Hill College Faculty Study Grants Presented At All-Staff Day

  Jessyca Brown
  Thursday, August 20, 2020 9:01 AM
  General Events

Hillsboro, TX

HILLSBORO, TEXAS— Last week, Hill College hosted All-Staff Day in preparation for the 2020-2021 school year. This fall, the college is offering face-to-face classes, online and hybrid learning amid the COVID pandemic.

Each year instructors apply for and are selected to receive a grant to enhance their course curriculum, providing students enriched higher education in their field of study. With this grant, the faculty members receive a stipend to spend on technology and resources needed to execute their research. The presenting instructors who received faculty study grants were Dr. Joanne Baham, Dr. Karen Kaiser, Rukmani Kuppuswami and Rosalyn Hunter.

This year, the requirements for the proposal had to involve a course with a minimum of three credit hours. Faculty were challenged to develop a quality, online, zero-cost course based on the requirements given by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The proposal was to include adaptive material for students with special needs, as well as interactive presentations through animation, text and video clips relevant to the subject matter. The instructors were also required to include interactive exercises and quizzes through the course for clarity and testing security with little to no cost to students. Lastly, the course had to be developed, tested and accessed in the Schoology platform Hill College currently utilizes.

The instructors found new ways that utilize technology to conduct labs, created plans for alternate in-person labs that accommodate social distancing practices, introduced video conference software for recorded lectures, photo documentation to accompany assignments and take-home labs. Hunter stated, “I’m curious to see if rethinking our classes might make them even better?” Students can access past lectures and information will be distributed differently this fall; these new learning methods will aid in digesting the information being studied.

Left to right: Dr. Joanne Baham, Dr. Karen Kaiser, Rosalyn Hunter and Rukmani Kuppuswami

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