Best AI Website MakerIn addition to the support we provide to individual instructors, we also support academic departments as they assess student learning, redesign curriculum, and develop new processes to recruit, evaluate, and retain their teachers. In the past year, we supported 20 different academic departments via 35 consultations, 22 planning meetings, and 4 meetings with job candidates. Figure 11 reveals that there was a decline in these meetings throughout the pandemic and that we are now close to pre-pandemic levels again. Figure 12 highlights the breadth of the programs we have served.
Curriculum & Assessment
The CAT devotes significant resources to support academic programs as they develop processes to assess student learning and (re)design their curriculum. Dr. Anita McCauley, recently promoted to a new position as Associate Director of Curriculum Development and Assessment, works intensively with a handful of departments on these projects each year. The typical phases of that work are illustrated below.
Figure 13 illustrates there was a sharp decline in curriculum and assessment work during the 2019-2020 academic year, which began to rebound this year. The largest contributor to that decline was departmental fatigue due to demands associated with navigating a global pandemic. Beginning this year, some departments & programs that had previously engaged with the CAT on this work, as well as some which were new to collaborating with the CAT, resumed or began focusing on curriculum and learning assessment. Work with those departments and programs began ramping up during the spring semester and are expected to continue intensively in the coming academic year. Figure 14 reveals that we have maintained a consistent breadth of impact across departments for curriculum and assessment support. Whether we can devote as much time to these units as we were able to with Engineering and Computer Science in 2018-2019 is unknown. Dr. McCauley has been asked to lead or support numerous institutional initiatives this year, which may limit her capacity to provide this level of support.
CURRICULUM SUPPORT SEQUENCE
Assessment of Teaching
At Wake Forest, departments have a great deal of autonomy to design their own procedures for assessing teaching effectiveness. As the wider higher ed community has begun to raise questions about the validity of student feedback, many Wake Forest departments have sought guidance about how to 1) improve their student feedback forms and 2) develop a more comprehensive assessment process that does not rely so heavily on student feedback. The CAT has consulted with 18 different departments about these processes in the last four years. Figure 15 shows the number of consultations in a year has increased steadily, and we expect these consultations to grow even further as the Office of the Dean of the College makes suggestions for new processes (see "Institutional Support" for more information about this initiative).
Helping Departments Educate All Students
The CAT also supports departments as they seek to educate all students. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion has encouraged offices within the University to create plans to support equity, and many academic departments set goals related to educating all students equally. Those who do so often propose working with the CAT to achieve those goals. This year we partnered with the Chemistry department to offer a full-day inclusive teaching retreat in January and worked with the School of Law to offer two lunchtime workshops.
Finally, we support university partners and administrators as they build structures, set policies, and allocate resources to advance teaching priorities across the institution. As with departmental support, this work includes consultations and project planning meetings. But we also spend substantial time in standing meetings with institutional partners and serving on university committees. In the last year, we participated in 169 support meetings with institutional partners, a 75% increase from the baseline numbers in 2018-2019. While Figure 17 reveals a naturally sharp increase in committee and project planning meetings throughout the pandemic, our consultations and project planning meetings have actually increased since then. It appears that our work throughout the pandemic has led to greater demand for our institutional support.
While Figure 18 highlights the breadth of our institutional partnerships, it is not an accident that almost 40% of our institutional meetings were with the Office of the Dean of the College and the Institutional Effectiveness Committee. In this academic year, the Provost invited us to co-chair an institutional effectiveness initiative, and the Office of the Dean of the College asked us to collaborate on projects to support general education, program evaluation, and the assessment of teaching across the school.
Institutional Effectiveness Project
At the end of the previous year, the Provost asked Associate Director Anita McCauley to co-chair the Institutional Effectiveness Committee with Randall Rogan. This 26-member committee with representatives from academic, administrative, and student support offices across all schools and campuses of the institution acted on a charge from the Provost’s office to gather information about the current state and aspirational needs for assessment across the institution. The findings were used to propose a comprehensive and integrated learning improvement system (i.e., people and resources) to support assessment throughout the university. When implemented, the proposal will facilitate continual learning improvement; support the creation and review of academic programs; enhance learning analytics and student success projects; provide formative assessment support for academic and general education programs; and contribute to accreditation requirements.
College Curriculum & Assessment Projects
We have also supported two major curriculum assessment projects at the level of the College, 1) the Committee on the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum (CLACC) as they implement a new general education program, and 2) the Associate Dean for Academic Planning to assist in evaluating and improving their processes for annual program evaluation.
College Teaching Assessment Project
Finally, Executive Director Betsy Barre spent a significant amount of time working with associate deans in the College to systematically rethink how teaching is assessed within the school. In a series of monthly meetings, she walked them through the various questions a unit must answer to develop a meaningful, transparent, and equitable process. In doing so, they discussed whether the assessment of teaching should be standards-based or norm-based; what kinds of work should count as "teaching"; standards of effectiveness in each area; appropriate evidence to determine whether those different standards have been met; and meaningful and pragmatic procedures to collect this evidence for both annual reviews and the reviews for promotion and tenure.
The associate deans were eager to engage the entire College faculty before they proposed a new approach. Toward that end, ODOC partnered with the CAT to deliver an all-campus survey and facilitate a series of focus groups. This rich feedback was processed over the summer and will be integrated into the first draft of a new proposal for teaching assessment in the College. This draft should be presented to the Chairs and College faculty for continual feedback and improvement, with the aim of full implementation by 2024.
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