Despite the massive disruption in higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s largest four-year public university has renewed its commitment to support student success by pursuing innovative ways to provide high-quality, affordable education and reduce equity gaps.

Through the coordination of campus efforts, system support and focused leadership, the California State University (CSU) was on track to meet its Graduation Initiative 2025 goals when the tidal wave of COVID-19 hit, necessitating the change from in-person to virtual instruction to keep students on course. Then in May, CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White announced that the majority of fall classes would remain online—the first major university system to make this decision.

“I announced…that we would proceed into the fall with the idea of trying to deliver as much of the curriculum as we possibly could in the virtual space, and that we were going to be planning in that direction…being driven by the health and safety of our students, but also of our faculty and staff, and the communities in which our 23 campuses are embedded in,” White said during a conversation on the podcast The Key with Inside Higher Ed.

The CSU’s early decision for largely virtual instruction this fall has allowed its faculty and staff to prepare throughout the summer, taking action to remain a few steps ahead of disruption and charting a new path to promote student success.

“The campus faculty development and academic technology directors have redoubled their efforts to support an unprecedented number of faculty with professional learning,” said Emily Magruder, Ph.D., director of the CSU Institute for Teaching & Learning. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’ll continue to work on advancing the quality of teaching and learning throughout the system.”

Partnering to Scale Faculty Support 

While CSU campuses have already been supporting their faculty development, leadership saw the opportunity to provide additional access to professional learning—boosting efforts to deliver quality online instruction to its more than 400,000 students who would begin their school year virtually.

The result: 450 faculty across 10 CSU campuses are participating in the Association of College and University Educators’ (ACUE) microcredential course, Promoting Active Learning Online, focusing on evidence-based teaching practices to engage students in the online learning environment. CSU faculty who teach first-year courses were encouraged to enroll. Those who complete the eight-week course will earn the microcredential which meets partial requirements for ACUE’s Certificate in Effective College Instruction, awarded in collaboration with the American Council on Education (ACE).

This effort is in addition to the 540 faculty across eight CSU campuses who will soon start ACUE’s 25-week program in Effective Online Teaching Practices. This work is supported by the National Association of System Heads’ (NASH) “Scaling Instructional Excellence for Student Success” initiative, a grant to enroll faculty in ACUE’s faculty development programs in evidence-based teaching practices proven to increase student achievement and close equity gaps. The grant supported 300 faculty at four campuses with the CSU investing additional funds to expand its impact.

Since 2015, ACUE has prepared and credentialed hundreds of faculty across the CSU through institutional partnerships—with great success. Cal State LA, for instance, has realized significant improvements in closing the completion and equity gaps of its first-year mathematics courses since partnering with ACUE.

Tricia Russ, executive director of partnerships at ACUE, believes this proven track record is one reason why the CSU looked to ACUE for additional support in its systemwide transition to virtual instruction.

“Our team is inspired by the CSU’s relentless commitment to student success, even during a time of major disruption,” said Russ. “Together with faculty and leaders across the CSU’s campuses, we’ve been able to demonstrate that supporting faculty with evidence-based teaching practices makes a real difference in eliminating achievement gaps and preparing students to persist to graduation.”

Learn more about how the CSU is continuing to enhance virtual instruction.

When we put out a call for stories of #ResilientFaculty, we received a handful of submissions from institutions across the country. The faculty at Montgomery County Community College shared the story of the Arts and Humanities Department, which showcases two things inherent to the discipline: creativity and tenacity.

Read their story and discover why ‘the show must go on.’

On Thursday mornings this summer, you’ll find 60 faculty from Norfolk State University (NSU), a public, historically Black university (HBCU) engaged in a lively Zoom meeting, sharing their experiences implementing new online teaching strategies they learned the week before.

For the faculty and administrators at NSU, providing students with the highest quality education and collegiate experience has always been a top priority. In partnership with ACUE, NSU launched two cohorts of ACUE’s nine-module microcredential course, “Promoting Engaged and Active Online Learning.” One of ACUE’s programs for institutional partners focused on effective online teaching practices, the flexible microcredential program enabled NSU’s two cohorts to be up and running within days.

More than 100 faculty members at NSU applied for about 60 seats in the program sponsored by the NSU Center for Teaching and Learning. Dr. Rhonda Fitzgerald, an NSU associate professor who facilitates one of the cohorts, hopes that establishing a healthy dialogue around effective online teaching practices within the cohort will encourage faculty to extend that conversation to colleagues across campus.

Talk it Through Thursdays

A sample agenda from one of NSU’s Talk it Through Thursday conversations.

Fitzgerald, along with fellow cohort facilitators Dr. Cynthia Nicholson, Dr. Berkley N. King, Jr., and Dr. Nicole Kyser, assistant professors, developed “Talk it Through Thursdays.” During these virtual gatherings, faculty discuss course content and how they’re implementing ACUE’s evidence-based teaching practices in their classes. Additionally, they use these meetings to encourage one another by handing out virtual “trophies” to faculty participants who are taking risks and putting in exceptional effort.

Nicholson’s cohort is comprised of faculty members who are currently teaching summer courses online, so they are putting their newly-learned practices—like chunking lectures—immediately to work while moving through the course.

