helpful in refining their teaching practice and found the content relevant to their work.  

Overall, faculty reported implementing an average of 20 new practices in their own courses over the duration of the ACUE program and that they plan to implement 50 additional practices in the future. Moreover, the course prompted more conversations with colleagues about teaching. 

“For me, the course was completely transformational,” said Kathy Renfro, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Cuyahoga Community College. She found the opportunities to reflect on practices and refine her teaching with colleagues enormously helpful. 

“The other added benefit was being an online student myself at a chaotic time,” she said. “It helped me gain a better perspective as an instructor. I definitely don’t have all the answers… but I feel armed and empowered to take my learning to the next step and the next. Isn’t that what we all hope for our students?… that they, too, are lifelong learners?” 

Lori Zakel, Interim Provost and Vice President for Instruction, Sinclair Community College, and Lead Faculty Engagement Coach, OACC, encouraged the course completers to pay it forward. “Don’t forget to share what you’ve learned with your colleagues,” she said. 

Congratulations to all these dedicated faculty! 

By Subhadra Ganguli

Over my years as an economics faculty, I have always sought to refine my teaching to help my students learn. In recent years, I have become particularly interested in — and passionate about — strategies that can help develop more career-ready skills.

According to the World Economic Forum, digitization is progressing at a fast rate, and that will have big implications for graduating students who will be expected to adapt to new technologies and the ever-changing workplace. As instructors, we strive to teach in a way that helps students achieve learning outcomes specific to a particular discipline or course. But how can we also make our courses more relevant to students’ career aspirations and create activities that develop students’ career-ready skills?

REPORT: Beyond Classroom Borders: Linking Learning and Work Through Career-Relevant Instruction.

That’s a question I have explored as a participant in the ACUE program through Bloomsburg University. While group work has always been integral to my courses when it comes to helping my students better understand the principles of microeconomics or macroeconomics, I wanted to know to what extent these collaborative projects could help them develop so-called “soft skills” such as resilience, adaptability, empathy, and integrity.

Using Groups to Ensure Active Learning

Organizing students into small groups is the first step, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. Earlier on in my career, I assumed it would be fine to manage the process, through coerced or random selection. But I’ve learned that taking a step back and enabling students to create their own groups can promote interdependence and shared accountability.

Similar to what is recommended in ACUE’s module on Using Groups to Ensure Active Learning, I encourage students to get to know each other using online discussion boards with prompts to share about their general areas of interest around the study of a country (macroeconomics) or study of a firm (microeconomics). During the pandemic, one of the most challenging aspects of teaching in an online learning environment has been creating student-to-student engagement, but I’ve found that this early step really can build meaningful connections.

Even as face-to-face classes have resumed, I have continued the “tradition” of using virtual discussion boards because they are so effective at cultivating a sense of community in both online and F2F course settings.  In addition, ACUE’s module on Providing Clear Directions and Explanations provided a good idea for how to create step-by-step tasks. For a lot of the freshmen in this class, it’s the first time they’re preparing a presentation.

REGISTER: Next course date for PROMOTING ACTIVE LEARNING ONLINE launches on January 22, 2022.

Facilitating Engaging Online Discussions

Soon after formation, groups must work collaboratively to assign roles and responsibilities to each member of the group. Our course’s group presentation typically takes approximately four weeks to prepare. Encouraging students to present their ideas is recommended in the module on Facilitating Engaging Online Discussions. But it’s a great way to create community in my F2F classes as well.

One role, for example, is responsible for organizing and coordinating team activities. But before they even begin to dive into the research and preparation for their chosen topic, students must create and sign an online contract. This process indicates a willingness by all group members to honor their responsibilities. Warren Buffet has famously said that integrity is the most important trait to look for when hiring, but it’s hardly innate. It takes time and practice, and this classroom activity is an opportunity to help students flex their soft-skill muscles.

LEARN MORE: Plan and Facilitate Effective Discussions – ACUE’s Online Teaching Toolkit

Developing Self-Directed Online Learners

After several trials and errors over the past years, I have created a peer evaluation process for students to provide critical feedback on one another’s work. This is a peer-evaluation questionnaire, which is designed to objectively explore various aspects of presentation quality, including delivery and content. This process of peer evaluation stresses the importance of stakeholder views that are now considered essential for real-world business solutions. Finally, all of this is wrapped in the framework of a fair and transparent grading process. Guided by principles that align with ACUE’s module on Developing Self-Directed Online Learners, students learn to use rubrics that help them evaluate their peers’ presentation performances.

Helping students develop career readiness skills isn’t something that should be left to a career center or offered through separate, standalone courses. Embedding this work into our existing courses doesn’t require a complete redesign but rather smaller adjustments or tweaking along the way. The advantage of this approach is that your students will be more likely to see the relevance of your course to their own learning and career aspirations. In my classes, it’s my hope that these group projects become learning experiences that leave invaluable impressions beyond the classroom.

Subhadra Ganguli is an instructor of economics at Bloomsburg University and is in the process of earning her full ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction.