Supporting Faculty

CSU was awarded the Accelerating the Adoption of Adaptive Courseware grant funded by the Personalized Learning Consortium (PLC) of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) in 2016. This grant has been foundational to providing support to CSU faculty interested in incorporating adaptive courseware. The APLU Adaptive Courseware Grant and the Learning Assistant programs are strong complements to the CSU Student Success Initiative (SSI) as they both are looking to make a positive change to student success at scale. This approach capitalizes on the strengths of the adaptive courseware to provide individualized practice outside class that prepares students to engage in more challenging in-class, collaborative learning activities guided by the instructor and a team of LAs. Supporting faculty to incorporate these student-centered learning strategies required faculty to consider changes across three key areas to redesign courses that integrate active learning, HIPs and collaborative learning. Specifically, the faculty:

  • Incorporated principles of learning science to inform course design
  • Utilized adaptive courseware to promote mastery of lower level Bloom's Taxonomy concepts outside of class
  • Integrated Learning Assistants (LA’s) in-class to facilitate the scaling up of collaborative and active learning to foster understanding of complex concepts

When students master core competencies outside of the class, this enables the use of high-impact practices (HIPs) during class. Research indicates that HIPs improve retention and success (Kinzie, 2012) and the use of learning assistants can positively impact student satisfaction and larger gains in conceptual understanding in large-enrollment courses (Talbot, et al., 2015). This integrative approach may offer a strategy for R1 and R2 institutions to meaningfully implement a combination of affordable, scalable, student-centered strategies that may prove effective in positively impacting student success in high-enrollment courses.

Incorporating Student-Centered Learning

Once faculty select an adaptive learning platform per the APLU Adaptive Courseware grant, Instructional Designers work with them to make changes to course design and incorporate highly engaging in-class activities. In an effort to incorporate student-centered learning, all faculty participate in a combination of faculty development opportunities, including:

  • a series of one-on-one course design consultations in the semester prior to the implementation of the new course design, and
  • a series of three faculty learning community session per semester.

The Course Design Process

Following the backward design approach (Wiggins and McTighe,1998), TILT Instructional Designers partnered with faculty to incorporate evidence-based, student-centered practices to ensure alignment between course objectives, course materials, class activities and student assessment. Due to the unique needs defined by each course and instructor, a menu of strategies were explored. The recommended strategies included: building community in the classroom, self-regulated learning, frequent meaningful feedback, spaced practice, student reflection and in-class active learning opportunities facilitated by the instructor and learning assistants.


Figure 3: Course Design Worksheet

Integrating Learning Assistants

The Learning Assistant Model is based on an experiential learning program developed by the University of Colorado at Boulder that drives course transformation and institutional change in large enrollment science courses. Top undergraduate students are recruited to engage in hands-on teaching experiences by working in transformed lab or recitation sections. Preparation of LA’s involves participating in training that connects their teaching experience with the opportunity to explore the science of learning and theoretical considerations of pedagogy. The LA’s also participate in a weekly preparation meeting with the faculty teaching the course to discuss and evaluate assignments, prepare for the problems the students will be working on in the lab or recitation, and identify difficult concepts or problems they may encounter when working with students in collaborative groups in class.

How LAs Impact the Classroom

Faculty who are interested in implementing active learning activities in a class of 30 students, can plan and DO active learning on their own. However, in a course with 200 students, it is much more challenging. With the support of LAs, faculty can effectively manage this feat. For example, LA's allow faculty to engage small groups of students in challenging conceptual activities and discussions. The LAs circulate through the classroom, answer questions about the activity itself, elicit critical thinking, and assist the small groups in effective collaborative learning.

How Adaptive Courseware and LAs Complement One Another

A common faculty concern is that active learning activities take time. If faculty increase the amount of active learning in the classroom, how can they also cover all the content? Adaptive Courseware supports students in preparing for class by practicing and mastering the basics. This increased level of preparedness on the student's part opens up the possibilities for LAs, faculty and students engaging together with active learning, problem solving, and deeper understanding of concepts.


Supporting Scaling Efforts

The APLU Adaptive Courseware Grant and the LA programs are strong complements to the CSU SSI as they both are looking to make a positive change to student success at scale. Goals for scaling:

Adaptive Courseware

At the completion of the Adaptive Courseware grant in December 2019, CSU anticipates impacting over 12,500 enrollments by working with high-enrollment, high DFW rates, gateway courses, and courses that CSU’s Institutional Research office has identified as predicting graduation.

Resources

  • Instructional Designers
  • Faculty who can commit a minimum of ten hours to working with Instructional Designers and attending faculty development sessions
  • Salary stipend: Funds provided by the APLU Adaptive Courseware Grant were used to provide stipends to faculty redesigning their courses to incorporate HIPs and adaptive learning platforms

Learning Assistants

Our goal is to negotiate a combination of strategies to support scaling the use of LA’s in across campus. We are partnering with the CSU Institutional Research office to collect initial data and plan for long term assessment of the use of LAs.

Resources

  • Learning Assistant Program Coordinator
  • Learning Assistant Pedagogy Training
  • Budget considerations: We are investigating a variety of strategies to support LA’s through centralized funding, departmental funding, and supervised college teaching credits