“I’m already getting personal emails from faculty in my cohort thanking me for helping them through this,” says Nicholson,. “Our ‘Talk it Through Thursdays’ give our faculty a learning community where they can discuss what they’re doing and encourage one another to try new things.”

“We are thankful our university was willing to invest in faculty by providing this training, so we wanted to make the most of it,” Fitzgerald says. “ACUE offers discussion boards and other engagement options within the modules, but we wanted to have a place to engage in deeper conversations about how this is working in our classes.”

Faculty on the Front Line

As the novel coronavirus pandemic forced NSU faculty to move courses online, they quickly realized supporting one another would play a critical role in student success.

“The reality is most of our students who were forced to transition to online courses last spring would have never chosen to take an online class. Many of them are first-generation college students and non-traditional students with jobs and families,” explains Dr. Rhonda Fitzgerald, NSU associate professor of mathematics. “As faculty, we had to come together to think through how to make online learning as engaging as possible. How can we humanize our courses and pull our students in?”

A huge part of eliciting enthusiasm from faculty, Nicholson explains, is the amount of research behind ACUE’s best practices. “Many of our faculty are heavily involved in research themselves, so for them to see the data behind these teaching methods and the impact it’s making at other colleges and universities was really important.”

Fitzgerald agrees and explains that the timing of this program couldn’t be better. “This is really an unprecedented time for everyone. We’re working remotely, stuck at home and in our silos,” she says. “This course has really brought us together, so we can, in turn, show up for our students.”

When Viviana Pezzullo came to the United States and began teaching at Florida Atlantic University, she found that the experience was significantly different from her previous work. After growing up and studying in Italy, before learning and teaching in France and then Poland, she discovered that college teaching in Europe didn’t resemble that in the U.S. in many ways.

“It was shocking for me,” she told Bonni Stachowiak on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. “When I moved, I started teaching the week after I arrived. I wasn’t ready.”

Today, Pezzullo is a graduate teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at FAU. While she was initially concerned about working directly with undergraduate students immediately, her institution helped prepare her for the challenge. For example, she took a mandatory course in second language acquisition that focused on how to help students succeed. “It was theoretical, but I was also putting all this theory into practice because I was actually teaching the class,” she explained.

Pezzullo found participating in the ACUE program especially helpful in developing her approach and identity as an instructor. This, too, encouraged her to apply theory to practice. 

“I was reading and I was watching videos about different activities and methodologies and pedagogy, but at the same time, ACUE was asking me to implement these techniques.”

Speaking with fellow graduate students in her ACUE cohort allowed her to reflect on which methods worked best in different fields and disciplines. The instructors discussed how they could use various techniques and which ones worked best for them. 

“After one year, I actually realized that I had so much more freedom than I had in my own country to experiment,” Pezzullo said.

COVID-19 has, of course, presented challenges to Pezzullo and her fellow instructors, but using what she’s learned she’s been able to adapt. For example, she’s using Flipgrid so students can record and watch each other’s videos, which prompts discussions among students. She finds it especially helpful to show her face on camera to encourage participation, noting, “I think it’s important that students know who the professor is.”

She also suggests pairing students and creating a kind of “buddy system” to facilitate peer engagement.

“We need to find a new way to build a community because community is so important for teaching,” Pezzullo added.

Viviana Pezzullo is an ACUE-credentialed graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature and a PhD Candidate in Comparative Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She participated in our #ResilientFaculty series, sharing more of her story with ACUE.

Ohio Strong Start to Finish partners with ACUE to advance developmental education reform

How do we better understand our students’ ability to learn and meet the expectations of college-level work?

This important question, rooted in a desire to address equity gaps among students, in teaching practices and in faculty mindset, led the Ohio Strong Start to Finish (OhioSSF) to partner with ACUE to continue advancing developmental education reform across the state.

A collaboration between the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), the Inter-University Council (IUC), the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) and the 18 community colleges and 12 universities in Ohio that have committed to the project, OhioSSF aims to significantly increase the number of students completing gateway mathematics and English courses as part of a guided pathway within their first academic year.

“Ohio colleges and universities have been redesigning curriculum, creating degree pathways and enhancing academic and social support services to help students succeed in their first year of college and beyond,” said Dr. Thomas Sudkamp of Ohio SSF. “An essential component for student success is ensuring that outstanding faculty are engaging with the students. The partnership of Ohio Strong Start to Finish and ACUE brings a program nationally recognized for increasing course and degree completion to faculty across the state.”

The new partnership with ACUE, generously supported by Strong Start to Finish (SSTF), will allow 120 faculty members from the 30 OhioSSF-participating institutions to take part in ACUE’s 25-module Effective Teaching Practices course.

Additionally, in an effort to impact even more educators across OhioSSF campuses, participating faculty will have the opportunity to share what they have learned in other faculty meetings and through various communications and culture-building activities. 

“We applaud the partnership between ACUE and the Ohio Department of Higher Education for their actions to undertake these reforms. Their work to support faculty will serve as a model for systems across the country looking to implement similar reform efforts,” says Christopher M. Mullin, director of Strong Start to Finish at the Education Commission of the States.

