Academic Affairs and Policy

Academic Affairs Division

Current Incubator Projects

The USG Incubator is a competitive program to identify and support promising campus ideas aligned to the work of Complete College Georgia. In 2013, all USG institutions were eligible to submit applications. This round focused on projects in the following areas: new models for learning, data-driven student engagement, partnerships, and success in gateway courses.

Recommendations for selection were made to USG by a panel of peers, experts from Institute of Higher Education at UGA, and system representatives. Nine applications out of 28 were selected for funding. Primary criteria for selection included the potential for high impact on college completion as well as the potential to replicate or scale the project across the campus and to other institutions.

This Incubator cohort will form a learning community of campuses focused on innovative practices. They will participate in efforts to evaluate the success of their projects and to share lessons learned with each other and all USG institutions.

We will update this page as the projects progress.

Category 1 Projects “Proof-of-Concept or Start-Up”

Bainbridge State College

“A Self Paced Competency-based Model for Learning”

Bainbridge State College will devise a self-paced, modularized, competency-based small business certificate program targeted towards the needs of non-traditional students. The program’s content will be developed using open educational resources as much as possible in order to reduce or eliminate the need for costly textbooks.

Georgia State University

“Integrating Risk Factors into GPS Advising through Data-based Markers, Predictive Analytics and Student Counseling”

This project aims to understand the role financial risk plays in student completion by identifying those financial risk factors corresponding with already-recognized academic markers and deploying appropriate interventions for those at high-risk. Georgia State will pilot two modes of interventions that include training current academic advisors and developing a cohort of financial counselors.

University of North Georgia

“Capturing Student Services Data to Improve Success and Completion”

University of North Georgia will devise a tracking system to capture student usage of academic support services. The collected data will be used to provide students with targeted advising interventions that promote the development of academic success skills.

South Georgia State College

“A Great Flippin’ Idea, Mac! Using iPads to Facilitate a Flipped Core Curriculum”

South Georgia State College will provide faculty members in at least one course in each core curriculum area with the technology and training to design their own course materials that will be available electronically (via iPads and other technological tools). The aim is to phase out the need for students to purchase costly textbooks each semester.

Southern Polytechnic State University

“Content Delivery Network”

The Content Delivery Network will allow faculty members to create course content through the development of learning objects (i.e. documents, graphic files, multimedia, and other executable files) that can be cataloged for maximum reusability. The outcomes of this project include reducing the amount of time on faculty spend on developing materials and the development of the institution’s own learning content.

Georgia Southwestern State University

“Project Storm Spotter: Developing a Data-Driven Response to Student Risk Factors”

The Storm Spotter project will allow Georgia Southwestern State University to learn how it loses it students by identifying student risk as captured in responses from the College Persistence Questionnaire (CPQ). The identified risk factors will be aggregated across the institution over several years to gain a large-scale perspective of the primary reasons students do not graduate. The result will be the development of targeted interventions designed to address a students’ individual risk factors.

University of Georgia

“Reducing Costs for Students through Open Education Resources”

In response to the financial challenges often exacerbated by the cost of textbooks and other learning materials, the University of Georgia is providing faculty members who teach large enrollment courses with the time, incentives and resources to transition from textbooks to open education resource-based courses. UGA will support the course redesign process necessary for this transition.

Category 2 Projects “Planning for Success in Gateway Courses”

Bainbridge State College

“Planning for Success in Gateway Courses: Curriculum Alignment of English, Math & Economics”

Bainbridge State College will align its gateway English and Mathematic courses with the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards in order to build on high school students’ acquired knowledge. The institution will also align its core Economic course to the current ACCEL course being offered at a local high school.

Gordon State College

“Building a Bridge to College English”

Using the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards, this project aligns course standards and performance expectations in grades 11 and 12 with English 1101 and English 1102 (introductory English composition courses). The institution will develop and deploy relevant materials, in consultation with a local high school teacher in a Title I school, to secondary schools with the aim that college-bound students will have clearer understanding of postsecondary academic expectations.