Proposal

Narrative

Since its inception in Fall 2007, the Supplemental Instruction (SI) program in the Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS) has grown to support a plethora of historically difficult courses at FAU. SI consists of peer-facilitated study sessions in which students discuss difficult course content with a peer leader, learning how to integrate what to learn with how to learn. Our SI program typically supports 14-16 courses and on average 2,000 unique FAU students per semester. Through data analysis conducted by the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Analysis, we are proud to report that students who attend 6 or more SI sessions are likely to receive half to a whole letter grade better than their peers who did not attend SI. Beginning in fall 2016, CLASS entered a collaboration with the FAU Center for Online Learning and Continuing Education to develop an innovative form of SI that allows online students to connect to in-person SI sessions. Since that time, hundreds of FAU students have joined online via Zoom in one of our SI classrooms (GS 226) outfitted with lecture capture technology. Recently, we expanded hybrid SI to all courses that offer in-person SI, which has led to capacity issues in our lecture capture space. Furthermore, we are experiencing unprecedentedly high demand for online/hybrid SI services as we return to campus from the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to lessen these capacity constraints and ensure scalability, this proposal seeks to secure technology fee funding to outfit our other SI classroom (GS 222). The addition of lecture capture technology in GS 222 is well aligned with both FAU’s Strategic Plan for the Race to Excellence, 2015-2025 and The Center for Online and Continuing Education’s Strategic Plan for eLearning.

Facilities

GS 222 is classified as an SI classroom and is managed by the Center for Learning and Student Success. GS 222 is only used for our academic support services as well as departmental trainings. Thus, GS 222 is already outfitted with the furniture and infrastructure to support the addition of the requested technology solutions. The Center for Teaching and Learning, where GS 222 is located, is outfitted with a security system and magnetic locking entrances to ensure the security for all of our technology solutions.

Hardware Requirements

Please see attached quote provided by FAU Office of Information Technology for further details.

Software Requirements

Please see attached quote provided by FAU Office of Information Technology for further details.

Personnel Costs

Installation will be completed in collaboration with the FAU Office of Information Technology. Please see the attached quote for the one-time installation costs. Please note that after installation operations associated with this project will be supported by existing staff, so no increase in personnel costs is anticipated.

Other Costs

N/A

Timeline

As soon as the awarded funds are made available, installation will be scheduled with the contractor. When we renovated our other SI classroom, the vendor took a long weekend to install the systems in an effort to not interrupt our operations.

Sustainability

This proposal consists of mainly one-time hardware costs. Since we have individuals in our center who are familiar with the requested technology, it also does not require any additional personnel costs. Therefore, this proposal is sustainable from a financial perspective. We anticipate that the requested technology will be used for 3-5 years before needing any upgrades. Future upgrades may be submitted as future Technology Fee Grant proposals or funded through Undergraduate Studies. Therefore, this proposal is also sustainable from a technology perspective. Our colleges/departments are committed to maintaining our facility.

Resource Matching

N/A

Implementing Organization

The Center for Learning and Student Success will work in concert with the FAU Office of Information Technology to implement this project.