Faculty Professional Development
Robust, “real-time” faculty professional development is critical to advancing student success in and beyond the classroom.
Meeting campus goals for equity and student success requires that faculty keep pace with changes occurring in higher education and with the latest innovations in teaching and learning.
At AAC&U, our goal is to make each aspect of a student’s curricular experience more transparent and equitable. Through faculty professional development that spans the learning environment—from the “micro” of assignment (re)design to the “macro” of curricular reform—OCPDI provides faculty professional development focused intensely on teaching, learning, and assessment.
Our approach to assignment (re)design encourages faculty to examine their assignments from a student’s perspective and to teach with transparency.
Approach to Assignment (Re)Design
Our approach to assignment (re)design focuses intensely on the student’s classroom experience. Faculty members and instructors can bolster students’ success, especially for underserved students, by sharing the underlying reasons for an assignment—namely, why and how courses and assignments are set up the way they are. These explanations can positively impact three key areas: academic confidence, a sense of belonging, and mastery of key skills.
Assignment (Re)Design & VALUE
Higher education institutions of all kinds have also benefited from applying AAC&U’s VALUE rubrics to assignment redesign. Additionally, AAC&U’s VALUE ADD tools provide faculty with resources to align student assignments with the VALUE rubrics. Unifying the curriculum to the assessment helps ensure content mastery and creates student opportunities for problem solving, analysis, ethical reasoning, and other situations beyond the classroom.
Curricular Reform: Reimagining General Education
Since the 1980s, AAC&U has taken the lead in creating a new vision of general education. We envision general education programs with clear, purposeful pathways that allow all students to demonstrate their learning through high-impact practices and teaching strategies that are transferable across disciplines, departments, institutions, and state systems. Through our conference and Institute on General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment, OCPDI works with faculty and campus leadership to strengthen their general education programs overall, embed high expectations for student learning assessments, and enhance their curricula and pedagogy to ensure that curricula promote retention and degree completion and provide sustained professional development for the current and future workforce