Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching

The Faculty Development Committee (FDC) is inviting applications for nomination to the Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching. Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching recognizes individual faculty and staff for a strong commitment to engaged, online teaching and student success. This is a USG level award, and the FDC will select the Georgia Southern nominee from the submitted applications. The FDC is a diverse group that has representatives from each academic college and the library and is assisted by the Director of the Faculty Center. The nomination portfolio will need to present and/or explain the nominee’s contributions, so that faculty members from various and diverse disciplines understand their value.

Eligibility

Current full-time members of the teaching faculty and teaching academic staff must teach a minimum of 12 credit hours of fully online instruction across the fall, spring, and summer semesters. Fully online instruction for this award is defined as “95% or more of the course must be delivered fully online.”

How to Submit

Email your nomination portfolio to facultycenter@georgiasouthern.edu. The Faculty Center will send all portfolios to the FDC for review.

• Email subject line: 2024 Online Teaching Award Submission
• Portfolio Title: 2024 Online Teaching Award_Last Name

Deadline: 8:00 AM on April 15, 2024

Required Documentation/Nomination Portfolio

Nomination portfolios are limited to 20 pages submitted as a single pdf file, including any appendices (1” margins, minimum 12-point font for each section below). Incorporating every kind of evidence will be impossible. Instead, each nominee will select only the strongest and most relevant evidence.  Incomplete portfolios or portfolios that do not adhere to stated requirements will not be reviewed. 

Each portfolio must include the following information:

• A Table of Contents (TOC) for the portfolio. NOTE: The TOC does not count toward the maximum of 20 pages.
• A nomination letter from the faculty member’s department Chair and one or two additional letters of support from colleagues qualified to comment on the nominee’s commitment to quality online teaching, scholarship of online teaching and learning, and service in promoting quality online teaching. These letters should describe the nominee’s online teaching and why they are especially effective in advancing student learning. See support letter guidelines below. (limited to 2 pages each) 
• A condensed curriculum vitae that includes a brief description of each of the online courses the nominee has taught in the past three years, including the semesters taught and the number of sections. (2-3 pages)
• A reflective statement that summarizes the nominee’s philosophy, strategies, and objectives focused on quality online education, including creating student collaboration in online environments and incorporation of USG standards such as Quality Matters. (1 – 2 pages)
• A brief summary of 2-3 innovative teaching artifacts or practices used in the online environment to promote student success. (2-3 pages)
• One or more letters of support from recent and/or past students. (1-2 pages)
• A well-organized set of documents that provide evidence of the nominee’s extraordinary commitment to online teaching and leadership excellence such as: data showing success of the nominee’s students, selected components of course syllabi, online materials, innovative methods of assessing student learning and achievement, summaries of recent student evaluations, peer evaluations, student mentoring and advising, peer mentoring, service and scholarship relevant to promoting online education.

Support Letter Guidelines 

As part of the nomination process, faculty members must obtain letters of support from one or two colleagues who are in a position to meaningfully evaluate their contributions to online learning. The nominee is responsible to provide these guidelines to those who write the support letters. These letters are open format and must indicate who the recommender is and in what capacity they have come to know about the nominee’s contributions to online learning. The letter may address how faculty members achieve some of the following points:

1. Achieve excellence in creating quality online teaching/learning experiences.
2. Update knowledge of effective and innovative online teaching practices.
3. Develop, utilize, and share innovative strategies recognized and promoted by the USG, such as Quality Matters, for creating quality online education.
4. Continually develop and broaden skills and awareness of technologies to enhance student collaboration and quality online education.
5. Uphold departmental standards for students to promote effective and equitable assessment in online environments.
6. Display enthusiasm, consistency and dependability for the possibilities of online education.
7. Any other relevant information about the nominee’s contributions to academic excellence and quality in online education.

Last updated: 6/7/2023