Chancellor’s Learning Scholars & Motivate Lab
Supporting Mindsets Across Georgia
Collaboration: Motivate lab and the university system of georgia
Assessing Faculty and Student Learning Mindsets through the University System of Georgia
In 2019, Motivate Lab partnered with the University System of Georgia to support and assess a system-wide professional development initiative, the Chancellor’s Learning Scholars. The goal of the initiative is to facilitate sustained, meaningful conversations about teaching and learning between faculty through the establishment of faculty learning communities. These learning communities are led by Chancellor’s Learning Scholars, who are selected for their leadership and enthusiasm for implementing evidence-based teaching practices.
The Georgia system has dedicated resources for various professional development opportunities for these faculty learning communities, and state-level leaders are enthusiastic about using these existing structures and events to promote and test growth mindset teaching practices. System-wide reach, as well as Georgia’s clear commitment to this initiative, make it an ideal space for conducting this research. Additionally, the initiative has an explicit goal of promoting the spread of promising teaching practices and has plans to develop structures to facilitate this sharing.
Research activities
The goal of this project is two-fold: to enhance the professional development activities of the Chancellor’s Learning Scholars initiative by providing additional training in growth mindset supportive practices, and to help the University System of Georgia assess the impact of professional development activities on the learning mindsets of faculty and students.
In Fall 2019, Motivate Lab attended and presented at the Chancellor’s Learning Scholar’s semester kick-off event. At that event, along with collaborator from Indiana University, Dr. Mary Murphy, an expert on faculty and organizational mindset, Motivate Lab delivered training in how to support students’ growth mindset. We collected pre- and post- event survey data to assess the impact of the trainings.
In Spring 2020, we collected initial survey data from 231 faculty and 4,300 students at the beginning that measured faculty and students’ own mindset beliefs, and their perceptions of each others’ mindset beliefs.
future directions
The University System of Georgia and Motivate Lab hope to expand this partnership to include additional professional development collaborations, intervention testing, and continued assessments of student and faculty learning mindsets and other factors that influence teaching and learning.
Interested in learning more?
Contact Megan Moran for more information on the Chancellor’s Learning Scholars Project