FAMU Faculty Pursue Instructional Excellence through ACUE Programs

Dr. Rebecca Blankenship, an educator of nearly twenty years, recognizes the most effective teachers are the ones who aren’t afraid to regularly reflect on their teaching methods in light of the evolving needs of their students. Blankenship, whose background is in second-language acquisition and instructional technology, is an associate professor of elementary education at Florida A&M University (FAMU), a public historically Black college or university (HBCU) in Tallahassee.

“Since education is my profession, people might ask why I wanted to pursue a fellowship with ACUE,” she says. “But, because of my background, I know it’s best practice to look for opportunities for self-growth and improvement.”

This commitment to constantly evolving as an educator is one of the reasons why she was one of the cohort of faculty members who eagerly agreed to participate in the Association of College and University Educators’ (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices program. FAMU piloted the program in 2015 and after seeing its success, launched a new cohort of faculty in the ACUE course during summer 2020.

“The current partnership between ACUE and Florida A&M University began almost five years ago. As pilot participants, many of our faculty immediately recognized the value in the enhanced teaching strategies that impact student engagement and student success. More importantly, our faculty valued then, and still do now, the collaboration component this program encourages,” says Dr. Genyne Boston, associate provost for faculty and academic affairs and chief of staff for the Division of Academic Affairs. “The ACUE partnership continues to forge new opportunities for growth and development among all faculty, and that is essential during this ever-evolving season of uncertainty within academia. This partnership could not have been more timely.”

Dr. Sundra Kincey, assistant vice president of program quality at FAMU, agrees.

“The faculty’s use of enhanced teaching strategies learned through the ACUE partnership enables FAMU to continue to offer high-quality academic programs,” she says.

While the faculty members are in the midst of completing the 25-week course, the ACUE learning design emphasizes the value of immediately implementing, reflecting upon and refining the newly gained teaching practices.

“I found some simple things, like creating an effective syllabus—a graphic syllabus—was life-changing,” says Dr. Brandon Moton, assistant professor of health science. “As a junior faculty member, I was excited about the opportunity to participate in the course. I knew I had my teaching methods, but I liked the idea that they could be backed up by golden standards and best practices. I want to use ACUE strategies to enhance my teaching skills.”

In one of his upper-division courses, which is heavy with research papers, Moton elected to supply his students with a checklist along with their assignments. “You may think that, ‘Well, I’ve already outlined this in the instructions of the assignment, so students should be okay,’” Moton says. “But when I was introduced to the checklist as a practice, I thought that this will help my students to know exactly what I’m looking for, such as a minimum number of citations or to make sure they included a running head if they use APA format.”

Additionally, as many students have struggled with the quick pivot to virtual learning due to COVID, Moton has found ACUE’s practices for group accountability and community building especially important.

“For me, encouraging my students to find a professional community of practice and hold each other accountable throughout the semester because of all that’s going on was really important,” Moton says. “It helps them build a sense of community within the classroom—even in a virtual environment.”

Christina Caines, a fourth-year health sciences student at FAMU has had Moton for two classes and speaks highly about his ability to connect with his students.

“Dr. Moton is one of the best professors I’ve encountered,” Caines says. “He lets his students participate in everything, from developing the rubrics to doing peer-reviews where we get to interact with our classmates and see colleagues are doing in class and learn from it. He really helps us motivate one another.”

Blankenship has also seen changes within her classroom as a result of implementing new strategies. She has a group of students who have been with her a second semester, as part of a two-part sequence, and have seen the changes within her teaching style.

“One of the things that, for me, was very revealing about my teaching style is control. I have very strong classroom management, but at the same time, it’s that next leap where you let your students take more control over their own learning,” she says. “I’ve gotten feedback from students who I had last semester saying, ‘This is not the same Dr. Blankenship.’ I’m giving them more control and say in the class, and giving them more opportunities to interact with one another.”

And she’s encouraged by the results. Blankenship has found that the work her students have submitted this semester far surpasses what she’s seen in the past. Not only that, Blankenship credits the ACUE course for shifting her mindset in how she approaches grading.

“For the first time, I’m allowing students to drop grades that don’t really reflect what they know and what they can do in the course,” she says. “It has really improved, I think, the student’s overall experience in the course. They can say, ‘I’m having a bad day,’ ‘I was having a technology issue,’ ‘I’ve got a family issue,’ whatever it is. They can feel comfortable coming to me acknowledging that it wasn’t their best work, and asking to resubmit work that better reflects their knowledge.”

Blankenship and her colleagues believe that focusing on what their students can do, instead of what they can’t, will result in stronger student outcomes and more confident, successful students.