Research has shown ACUE-credentialed faculty sustain their use of evidence-based practices, which benefit all students and are particularly beneficial to students from historically underrepresented, disenfranchised and minoritized communities.

Through OhioSSF’s partnership with ACUE, 40 percent of students in gateway mathematics and English courses with corequisite support across the 30 participating institutions will be taught by faculty who have learned about, and are implementing, evidence-based teaching practices.

“The ACUE team is incredibly excited about the scale of impact this program will have on student success efforts in Ohio. Given typical teaching loads, we estimate that this work will directly benefit more than 14,000 students in the initial year. ACUE-credentialed faculty across the country have demonstrated strong evidence of impact across a diversity of learners,” said Marianne Dombroski, partnership director, ACUE.

OhioSSF is one of SSTF’s Scaling Sites. The partnership with ACUE is supported from a second round of pooled funding, totaling more than $5.3 million, to accelerate the developmental education reform movement. The grants expand the initiative’s footprint to nearly 5 million undergraduates in 96 universities and 277 community colleges across 12 states. More information at SSTF News.

One passionate professor’s commitment to his or her students has the ability to change lives. But when you have a large group of educators with that same desire? That has the potential to drive meaningful change at scale.

This mindset is how Utah State University (USU)’s faculty have approached recent challenges and come out on the other side even stronger than before.

For several years, Dr. Travis Thurston, assistant director of USU’s Office of Empowering Teaching Excellence (ETE), has been researching and working with staff members on what he calls the “architecture of engagement,” a plan for how the university can support and engage instructors in a process of instructional improvement.

Better Together

This ongoing effort to support and improve instruction at USU created an essential foundation and culture that faculty relied on to help them come together this spring to support students and staff when the university had to switch to remote learning.

Right away teamwork was evident.

“We had three to four days to make this transition for hundreds of courses, and we have a relatively small team compared to the number of instructors we have. We had to rely on our own faculty stepping up to support their peers, and it was really fantastic,” explains Thurston.

In addition to professors, thirty graduate students in the university’s Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences program jumped in to lend a hand. “Having their help nearly doubled the number of people we had to help support faculty. We quickly set up a system to handle any requests for assistance, and a faculty member in the instructional technology and learning sciences program helped us to start feeding out tasks to mentor faculty that needed extra support.”

The priority through it all, Thurston says, was to determine how best to meet the needs of their students.

Supporting Students

To assure all students could continue their academic growth, the university first had to address the technology needs of its students. “We have a lot of students who rely on the resources on campus like a computer lab. Many students don’t have a laptop, and it’s hard to engage in an online course from a smartphone. We had instructors reach out to ask if we had available laptops to share with students and how to ensure students could connect with reliable WiFi,” he says.

Faculty and staff across campus also recognized the importance of both the mental health and physical needs of students. Dr. Rose Judd-Murray, assistant professor in the School of Applied Sciences, Technology & Education, adapted her schedule to ensure she could make regular and meaningful contact with her students to keep them engaged and in good spirits. Dr. Colby Tofel-Grehl, associate professor in the School of Teacher Education & Leadership, used Twitter to reach out to USU students, requesting they send her a private message if they were food insecure. “Colby drove around the community to collect food donated by our faculty and staff and then delivered it to students in need,” Thurston says.

Sharing Resources

Instructors also came together to support each other during the trying times of remote learning. Thurston worked with Dr. Mitchell Colver, who manages the data science team at USU’s Center for Student Analytics, to develop a webinar series focused on remote learning best practices. Thurston said one of the most helpful topics was to highlight the campus professional staff and resources available to help faculty—instructional designers, analysts, librarians and media production, among others.

Faculty at Utah State shared one word to describe online teaching in the spring. This word cloud visualized that.

Additionally, as a team, USU faculty across disciplines collaborated to help each other find and use OpenStax and other open educational resources (OER) in a timely and beneficial way. Thurston reflects, “I think it has been really beneficial for faculty not having to feel like they have to create all this new content because there’s fantastic content that exists as OER that we can be utilizing.”

USU continues to find new ways to equip its students and faculty to ensure success.

For summer sessions, the university is conducting online courses for students, but additionally, Thurston says, for hands-on courses such as labs, “our classrooms team has been going through and adding technology to a lot of classrooms to allow students who can’t be physically present in the classroom to still be able to participate.”

For instructors, USU is partnering with ACUE to provide a select number of faculty a comprehensive course in Effective Online Teaching Practices. The university also is hosting two eLearnX conferences. These events, co-sponsored by the ETE and by the university’s Center for Innovative Design and Instruction, provide USU faculty with a three-day virtual experience covering teaching tools and methodologies of online, broadcast and blended instruction.

To support learning through the fall and beyond, USU also has a faculty committee working on an “open access book” covering topics ranging from “teaching in a remote environment” to “how to connect with students during social distancing.”

Through it all, the USU faculty and administration are committed to a growth mindset and true collaboration to engage their students in new and innovative ways, clearing the path for success.

The recipe for success, according to Thurston? “It takes all of us working together.”