SHREVEPORT – College faculty members are experts in their fields, acquired through thousands of hours of study and research.
The majority of faculty members aren’t necessarily trained in pedagogy, the method and practice of teaching.
In response to surveys and engagement from faculty, staff and students, LSUS is embarking on an intensive professional development regimen with access to evidence-based pedagogical strategies to better use and account for new technology.
Part of LSUS’s preparation for its 10-year accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the region’s accrediting body for universities, is to develop a Quality Enhancement Plan coalescing around a specific topic.
In alignment with its overall Navigating Student Success strategy, LSUS is focusing on modernizing teaching and instruction to better meet the needs of today’s student.
“All of us are faculty first, which means that we know our content beautifully,” said Dr. Helen Wise, associate vice chancellor for accreditation and assessment. “Very few faculty in higher education have actually been trained on pedagogy or how to teach the content.
“One of the great things that the Board of Regents has done is initiate something called the Meauxmentum Scholars program, which takes outstanding faculty from across the state to receive professional development in high-impact practices. These faculty come back to our learning communities and share these high-impact practices on our campus.”
High-impact practices include collaborative work in the classroom, participation in learning communities, service-learning, student research with faculty, study abroad, and a senior culminating experience.
Dr. Adrienne Brecheen Davis, a faculty member in the public health department, is a Meauxmentum Scholar and is implementing some high-impact practices in her classroom.
“We do a lot of group work and projects,” Davis said. “I may only lecture for about 10 minutes and then give them active learning to do.
“What they walk away with are skills that they can use in the real world, things they can put on their resume. I’m definitely a big fan of the high-impact practices because it’s essential that we’re giving our students a real-world application, letting them learn collaboratively because that’s how we work in the field.”
LSUS public health senior Dana Le said Davis’ collaborative teaching style engages students in the content.
“She doesn’t lecture the entire time,” Le said. “A lot of us (students) now have shorter attention spans, and working in groups is something I never really did in high school or past classes.
“The projects we’ve done, the little conversations we have in class – it’s something you don’t see in every classroom. (Davis) taught the first public health class I ever took, and it made me want to further my knowledge and pursue public health.”
Le plans to go to physician assistant school after graduating from LSUS.
Davis added that many faculty members teach the way they are taught, which doesn’t always account for advances in technology and different learning styles of today’s student.
“We need to constantly be developing our teaching skills, and because of technology, there are so many new things that we can be using in the classroom that can be really relevant in the job market for our students,” Davis said. “Improving instructional quality translates to our students being more successful in the job market. Success in the classroom is important, but so is graduating students into well-paying jobs.”
LSUS has been recognized among the nation’s best in the Economic Mobility Index, which measures how effectively institutions assist low-income students improve their socioeconomic status by obtaining well-paying jobs after graduation.
The university was also chosen to participate in an inaugural cohort of 11 colleges to transform the first two years of the college experience with partners like the Gardner Institute and Complete College America.
The goal is to decrease institutional obstacles that prevent students from progressing toward a degree, which improve retention rates.
LSUS is specifically targeting general education classes in which students struggle, classes like College Algebra.
High-impact practices will be deployed in these types of classes with consistent assessment using validated instruments such as the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, both of which were used in the identification of the topic.
“Everything we do at a university should be about improvement,” Wise said. “When we think about a student coming in, we don’t think about them as being perfectly formed.
“We think about how we’re going to help them become the best student they can possibly be. We know that there are many benefits to going to college, and least among them is the earnings potential that you will have. But there are other things – more likely to be homeowners, more likely to vote, more likely to be engaged at all levels. Implementing ideas like this will improve the Shreveport-Bossier community and our entire region.”
