Executive Summary

Recommendation:

Our Campus needs to provide our current and future students with learning experiences and learning environments that accommodate the different learning needs of the current Net-Generation. In order to achieve this we propose that faculty, with the assistance of instructional support units, redesign courses to create more engaging learning environments for students. This effort will be guided by research-based instuctional design principles.

Benefits for Our Campus:

• Improved student retention rates
• Increased student satisfaction
• Better prepared students for the workforce

Problem

Today's students come to our campus with different expectations and a need for more engaging and interactive learning environments. Because these expectations and needs are not being addressed at Our Campus student satisfaction levels and retention rates are declining. Today’s students are interested in social and collaborative learning and see technology as an essential component of learning and working. Therefore, in order to stay competitive as a Higher-Education institution, Our Campus needs to provide its students with ways to learn that take into account current technology trends. As technology continues to change rapidly, faculty who develop courses do not have the time to stay current with such developments and innovations. Instructional support units are better able to keep current. However, instructional support staff do not have the time and mandate to keep up with research and to distribute and apply this research.

Desired State

• Student retention and satisfaction levels increase.
• Course content will become more interactive and engaging.
• Instructional design of all courses will be based on research in effective teachning and learning.

Action Plan

1. Form a task force as an advising group with representatives from instructional support units, academic administrators, faculty and the Office of Student Affairs
2. Develop assessment measures in the form of benchmarks, formative and summative evaluations.
3. Form a standards committee
4. Establish a faculty development program
5. Establish professional development for instructional support units
6. Establish a plan for communicating and educating instructional support units

Costs

The initial cost will be a slight decrease in faculty support during the time the ID/IT staff and faculty volunteers develop the first projects that are research-based. After this initial phase that we assume will take around 6 months, the new-gained knowledge will help streamline support, will help faculty to make better informed decisions on how to revise their teaching, and thus will improve student learning.