Learn More about our QEP Topic

After a college-wide vote between four different possible topics, the ACC community has chosen “Digital Fluency for Today’s Jobs” as our QEP topic. See full details below.

OUR QEP TOPIC: Digital Fluency for Today’s Jobs

The focus of this project will be to provide a short-term, stackable, four-course Occupational Skills Award (OSA) that offers high-demand, digital workforce competencies in a shorter, skill-focused, work-relevant manner to support student access, retention, and completion.

It was an Academic Master Plan proposal that ties into our current planning through ACC’s Strategic Plan goal 1, Equity & Access, by attracting a diverse population of students and also providing equitable opportunities for our diverse student population. Additionally, it supports goal 3, Completion and Transition to Employment/Transfer, by providing marketable digital skills relevant to today’s workforce requirements. 

It will address student success/learning by allowing students to develop the initial skills and knowledge at their own pace allowing for time and development of proficiencies in today’s workforce technologies. 

The key interventions will be courses offered online and in ACC’s ACCelerators aimed at providing marketable digital skills for any student. 

The key group implementing this work will be the computer science department. 

We hope you’ll be excited about this topic because it impacts all students who are digitally challenged–from the high school student to the parent or grandparent, to the unemployed, underemployed. Anyone in need of upskilling their digital skills can benefit from this project.

Watch this video to learn more!

Finalist #1: Creating a Culture of Inclusivity through Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

The focus of this project will be to empower faculty to redesign gateway courses by centering the redesign around the student disciplinary experience by using the Liberal Arts Gateway framework. Liberal Arts Gateway courses offer a thematic approach to help students think deeply, write critically, and find additional relevance and meaning in what they are studying. These goals would be achieved by embedding coursework with various tools, learning strategies, and metacognitive activities that are useful throughout college and beyond. 

This project ties into ACC’s planning because Redesigning Liberal Arts Gateway Courses is an ongoing initiative in the 2020-2025 Academic Master Plan. 

Student success/learning will be addressed by improving course completion and course persistence rates through multiple approaches, some of which include a “portfolio” process for benchmarking student success, developing a “discipline toolbox” for skill-building, and project-based learning to enhance student engagement. 

The key interventions will allow faculty to redesign Liberal Arts gateway course curricula using a philosophical framework that centers the student experience by intertwining lessons and assignments with multiple avenues of student support, including tutors, counselors, learning labs, faculty mentors, and even opportunities outside of academia. 

The project would be implemented by Liberal Arts Faculty with Student Affairs support.  

We hope you’ll find this topic relevant and exciting because this initiative is grounded in research and course redesign principles from the Gardner Institute. It is faculty-driven and student-centered, and it has equitable student success at its core.

Finalist #2: Investing in the Liberal Arts: Redesigning Gateway Courses

The focus of this project will be to empower faculty to redesign gateway courses by centering the redesign around the student disciplinary experience by using the Liberal Arts Gateway framework. Liberal Arts Gateway courses offer a thematic approach to help students think deeply, write critically, and find additional relevance and meaning in what they are studying. These goals would be achieved by embedding coursework with various tools, learning strategies, and metacognitive activities that are useful throughout college and beyond. 

This project ties into ACC’s planning because Redesigning Liberal Arts Gateway Courses is an ongoing initiative in the 2020-2025 Academic Master Plan. 

Student success/learning will be addressed by improving course completion and course persistence rates through multiple approaches, some of which include a “portfolio” process for benchmarking student success, developing a “discipline toolbox” for skill-building, and project-based learning to enhance student engagement. 

The key interventions will allow faculty to redesign Liberal Arts gateway course curricula using a philosophical framework that centers the student experience by intertwining lessons and assignments with multiple avenues of student support, including tutors, counselors, learning labs, faculty mentors, and even opportunities outside of academia. 

The project would be implemented by Liberal Arts Faculty with Student Affairs support.  

We hope you’ll find this topic relevant and exciting because this initiative is grounded in research and course redesign principles from the Gardner Institute. It is faculty-driven and student-centered, and it has equitable student success at its core.

Watch this video to learn more!

Finalist #3: On the Write Track

The focus of this project will be to integrate effective writing processes and practices in all courses requiring writing and encourage faculty outside the writing discipline to integrate effective writing practices in their classrooms, including process-based practices, feedback and revision, and assessment. 

It ties into our current planning by addressing College goals relating to equity, persistence, completion, transition, and engagement. 

It will address student success/learning by improving students’ writing skills as they progress through their program of study which improves student performance, retention, transfer, and employment. It will support students’ academic performance and course engagement, improve equity by addressing knowledge gaps, support students’ persistence to graduation, improve their critical thinking and retention of information, and provide students with in-demand skills for transfer to four-year colleges or employment.  

The key interventions will be to train faculty in the fundamentals of teaching writing so they can reinforce what students have learned in ENGL-1301 and 1302 to improve the quality of their writing outside of writing courses. 

The key groups affected by this work will be faculty in Composition and Literary Studies, all instructional disciplines that include writing in their courses, and ACC Learning Labs. 

We hope you’ll find this topic relevant and exciting because it empowers faculty to teach writing in their classrooms and empowers students to communicate about their knowledge in multiple disciplines. As a result, ACC graduates will be more likely to be effective in their future endeavors.

Watch this video to learn more!

Topic Selection Committee

Committee charge
Committee membership

Topic Selection Timeline

The Topic Selection Committee worked from Spring 2021 through Fall 2021 to select the focus of the QEP. The committee has now completed its work. We’d like to extend our hearty thanks to this incredible group of people. The Topic Selection Committee was an intense process with a lot of work, and its members rose to every challenge to ensure that the ACC community had a terrific set of options to consider as our QEP.

Meeting Schedule

Meetings will held as virtual meetings from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. unless otherwise noted.

Fall 2021
Summer 2021
Spring 2021

QEP Survey Results

From March 10, 2021 to April 23, 2021, the QEP Topic Selection Survey was open to all ACC employees, students and the broader community. The topic selection committee will use these results to inform their decisions by highlighting which suggested topics will be most important for the Riverbat family.  

  • Breakdown of Respondents
    • Total Responses – 176
    • Staff – 38.07%
    • Full-Time Faculty – 23.86%
    • Adjunct Faculty – 18.18%
    • Administration – 2.84%
    • Student – 16.48%
    • Community Member- 0.57%
    All responses were coded by two reviewers for which themes were mentioned. Each response could highlight multiple themes. Themes that were highlighted as most important by respondents include (percentages note responses for two different questions):
    • Student success (in general) – 35% /31%
    • Student engagement – 29% / 39%
    • Improving ACC resources – 25% / 31.48%
    • Academic needs – 24% / 35%
    • Equity – 23% / 37%