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FAMU Perspectives

“The participation and commitment of our faculty to the FAMU ACUE collaborative initiative speaks volumes to the desire to be scholarly and engaging in our teaching efforts. This cohort has gleaned so much in the way of evidence-based approaches for designing effective courses, establishing productive learning environments and utilizing active learning strategies. We have developed a true faculty learning community and are looking forward to the next phase with a focus on promoting higher-order thinking and assessing to inform instruction and promote learning. This endeavor is novel in its duality, supporting world-class instruction while strengthening student learning.”

—Dr. Cheree Wiltsher, ACUE-credentialed faculty member and lead ACUE facilitator

“I appreciate the support of our administration in providing an opportunity for faculty to grow professionally. This ACUE experience is a measurable example of teaching as scholarship and not just a career. We want our graduates to be excellent, culturally encompassing and caring! ACUE is just another example of how FAMU supports student progression and faculty development.”

—Dr. Aurelia Alexander, ACUE-credentialed faculty member and current cohort co-facilitator

“I enjoyed the ACUE module on powerful note-taking skills. In my courses, we have a shared Google Doc that all students use as a classroom journal—synchronously. The students and I can work from one document and add notes, drawings, photos, videos or simulations. Students get points for contributing to the document. It’s helpful because students who have to miss a class can still go and reference the material in there. I found this helps improve their attention span and helps them engage more in the classroom. Plus, research shows better note-taking translates to better grades. I love that ACUE uses research-based techniques because I’m very interested in education research.”

—Dr. Gokhan Hacisalihoglu, FAMU professor of biological sciences

“I had Dr. Haci my fall semester, freshman year for general biology, and later a biology lab and now as the professor of my plant anatomy class. He’s a very engaging professor, and always gives us multiple projects and activities to help us learn. Online learning can be hard for science classes, but he gives multiple projects where we can use our creativity to understand the material.”

—Shaima Arshad, third-year biology student

“Dr. Blankenship is a professor that has high expectations for her students and wants nothing but the best from us. She uses various instructional strategies within her courses to ensure that we understand the content she is teaching. For example, she uses traditional teacher-directed instructional strategies (such as PowerPoints), hand-selected webinar videos that align with the subject she is teaching, supplemental links to primary and secondary resource documents, and interactive educational games.”

—Doneisha Miller, four-year elementary education student

Help Your Colleagues Create More Equitable Courses and Learning Environments

ACUE is seeking instructors who know and are willing to demonstrate teaching practices designed to create more equitable courses and learning environments.

Due date for submitting: Friday, December 4, 2020

An essential component in every ACUE modules is the demonstration video that allows our course takers the opportunity to see recommended teaching practices in use by fellow instructors in their online courses and classrooms.  We know that these videos have helped thousands of instructors across the nation try new teaching practices and experience their students being more engaged, asking more and often better questions, completing higher quality assignments, persisting in meeting academic challenges and completing the courses they teach at higher rates.

In order to help instructors create equitable courses and learning environments we are seeking higher education instructors who utilize practices for:

• Designing inclusive courses
• Creating inclusive learning environments

In addition, we are seeking instructors who can describe the following topics and demonstrate practices they use to mitigate the impact of each, including:

• Implicit bias
• Microaggressions
• Stereotype threat
• Imposter syndrome

If you are interested in sharing the practices you have used to create a more equitable learning environment for your students, please let us know by completing the process below.

Step One: Review the module topics and draft set of practices listed below and consider how you implement these or similar practices in your own courses. For each practice you currently use you will complete a brief survey which requires a description of how and why you use the practice and an explanation of how your students have been positively impacted.  We prefer to capture three or more practices from each of the instructors we engage in this process therefore we encourage you to submit an interest survey for at least three practices (they can be from different modules).  In addition, if you have used a practice that has been very successful in creating a more equitable learning environment that is not listed please feel free to select “other” in the most appropriate module and add your comments.

Step Two: Because the work required to show you demonstrating an effective teaching practice means you will be “on camera” we also ask that you submit a short (1-2 minute) video addressing the questions below, in connection to any one of the practices you have described in the interest survey.

1. What is the practice?
2. Why do you use it?
3. How have your students responded to your use of the practice?

 Step Three: To submit your video.

• Label and save your video with YourFirstandLastName_YourInstitution_VideoExample (For example: TashaJohnston_AmericanUniversity_VideoExample)
• Go to https://www.dropbox.com/request/drt8OTO6AVUy3Vnvrqq8
• Click on “Add files” or drag and drop the files into the Dropbox site.
• Once you have added both files, click “Upload.”
• Once the upload has been completed, you will receive a confirmation page that says “Finished uploading.”

