Innovative Pedagogies Beyond the Pandemic
UNC Faculty Fellowship Program 2023
Abstract
The UNC System Faculty Fellowship is an interdisciplinary initiative to enhance faculty understanding of the landscape of public higher education, place system-level and university administrative decision making into context, support System-wide initiatives in service to the seventeen constituent institutions, and sharpen faculty expertise. This supports key areas of the UNC Strategic Plan: Student Success, Student Access, and Excellent and Diverse Institutions.
The fellowship focus area for calendar year 2023 is “Innovative Pedagogies Beyond the Pandemic.”
Pre-pandemic teaching and learning practices already had been undergoing profound changes, but the pandemic has induced a seismic shift, especially in learning technologies. The past two years of emergency remote teaching left gaps in study skills and college-level preparation for many high school and college students. Our current undergraduates, especially those who encountered the pandemic in their sophomore or junior high school year, could benefit from pedagogies that develop productive study habits and facilitate learning missing content.
The 2023 Faculty Fellows are identifying and developing innovative pedagogies, such as open pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and metacognitive teaching to help students better connect to instruction and take ownership of their learning. We are especially focusing on learning experiences that support our diverse undergraduate student populations. We collectively seek to build shared teaching and learning strategies in an evolving and new “normal.”
If the experience of the 2021-22 first-year cohort is any indication, future incoming cohorts are going to need more guidance than ever before. Our fellowship theme is timely, as campuses across the system are all scrambling to address our “pandemic student” needs. Although Fellows represent three campuses of different sizes and student populations, we seek to broaden our perspective with feedback from faculty and instructional support staff systemwide.
