Driving Evidence-Informed Educational Improvement through Collaborative Inquiry

Academic departments serve as crucial sites for educational transformation, particularly for course and curricular changes that require coordinated faculty efforts and collective responsibility for student learning. Yet getting individuals within departments "rowing in the same direction" can be challenging. This interactive session presents a model for fostering shared responsibility and collective, evidence-informed educational improvements through departmental collaborative inquiry.

Grounded in theories of organizational learning and sensemaking in higher education, our approach engages departments in cycles of inquiry, reflection, planning and action. Department teams begin by identifying meaningful questions about student learning and success. Program leaders then help them gather and make sense of relevant evidence- such as institutional data, learning outcomes, alumni outcomes and feedback, or student narratives- to explore challenges and opportunities in their programs and develop a responsive vision for course and curricular revisions. Through collaborative sense-making processes that involve cross-department discussions, teams interpret findings and develop action plans. Iterative inquiry cycles create pathways for deeper understanding of student experiences, facilitate departmental dialogue, and lead to actionable improvements.

The session will include an overview of the model for departmental collaborative inquiry, along with case studies from multiple participating departments. We will engage the participants in considering the sorts of evidence gathered in each case, and how the data were used to determine action plans to support student success and enact programmatic change. We will also share an analysis of program outcomes to date, demonstrating how this model for transformation has helped academic units develop actionable plans for curricular improvements that promote student growth, discovery, and success. Through guided discussion, participants will explore opportunities and practical strategies for promoting a culture of shared responsibility and evidence-informed improvement in their own institutional contexts.