A member of the ACUE content team will review your submission and contact you about next steps. Should you be selected to participate in the filming, we will work closely with you to ensure you are prepared to be interviewed and filmed. The filming will take place over two days in December, 2020 and January, 2021 and you will be compensated for your work and your time.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].

Inclusive Teaching for Equitable Learning

Module EL1:   Managing the Impact of Biases

1. Examine how conscious and unconscious bias affects your understanding, actions, and decisions
   • a. Reflect on how your identities and biases impact your teaching practices
2. Mitigate the impact of bias in instructional practices
3. • a. Use anonymous grading to mitigate the impact of bias in assessment
   • b. Use rubrics to ensure your grading practices are equitable
   • c. Track your interactions with students to ensure equity

3. Use an empathetic approach to support student academic success
   • a. Use surveys, discussion forums, and office hours to get to know your students
   • b. Design course policies that reflect an understanding of your students
4. Use feedback to reflect on your role as an inclusive educator
   • a. Solicit feedback from students on inclusivity
   • b. Use observation protocols to reflect on your role as an inclusive educator

Complete an interest survey for module EL1: Managing the Impact of Biases

Module EL2: Reducing Microaggressions in Learning Environments

1. Understand the impact of microaggressions
   • a. Describe microaggressions and the impact on students
2. Recognize and effectively address different types of microaggressions
   • a. Recognize and respond to microinsults and microinvalidations
   • b. Recognize and respond to microassaults
3. Empower students to recognize and address microaggressions
   • a. Include definitions of microaggressions in your syllabus
   • b. Help students recognize microaggressions either as a recipient or by-stander
   • c. Encourage students to reflect and take appropriate action

Complete an interest survey for module EL2: Reducing Microaggressions in Learning Environments

Module EL3: Addressing Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Threat

1. Implement practices to reduce the impact of imposter syndrome
   • a. Recognize symptoms of imposter syndrome
   • b. Cultivate a sense of belonging
   • c. Encourage students to take risks
2. Implement practices to reduce stereotype threat
   • a. Describe stereotype threat and the impact on students
   • b. Promote a growth mindset to address the impact of stereotype threat by:
     1. Sharing examples of persistence
     2. Prompting students to reflect on their own persistence
     3. Using low-stakes assessments and assignments to build confidence
     4. Communicating your confidence in students’ ability to succeed

Complete an interest survey for module EL3: Addressing Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Threat

Module EL4: Creating Inclusive Learning Environments

1. Share academic and social support resources
   • a. Share diverse resources and opportunities to increase students’ sense of belonging
2. Foster respect for diverse identities
   • a. Use inclusive language including chosen name pronunciation and pronoun use
   • b. Prepare and monitor students to respectfully work together
3. Set expectations and manage for respectful dialogue
   • a. Create community agreements with students
   • b. Explicitly invite diverse perspectives and viewpoints
   • c. Manage hot moments
4. Make learning accessible
   • a. Provide resources your students need to learn best
   • b. Provide multiple pathways for students to reach learning outcomes

Complete an interest survey for module EL4: Creating Inclusive Learning Environments

Module EL5: Designing Equity-Centered Courses 

1. Create an inclusive syllabus
   • a. Create a diversity statement
   • b. Create an accessibility statement
   • c. Adjust your syllabus to support inclusion
2. Ensure your course incorporates diverse perspectives and experiences
   • a. Ensure course readings and materials include diverse perspectives
   • b. Explore the lack of diverse representation in course readings and materials
   • c. Ensure your course examples reflect a diverse society
3. Be explicit about assignment expectations
   • a. Use the transparent assignment template
   • b. Provide examples of student work
4. Ensure your course materials are accessible to all students
   • a. Incorporate design elements that address barriers to access
   • b. Format materials for assistive technology
   • c. Ensure accessibility on mobile and tablet devices

Complete an interest survey for module EL5: Designing Equity-Centered Courses

We at the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) realize faculty across higher ed are in the homestretch of a challenging fall. We are grateful for the resiliency you’ve shown to help your students continue to thrive! Behind every resilient student is a resilient educator.

A new year and academic term is just around the corner! In this post, I continue with our “Back to Class” series to share a teaching practice that you may find helpful as you plan for a new semester—whether in a classroom or a virtual learning environment—to support deeper engagement and learning.

