The Learning Environment Matters: Creating Conditions for Academic Well-Being
Georgia Tech's new strategic plan calls for the cultivation of well-being both in and out of the classroom where all can grow and learn. To promote this goal and contribute to its realization, our Faculty Learning Community (FLC) created a project on academic well-being that will feature faculty voices from across colleges and disciplines. Members of our FLC include four Provost Teaching and Learning Fellows: Satish Kumar (Associate Professor, ME), Charles Rudolph (Associate Professor, ARCH), Jake Soper (Associate Professor, CHEM), and Linda Wills (Associate Professor, ECE). Our FLC is facilitated by the Center for Teaching and Learning's director, Dr. Joyce Weinsheimer and associate director, Dr. David Lawrence.
In phase 1 of our project we identified seven factors that that contribute to the academic well-being of students in higher education. These seven factors emerged from a survey of the literature and a consideration of the culture of Georgia Tech. We created three survey questions for each factor. One purpose of the questions is to discover course design and teaching strategies Tech faculty employ to foster those factors.
We are now in phase 2 of the project where our aim is to identify concrete practices that Tech faculty utilize to promote a positive learning environment that fosters academic well-being. We created separate surveys for each of the seven factors identified in phase 1. The surveys are designed so that faculty responses may be grouped by college, school, or topic.