ACE unveiled a white paper and tool to help college leaders assess the return on teaching quality investments during a session Thursday at the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education 43rd Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon.
The spreadsheet tool, which can be found here, and the resulting return-on-investment (ROI) ranges it produces, is designed to help institutional administrators in making decisions about whether, or to what extent, to invest in select teaching improvement efforts on their campuses and was co-developed with Ithaka S+R. This tool builds on the framework developed in the paper “Instructional Quality, Student Outcomes, and Institutional Finances,” which made the connections between instructional quality investments and improved institutional efficiency.
The new white paper, “Estimating the Return on Investment (ROI) for Instructional Improvement Efforts,” and ROI tool were part of a broader session focused on enterprise perspectives on teaching and learning. Sherri Lind Hughes, ACE assistant vice president of leadership, and Steven Taylor, director of ACE’s Center for Education Attainment and Innovation, helped lead the discussion.
ACE also released a highly anticipated Center for Teaching and Learning Matrix during a packed session at the conference. The matrix is a joint effort between ACE and POD and builds off the Beta Faculty Development Center Matrix first developed by ACE in 2017.
Both ACE and ACUE, the Association of College and University Educators, helped sponsor this year’s POD conference. ACE and ACUE are engaged in an ongoing collaboration to advance teaching and learning through faculty and organizational development. ACE’s support included sponsorship of the plenary session on Nov. 16 featuring ACE member president José Bowen of Goucher College (MD).
ACE continues to develop a practice and research agenda on teaching and learning innovation, which includes mobilizing its members to experiment with innovative practices, and through collaborations with similarly mission-aligned organizations. More information is available here.