Using Points to Encourage Student Behavior

The use of points, sometimes referred to as “gamification,” can be leveraged to encourage the types of learning activities or behaviors you recognize as having a positive effect on student success in your course. Offering a small number of points as an incentive for students to engage in these behaviors can help to build good habits that students will continue using. This planning guide from our course in Effective Teaching Practices offers a quick and easy way to incentivize students to:

1) Do things that will benefit them academically
2) Build community in their online course
3) Build professional skills
4) Offer anonymous feedback to the instructor to improve the course and instruction

You may find this planning guide helpful: Using Points to Encourage Student Behavior.

Have a great class!

—Laurie Pendleton, Executive Director of Curriculum and Assessment, ACUE

The cover of this Fall’s Change magazine features a clarion call for student success and equity through quality instruction. Authored by ACUE’s Meghan Snow, executive director of analytics, and Jonathan Gyurko, president and co-founder, the piece summarizes six years of ACUE’s research on effective teaching and program evaluations with partner colleges and universities. Studies use a research-based methodology and show improved academic achievement and closed equity gaps among students taught by ACUE-credentialed educators. One analysis further estimates the sizable financial return to an institution based on greater student completion and anticipated retention.

The 14 reviewed studies examine data from more than 700 ACUE-credentialed faculty and more than 69,000 students enrolled in their courses. Studies compared their student outcomes to achievement data for more than 75,000 student enrollments from courses taught by over 5,300 colleagues who have not yet participated in an ACUE program (or to student outcomes prior to the faculty member’s participation), with statistically significant differences. Independent reviewers noted that, collectively, this constitutes one of the largest bodies of research reinforcing the link between faculty development, changes in teaching practices, and the consequent impact on student outcomes.

For decades, Adrianna Kezar has studied higher education’s ever-growing reliance on adjunct and contingent faculty. According to her research, nearly two-thirds of United States faculty exclusively teach, but few of them receive enough professional support to create high-quality teaching and learning environments for students.

That’s a problem and an opportunity, she says, because the faculty’s role in student success is critical.

“There is an incredibly strong connection between faculty and their ability to support student success. This is one of those really important factors that we need to understand,” says Kezar, director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California and a national expert on faculty changes. Kezar’s Delphi Project is committed to raising awareness about faculty trends and their impact on student success through research and data.

In this interview, she shares insights and takeaways from her research, as well as examples of innovative faculty models being implemented across the country.

What is the Delphi Project?

The Delphi Project started as a conversation to learn about changing faculty trends, particularly the move towards more part-time and contingent faculty. I thought it was important to bring together different stakeholder groups– board members, presidents, and faculty of different types, policymakers– to give visibility to these trends, look at emerging data, and discuss how it was shaping student success.

Out of this original set of meetings, we agreed on a few things. First, that faculty who are off the tenure track were not supported in ways that created the best teaching and learning environments. And second, we agreed to explore new faculty models that plan for a future where there may not be just adjunct faculty and tenure-track faculty.

What are some takeaways from the Delphi Project’s State of the Faculty report?

The most important thing to highlight is how large part-time faculty, or adjuncts, have grown as a group. They now represent 52% of all faculty. That’s 52% of all faculty who are adjuncts whose jobs are just focused on teaching.

And then there’s another 18% that’s full-time but contingent and can be let go at any time. Not all of them are teaching faculty, but a large proportion are. Some also are on research appointments. Then there’s the tenure-track faculty, which represents about 30% of all faculty.

The biggest change, and this cuts across all faculty types, is what I see as the de-professionalization of the faculty role. Their work is unbundled, so you don’t get the professional synergies where faculty have a hand in teaching, research, and service work. Adjuncts are often not involved in shared governance, they’re often not eligible for awards or recognized for their work. They don’t have access to professional development and they don’t get any benefits. And they make, on average, $24,000 a year.

What has been the general response to this problem?

Up until recently, there has been this overarching blindness to the changes in faculty. The general public and even some campus stakeholders still have this idea that college faculty are these stodgy old tenure-track professors out of the 1960s. That’s problematic, but it’s starting to erode away.

Institutions are stuck in tough situations because funding has been going down for 30 years. And when faced with budget cuts, they have always done the easy thing to pull this adjunct model off the shelf and treat it like a short-term quick fix. Well it’s not short-term. We’ve been doing this now for three decades.

How can professional development address these challenges?

There is an incredibly strong connection between faculty and their ability to support student success. This is one of those really important factors that we need to understand.

And professional development is critical to creating quality teaching and learning environments. Yet almost 70% of faculty, largely, cannot get access to it. Campuses need to recognize that it is not enough to just offer it. We need to offer it in different modalities, in-person and online, and in ways that incentivize faculty to want to participate.

Think about institutional recognition. So many campuses exclude non-tenure track faculty from their teaching awards. If you want non-tenure track faculty to participate in professional development, how is it encouraging to say that they can’t be awarded or recognized for being good at their jobs?

