Core principles to guide and evaluate change: The TRESTLE Principles

Principles are statements that identify the core values, philosophy, or operating assumptions of an initiative, allowing a project to externalize its core values and create accountability for enacting those values (see M.Q. Patton, 2017). A growing number of institutional change projects are defining principles to guide their projects, because principles allow flexible solutions that contextually appropriate in complex systems (as compared to projects that have clearly defined rules that all actors should follow).

In this poster I will highlight the 7 identified principles of the Transforming Education, Stimulating Teaching and Learning Excellence (TRESTLE; http://trestlenetwork.org) network; a network of 7 institutions organized around a common vision of leading change focused on department-based course transformation efforts.

Additionally, we will share results of the external evaluation survey of network members about the Principles. Network members generally agreed with the principles and felt that the TRESTLE project as a whole, and at their campus, embodied those Principles. Respondents agreed with the Principles more strongly than they agreed with whether the project emphasized that Principle. Respondents indicated that there was a good deal of local variation on how the ideas behind the Principles were put into practice because of differences in context, despite this overall consistency of purpose. Comments indicate that some principles were harder to implement (such as gathering evidence of the result of change), and this had negative implications for the work.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DUE1525775 (KU), DUE1525331 (CU) and DUE1525345 (UTSA).