Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education Supporting Equitable and Effective Teaching (2025) / Chapter Skim
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6 Role of Academic Units in Achieving Equitable and Effective Teaching
Pages 127-154

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From page 127...
... Where we refer back to specific Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching to make connections to content in this chapter we use the shorthand names presented in Table 4-1. The academic unit plays an important role in shaping and understanding the impact of the collection of courses that comprises the curriculum, degree requirements, and other central elements that define the educational experience.
From page 128...
... Specifically, it discusses approaches academic units can take to consider their intended curriculum, how it is being enacted now, and how students are experiencing it today. These kinds of approaches can help illuminate choices that can have significant implications for equitable and effective teaching.
From page 129...
... Program-level learning outcomes can be both a central tenet of the intended curriculum (e.g., the outcome or degree defined by instructors) that ensures active engagement in disciplinary knowledge and a means for improving flexibility and transparency (related to Principle 6: Flexibility and responsiveness and Principle 7: Intentionality and transparency)
From page 130...
... However, students do not experience individual courses in a vacuum, but as a collection of courses within a curriculum designed by an academic unit. The ability to truly achieve both an equitable and effective learning experience requires understanding the interactions between the courses students take both simultaneously and sequentially, an understanding that the academic unit is particularly well positioned to achieve.
From page 131...
... . In the context of undergraduate teaching reform, while the policies and practices of academic units can have an immediate and lasting impact, research on their role as a lever for impacting equitable and effective teaching is an emerging area.
From page 132...
... . Another way to think of "culture" is as part of a unit's "identity." Although identity is often seen as the collection of characteristics of an individual, academic units have identities, too.
From page 133...
... The role of professional standards and competence within academic freedom points to the important connection between academic units and professional societies and between disciplinary and departmental/unit culture. The culture within a unit may arise from the experience of the discipline's culture that is sometimes nurtured at professional meetings and within the practices of the larger profession (Austin, 1994, 1996; Finnegan & Gamson, 1996; Lee, 2007; Martin et al., 2015; Murzi et al., 2016, 2021; Tierney & Lanford, 2018)
From page 134...
... . Curricular decisions by academic units may therefore reflect the dominant views in the discipline or compromises based on disagreements from faculty in different subdisciplines instead of thoughtful analysis of the desired learning outcomes for undergraduates.
From page 135...
... FOCUS ON COURSE AND PROGRAM LEARNING OUTCOMES As mentioned above, academic units have many factors and influences that go into the determination of the curriculum. One key influence should be the learning outcomes discussed extensively at the course level in Chapter 5 and that emerged out of Principle 1: Active engagement; one effective way to do this is to outline the scope of the disciplinary learning that students will actively engage in during their time in a course or program.
From page 136...
... Engaging all instructors in the development of learning outcomes ensures that PLOs represent consensus, and that individual instructors will be more likely to make connections in their own courses to the program outcomes (Clark & Hsu, 2023)
From page 137...
... NOTE: An example Source: Committee of a portion of a curriculum matrix for an undergraduate program in the geosciences showing program-level generated. learning outcomes and courses in which they are addressed.
From page 138...
... In general, the curriculum matrix is a way to visualize the extent to which a department is supporting its students in meeting their program learn ing outcomes: program learning outcomes are listed on one axis and individual courses on the other, and in each box, faculty can indicate whether a skill is introduced, developed, or expected in that course (the exact schema can vary) .a The initial completion of the matrix generates highly productive discus sions.
From page 139...
... . To ensure that program learning outcomes are meaningfully designed and incorporated throughout a degree program in an intentional and transparent way, lessons can be learned from STEM disciplines for which accrediting bodies provide expected learning outcomes and use those as one basis for program accreditation, including chemistry (e.g., Towns, 2010)
From page 140...
... . One important aspect of these acts is that, in contrast to the way that traditional disciplinary academic units make decisions about course content and major requirements, local educational agencies (LEAs)
From page 141...
... CONSIDER CURRICULAR COMPLEXITY AND COHERENCE There are several key factors beyond the desired learning outcomes to keep in mind when making decisions about curriculum. As alluded to above, these include the ways instructors will enact the curriculum and the ways that students will experience the curriculum.
From page 142...
