Academic Support 360 Framework in Higher Education

Academic Support 360 Framework is a strategy to support the professional development of faculty. Such a strategy can be applied to solving full-time and adjunct faculty issues that relate to pedagogy, systems and processes in Higher Education. The faculty that this framework supports includes professors, lecturers, programme/course directors and classroom assistants. Adjunct faculty are part-time lecturers who complete many of the same tasks as a full-time professor/lecturer whilst also working in industry. For both new full-time and adjunct faculty, understanding pedagogy, systems and processes is a challenge. New faculty may require support around teaching effectively, creating assessments, using the Learning Management System, entering grades into the student management system and so on. For adjunct faculty, the challenge is compounded by their time commitments to both their professional and academic careers. Programme/Course Directors need support in understanding college processes such as course validation, exam boards, reading broadsheets, student requests to defer modules or move courses and more. Classroom assistants require induction, training and support on the Learning Management System, in-class student queries and payroll systems. This research proposes an Academic Support 360 Framework that provides the knowledge, skills and competence for full-time and adjunct faculty to apply pedagogy, use systems and follow processes. The framework is comprised of Induction, Mentoring, Online Resources and Just-in-Time training. This framework provides continual support to faculty which commences before the start of a semester, continues throughout the teaching weeks and is available during the grading process after the end of the semester. The framework shows promise as demonstrated by the increase in the number of users, induction sessions, attendance at weekly Q&A sessions, video views, queries in teams' channels and induction events. This research is useful to academic management that would like to induct and train full-time and adjunct faculty in systems, processes and teaching and learning.