Digital Content Repository Initiative

Overview

During the summer of 2022, over 40 faculty from the College of Science participated in a student success, CSU Graduation Initiative 2025-funded pilot program called the Digital Content Repositories (DCR) Initiative.

Background: The Challenges

1. Student access to course content potentially ends at the close of the term.

2. Students who need to refer to that content as a review of prerequisite or foundational content for another course are disadvantaged and are left without a set place to review content.

3. Loss of access to or absence of foundational materials is especially detrimental for students in courses identified as high DFW, prerequisite, required, bottleneck, and equity gap courses.

Benefits

o The content can serve as reusable modules that can be shared across courses and programs and can be linked to from within other courses.

o By working in teams, instructors will decide collectively what content is essential and what should be included in the content repositories.

o Students will have access to all content in their program’s content library for as long as they are in that program, so they can revisit information at any time to brush up, or experience the content at their own pace.

Goal

Our goal is to decrease DFWs and course repeats and increase grades and equity.

Courses

STA 1200 – Statistics with Application	MAT 1140 – Calculus I
STA 1300 – Biostatistics	MAT 1150 – Calculus II
MAT 1050 – College Algebra	MAT 2140 – Calculus III

Content Elements for the Digital Content Repositories

o Section overviews and summaries	o Context, not just content
o Glossary, definitions, table of contents	o Real-world applications
o Small, digestible chucks of content	o Case-studies
o Personality, professors as people	o Problem sets and answers
o Logical pairing of content	o Topic or section introductory videos
o Inclusive pedagogies

Financial Support

o Faculty were compensated at two important milestones: completion of the content map for the DCR and the delivery of the DCR.

o All tenure-line faculty and lecturer participants were compensated.

o We also had a Foundation staff member, a manager (MPP), and a faculty member in retirement (FERP) who received other forms of compensation.

o Compensation is deserved and essential, but can create a resource bottleneck for staff processors.

Teamwork and IP: The Shared Curriculum Model

This is a collaborative effort, working together as a team, not individual contributors working in isolation.

The university is investing resources.

We share the work and share intellectual property ownership.

Data, Metrics, & Key Performance Indicators

Some of the data collected include:

o # of DFW grades in courses with a DCR

o Pass rate for courses with a repository

o # of total visits to a repository in a term

o # of unique visits during term

o DFW rate for digital content repository visitors by course vs DFW rate non-visitors by course

o For courses with 20% DFW or higher: Change in DFW rate for courses with content library vs without a DCR

o Equity gap among students in courses with a DCR

Support Resources

Faculty support was vital. Some of the support resources included:

Content recording studio support through MediaVision
Instructional Design Support through CAFE (Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence)
Library and digital media support through the University LIbrary