Faculty Responsibilities
ACE faculty members play one of the most important roles at ACE. As a faculty member you impact the student learning and experience more than anyone at the College. We thank you for playing this role. Please know to uphold the high-quality expectations, ACE does have expectations or our faculty members. Specifically, faculty members are responsible for fostering an environment of professional learning and student engagement to ensure students successfully complete their courses and graduate from the program. ACE faculty members set course guidelines, communicate learning expectations, grade all assignments, and assign final grades. We encourage you to review the expectations listed below as well as visit Faculty Commons to explore department specific expectations.
As an ACE faculty member, your responsibilities include:
- Ensuring high-quality delivery of course content.
- Contributing to the academic learning environment through the sharing of professional knowledge and experiences.
- Responding to all student requests for information or clarification of course content.
- Providing feedback regarding student performance as measured by quizzes, discussion threads, assignments and exams.
- Grading student work according to established criteria.
- Synthesizing and reporting student performance data.
- Publishing your expectations prior to the term start.
As a course faculty member, you contribute to student success by:
- Facilitating a safe and comfortable learning environment for students.
- Sharing supplementary course content, professional insight, application assignment tips, and exam preparation guidance.
- Participating in each week’s online threaded discussions.
- Responding to all student inquiries.
- Designing just-in-time instruction as needed to further guide student learning or capitalize on significant current events.
- Monitoring completion of assignments and assessments.
- Grading all discussion responses and assignments.
- Contacting students who have not turned in assignments or assessments.
- Clarifying course content.
As a course faculty member, you will respond to questions about:
- Course content or expectations.
- Submitting assignments.
- Due dates.
- Exam content.
The College expects you to be available to students and College personnel. If you are planning to be away from your class (or computer) for more than 24 hours, we require that you please notify your supervisor, so someone can be available to assist your students.
We recommend you use an email auto-responder while you are “away” from your ACE responsibilities. Away messages should provide an appropriate level of support to our students while also setting appropriate expectations for a response.
Faculty Response Time Expectations
You are required to answer student and administrator communications within 24 hours. Please be mindful of this expectation as it influences faculty performance evaluations. Should you be away from access to your course, contact your supervisor for additional support.
Due to the length of terms at ACE, students must receive feedback quickly in order to incorporate feedback on their next assignment. Because of this, all faculty members are required to grade all assignments within 96 hours of the due date. If problems arise, you must notify your supervisor. Because the majority of our course assignments build upon each other, students need to receive the feedback from each graded assignment in time to adjust the subsequent assignment.
ACE Email Expectations
You are provided with ACE email accounts. If you are a new faculty member, you will receive login information for your accounts during the on-boarding process. The welcome letter you will send at the beginning of each course must include your ACE email address.
Correspondence with students should be accomplished from your ACE email address, either in the LMS or through web mail using Outlook. At no time should you utilize a different institution’s email address in contacting ACE students. Faculty are expected to respond to ACE related emails within 24 hours of receipt.
ACE email is accessed through https://portal.microsoftonline.com/
General Course Management Expectations
Ensuring that your students have a great first impression of their new course and of you is important. Thus, we ask faculty members to engage with postings and messages prior to the term start. Please post your welcome message and a short biography in the discussion board and include your contact information and office/contact hours in the Instructor Studio. Also post your expectations, particularly addressing submission of late assignments, grading approach, or other typical issues you encounter.
Please note that all these items should be posted the Friday before the course starts.
During the Course
The faculty member’s active presence in the course is critical. We ask our faculty members to be actively engaged in their course each week in the following ways:
- Post 3-5 comments/questions (at minimum) to the discussion board each week. These questions/comments should:
- Promote in-depth thinking.
- Challenge different perspectives or points of view.
- Draw conclusions about a real-world experience.
- Monitor student conversation in the discussion board each day for content, appropriate dialogue, and Netiquette.
- Answer student questions as needed.
- Grade all assignments within 96 hours of the due date.
- Offer thoughtful and constructive feedback.
- This is the number one thing that our students comment about in their evaluations. Students appreciate (and need) specific and constructive feedback personalized to them.
- Post helpful announcements to students to help direct their thinking and learning.
Putting a “Fingerprint” On the Course
You have a responsibility to add your expertise in each course. In traditional courses, the faculty member demonstrates his or her expertise by developing the course, guiding the students through assignments and facilitating useful classroom discussions. Because ACE courses are pre-designed (often by a different faculty member), you must make intentional efforts to add your own “fingerprints” to each course taught. These elements should enhance the course material and the learning occurring via the course discussions. You are required to add at least two unique elements to each course. Possibilities include:
- Adding documents or photographs from the faculty member’s own experience to enhance content.
- Holding live chat sessions with students (could be Q & A, elaboration on discussion threads, examples of personal experiences, etc.).
- Creating screen casting or documents supported by audio.
- Video or phone conferencing with students (available in Zoom and the “conference” tool in Canvas).
- Using Google apps for groups, collaborative documents, etc. to enhance course content and add personal expertise.
- Creating and distributing out podcasts and screencasts.
- Creating a course blog or wiki.
- Creating a live or virtual lesson.
At the end of each course, faculty members will receive an “End-of-Course Faculty Survey”. We ask that all faculty members complete this as ACE uses this information to improve course content. The survey asks faculty members to provide both general and specific feedback about the course as well as provide any suggestions for improvement.
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