I’m very excited to see different groups, like ACUE, that are taking up this mantle to improve teaching and learning in higher education, and that are thinking about it at scale, so that we can reach lots of people. And that we’re not just thinking about tenure-track faculty, which is so often the focus of professional development.

But the bigger issue is that if we want a quality teaching and learning environment, we fundamentally have to rethink faculty models. As it exists, the adjunct faculty model is not designed in a way to create a quality teaching and learning environment.

How can institutions promote policies and practices that support non-tenure-track faculty? What are some specific examples worth highlighting?

One thing we’ve done is create The Delphi Awards to capture and recognize the good work happening across the country to better support non-tenure-track faculty.

• Harper College won the award the first year for its adjunct faculty evaluation model that gave non-tenure track faculty feedback and options for how they wanted to be evaluated.
• Penn State, one of the winners in 2019, is an example of a whole system making changes to support adjunct faculty. They overhauled promotion procedures to make them more standardized for non-tenure-track faculty and established a consistent title and rank system for teaching faculty.
• Santa Monica Community College has done some really important work with contingent faculty by doing adjunct-specific orientations, mentorship, and providing professional development.
• Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges, a finalist this year, is a consortium of six institutions in Pennsylvania that is working together to provide professional development for their adjunct faculty. By pooling resources, they have been able to create some really important, meaningful professional development, and also build a sense of community across these different institutions.
• You can read full case studies on our web site, including for this year’s winners, Louisiana State University and Northcentral University.

Other examples include California State University, San Bernardino, which is using ACUE as part of its model to offer and scale up professional development that recognizes adjunct faculty with a national certificate.

What COVID-19 trends are you seeing?

This year has been really hard for adjunct faculty. They’re easy to let go, so we’re seeing more unemployment as a result of the pandemic. That will likely change after the pandemic, when hiring increases again, but my hope is that we take this opportunity to rethink faculty models more broadly.

One trend I have noticed during COVID is that we’re seeing professional development being offered much more broadly to non-tenure track faculty members. Campuses are recognizing that they need to support their faculty in this work. Instead of going back to the existing model, what if we explored approaches that would truly create a quality teaching and learning environment by continuing to offer professional development broadly to all our faculty of all contract types – to invest in faculty to ensure student success?

Jonathan Gyurko

“Why is college teaching so hit or miss?” asked Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in a recent web talk with historian Jonathan Zimmerman, author of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America. Joining the lively discussion were Aimée Eubanks Davis, founder and CEO of Braven, which empowers college students to transition to first jobs, and Jonathan Gyurko, president and co-founder of ACUE.

Zimmerman drew a quick sketch of the past 200 years, a history filled with noble but failed efforts to improve and reform college teaching, marked by student-led protests and solitary campaigns led by individual professors or administrators. These efforts repeatedly stumble and stall across different eras, Zimmerman argues, for similar reasons: A reluctance to identify and embrace evidence-based teaching practices using the same professional standards established for research and scholarship.

Mindful of this history, and eager to look forward, Hess wondered: How are things changing?

Gyurko explained how ACUE built the professional approach Zimmerman found absent in the past, with ACUE’s independently-validated Effective Practice Framework as the evidence-based teaching competencies that every college educator should possess, ACUE’s Framework-aligned courses to prepare faculty across these competencies, and its nationally-recognized teaching credential endorsed by the American Council on Education.

Adding the student perspective, Davis noted that quality teaching matters as much at the college level as it does in K-12, pointing to the “fallacy” that undergraduates don’t need engaging instruction with proven methods. Panelists also noted that this is no fault of faculty, who are trained in PhD programs that emphasize subject matter expertise and research, not teaching.

What will it take to ensure that all faculty receive the preparation they seek so that every student benefits from proven instructional approaches? Panelists explored the need to demonstrate the value of effective teaching to every stakeholder. For a provost, it helps with retention. For a chief financial officer, that translates into increased tuition revenue. For a president, it strengthens an institution’s reputation. Faculty experience the joy of more effectively helping students learn about the subject which is their passion. Students lean more, complete their studies, and graduate prepared for life’s opportunities—and become loyal alumni.

Gyurko shared how powerful ACUE’s efficacy research has been in communicating the value of quality teaching across stakeholders, such as a recent study with Broward College which showed closed equity gaps by race and class, among students taught by ACUE-credentialed faculty. He noted that “ACUE has tried to be a good student of history, to break the patterns Zimmerman identifies, and create a real movement, to ensure that “quality instruction, like access and affordability, is a permanent part of higher education’s mission.”