Presentations: Session VII

ASCN is an established lever for engaging faculty, administrators, and policy makers in careful thinking about improvement in undergraduate teaching and learning, providing opportunities to explore and analyze strategies for transforming higher education. This presentation focuses on a powerful approach to scaling this work to promote widespread, sustainable change: cross-institutional partnership and collaboration. We draw on lessons learned from institutional collaborations we have been involved with over the last decade, and on research and theory on systemic change, to explore strategies for connecting institutions and collaborating for improvement. The goal is to help participants build on collegial relationships formed through ASCN and other networks and to envision and design cross-institutional collaborations. The purpose is to overcome common disciplinary and institutional boundaries that prevent sustained, systemic change from taking root in their programs and schools.

It is well understood that interventions solely focused on individual faculty members will not yield systemic change (Fairweather, 2009) so we have pursued approaches that involve cross-institutional collaboration as an approach that have great promise for scaling up and sustaining change (e.g., Kezar & Gehrke, 2015). Since 2012, we have been implementing and refining an approach based on Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011; Bryk et al., 2015) that applies action research to promote cultural change in undergraduate STEM programs and departments. The model has been developed and systematically studied by a consortium of ten universities, known as the Bay View Alliance. The workshop facilitators include organizers of this alliance and leaders and participants in associated campus-based initiatives. Drawing on concepts from improvement science (Berwick, 2008) and recent results from the consortium's projects, we will invite participants to engage with cross-cutting ideas on how to design and leverage collaborations that will advance institutional goals and engage in transformative culture change (Seidel, et al., 2017).  

The sudden and wholesale shift in March 2020 away from brick-and-mortar classrooms and toward hybrid and online teaching due to the pandemic was experienced by most faculty as a crisis moment. For many faculty developers, change agents, and scholars of instructional design it was also a teachable moment. How might they rapidly develop and deploy practical guidance for instructors who were struggling, while at the same time leveraging the opportunity created by the pandemic to introduce these same instructors to evidence-based methods they could productively draw on well past the time Covid-19 had run its course? The Bay View Alliance – an international network of research institutions dedicated to the study and improvement of student learning – adopted a strategy that leaned heavily on relationships already developed among trusted colleagues: it asked each of its 10 member campuses to provide examples of best practices in remote and online assessment of student learning, and then distilled from these examples a set of succinct principles for good practice. Additionally, the new resource included a gallery of faculty narratives and examples, and linked resources from each member campus. This session will provide examples of how these materials are now being used to shape teaching and assessment on member campuses, and, drawing on a study at the University of Kansas, provide suggestive evidence of their impact on faculty attitudes and practices. For instance, faculty participants reported being less concerned about students' propensity to cheat on large assignments or exams, and were instead more interested in topics such as scaffolded learning, authentic assignments, and equity. Perhaps most encouraging were several stories of instructors arriving at a new method, task, or tool for a course that they intended to continue using when back to in-person instruction in future semesters.  

UPSTEM (Utah Pathways to STEM) is an HHMI Inclusive Excellence project at the University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College to build capacity for supporting people from diverse backgrounds. The project involves four major change components at the course, department, college and cross-institutional levels: 1) year-long, interdisciplinary and cross-institutional faculty learning communities (FLCs) that build leadership skills around inclusive teaching practices, 2) cross-institutional "articulation" teams composed of faculty and advisors who closely examine curricular bottlenecks, alignment of learning outcomes, and transfer pathways, 3) access to inter-institutional student-level data, and 4) assessment of the climate for students, faculty, and staff in the College of Science at the University of Utah.

In the FLCs, faculty use institutional data to identify needs and develop projects that range in complexity from simple course-level adjustments to large-scale college-wide reforms. Some outcomes of this work include the implementation of a course-level climate assessment, the development of a math course for pre-engineering students that unlocks the introductory engineering curriculum, the conception of a "Story Corps" project that captures experiences of diverse faculty, students and staff, and the creation of an action plan to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the College of Science. The work of the articulation teams has resulted in changes to course sequencing, a shift in statewide rules for general education and associates degrees, and two new transfer degrees that seamlessly guide students to multiple STEM majors at the University of Utah.

The key to facilitating change at both institutions has been providing faculty with training and information on best practices in inclusive teaching and access to institutional data. Also, providing a community of peers who are working toward the same goal stimulates creative problem solving and helps empower faculty to take on tough structural and interpersonal challenges.