... uses this software in its study of the connection between curricular structure and complexity and student outcomes such as time to degree, retention, and graduation rates across multiple research universities and STEM disciplines. It is increasingly recognized that assessment professionals can play a critical role in designing, developing, and evaluating Curricular Analytics to improve student learning and reducing student dropouts (De Silva et al., 2024)
From page 143...
... Implementation in these settings benefits from a systemic approach that includes all members of the instructional team. Strategies that show promise for reforming introductory STEM courses include • Developing learning outcomes that span multiple cognitive levels and include higher-order thinking skills (Clark & Hsu, 2023)
From page 144...
... Understanding the impact of approaches such as co-requisite remediation and supporting students in navigating these new pathways ultimately requires coordination across disciplines and academic as well as an institutional commitment to support the necessary changes to processes, policies, and institutional structures. ALIGN POLICIES AND APPROACHES Academic units and programs typically include members at different ranks with a range of emphases in their roles.
From page 145...
... The Departmental Action Team approach described in Box 6-2 is one example of how members of an academic unit can work together to advance change and build consensus among unit members. Another critical issue for academic units in the alignment of policies and approaches is the criteria for review, tenure, and promotion, which codifies what is valued within a faculty members' work (discussed further later in this chapter)
From page 146...
... : • Developing a new undergraduate major • Developing assessment plans • Monthly seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion • A multi-year undergraduate skills assessment • Program-level student learning outcomes • Ongoing study of student experiences for the purposes of improving the undergraduate program • Implementation of a peer mentoring program While most institutions have unit- and institution-based metrics and/ or dashboards to look at student retention and completion, fewer have disaggregated those outcomes via student demographics and intersections of identities, and even fewer have shared disaggregated D, F, and withdraw rates and GPA outcomes or linked measures of incoming student opportunity with outcomes or social mobility measures (Shapiro & Tang, 2019)
From page 147...
... enacted curriculum, learning outcomes taught and/or assessed in a course; and (c) experienced curriculum, learning outcomes reported by students as being taught (Clemmons et al., 2022)
From page 148...
... This is especially important given that they also found that the assessment of learning outcomes increased the likelihood of students recognizing that the particular learning outcomes were part of the course. Consider Student Experiences Taking Courses Across Multiple Academic Units The enacted curriculum sets a path for students to achieve an end goal -- a credential, or degree.
From page 149...
... Some campuses have minimized these issues by adopting a "common goods" approach to the introductory STEM courses whereby the instructors teaching these courses come together as a community to uncover and minimize toxic course combinations and unnecessary co- and prerequisites. For example, to increase student retention and success in engineering, Wright State University developed a freshman-level engineering math course which did not require traditional math prerequisites and instead moved core engineering courses earlier in the program, redefining the way in which engineering math was taught (Klingbeil, 2004)
From page 150...
... The UERU Curricular Analytics Project mentioned earlier has developed a tool to help identify potential curricular bottlenecks and also logistical ones where students who may not succeed in a course the first time can be delayed up to a year in their degree progression if that course is only offered during one term each academic year. Groups that manage curricular programs can also discuss in detail which skills and knowledge are needed for particular courses (e.g., which specific quantitative skills are expected for an upper-level course)
From page 151...
... While articulation agreements can facilitate this process by providing documentation of what courses will transfer for credit at the new institution, many are based on outdated learning outcomes that may not have been revisited for many years. Community college faculty may feel constrained in making changes to courses because they are articulated to a four-year college.
From page 152...
... Therefore, a message that these efforts are valued and supported by academic units and institutions can be a powerful motivator. Equitable and effective teaching is unlikely to happen in a widespread manner if the work is not valued by academic units, considered in teaching evaluations, and rewarded equitably and reliably.
From page 153...
... are located at a key level of institutional change where they may be able to influence the larger institutional policies and certainly can influence instructor behavior by providing opportunities, support, and incentives for attention to teaching and equity. When members of the academic unit agree to act collectively and come to agreement about course, major, or program learning outcomes, the unit provides a structure for developing a clearly articulated curricular structure that supports those learning outcomes.
From page 154...
... Academic unit decisions and policies related to teaching can impede or promote the implementation of equitable and effective teaching strategies. Conclusion 6.4: Barriers to students' success can arise from the struc ture of course offerings and requirements.


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