From the Dean: Curriculum reviews

As part of my continued goal to increase communication, I am writing to summarize our recent curriculum review and five-year forecast efforts. Updating the College about these reviews and noting next steps for the process around the reviews was a topic suggested via the online suggestion box and advanced by Faculty Senate and department heads. In this piece, I describe both the purpose of the curriculum reviews as well as the process.

Purpose

The overall purpose of the curriculum reviews is faculty-led continuous improvement of programs. Although the University-mandated Program Review process that occurs every seven years is meant to engender continuous improvement, it doesn’t really call for a deep dive, has minimal follow up, and only 2-3 units complete PRAC reviews each year. Given the individualized nature of review at different times across the College, it also impairs College leaders from having simultaneously in-depth knowledge of all needs of all units. Given how quickly the landscape is changing in our disciplines and our need to respond to fiscal constraints, the Cabinet (Spangler, Neuharth-Pritchett, Delgado-Romero, Ardoin, Garber) decided that the curriculum review process would be a way to engage faculty in a review of programs and create opportunities for cross-unit collaboration. The curriculum review process is meant to provide a space to thoughtfully examine why we are doing what we are doing, identify which things (or pieces of things) we want to hold onto, which pieces need to be re-crafted to meet a variety of constituents’ needs, and which pieces need to be shed to make way for something else.

Historical events have shaped our curricula and programs, and we are at a moment to take stock of those curricula and programs and ask why we are teaching what we are teaching in the particular ways we are teaching it. Is what we are doing contemporary, reflective of best practice, meeting the needs of our students and our respective communities, and utilizing the expertise of our highly-regarded faculty?

Examples of historical forces that have shaped our curricula include:

An emphasis on credit hour production that led to the replication of research and foundations course in programs/departments as well as a perceived need to keep all courses in a program within a given unit
Mandates from various entities (UGA, USG, accrediting bodies) that led to the creation of topics within courses, entire courses, or even entire programs
Topics, courses, and programs that reflect the expertise and passions of faculty members, some of whom are no longer in the College or whose research areas are no longer connected to the offered content
The creation of online programs and programs at other campuses (Gwinnett, Griffin) that led to fully self-contained programs

We also have current forces at work that call on us revisit our curricula, including:

University System of Georgia limits on hours in degree programs (121 for B.S.Ed.; 30-36 for master’s programs) and courses that foster opportunities for students to smoothly transfer between institutions
A state-wide emphasis on affordable and efficient degrees
Students’ desires for predictability in course offerings so they can plan their degrees, which calls for a stable rotation of courses
A trend toward interdisciplinarity in research, the world of work, and meeting the grand challenges of our time

One of the strengths of our College is the breadth of methodological, theoretical, and philosophical approaches across disciplines with a strong emphasis on disciplinary content. We have over 200 faculty members with amazing expertise who can benefit from sharing ideas with one another and providing a wonderful opportunity for students to see a variety of perspectives during their degree programs. Students taking courses with students from other disciplines also provide enriching opportunities to learn from peers, and in many real world settings, professionals from a variety of disciplines work together to solve problems and meet client needs.

Through the curriculum review and forecast process, we have an opportunity to utilize the expertise of faculty across the College to strengthen students’ experiences and preparation for careers following graduation. For example, we have faculty with expertise in quantitative and qualitative methods as well as faculty with specializations in things such as arts-based pedagogy and single subject research design. The curriculum reviews could lead to collaborative conversations about how these courses might be built into our programs. Examples of creative ideas that might come out of such a discussion include research courses taught to students from an array of programs with a collaboratively developed set of readings that showcase particular methods in specific disciplines and data sets or research questions from specific disciplines that align with particular methods. Co-teaching is another creative solution that might arise (not just for research methods courses). Another example is that we have an array of courses and certificates in areas such as TESOL, dyslexia, DEI, education law and policy, obesity and weight management, organization coaching, human services, online teaching, and more that could provide meaningful enhancements to degree programs to strengthen students’ preparation.

The curriculum review and forecasting experience is an opportunity to engage in the intellectual activity of program design. Curriculum is the purview of the faculty, and we have the faculty expertise to design new curricula (topics, courses, programs) and redesign existing curricula. Of course, we cannot do everything everywhere all at once, so faculty conversations are needed to identify priorities and opportunities as well as to decide what we should cease doing to make way for new ideas.

Process

The process was designed to be incremental and for faculty to drive the work so there was buy-in rather than having a top-down process. To this end, we provided each department with data about enrollment, graduates, and credit hours over the last five years along with a series of questions to guide exploration of the data. The goal was for faculty to do a deep dive to look at specifics of various programs and identify areas for focus (e.g., growth, revision, collaboration, collapsing, discontinuation). It was left up to the unit to decide how the review was done, the grain size of items identified, whether to look by program or across the department, etc.

After units submitted their responses to the questions, Cabinet members individually looked at the data and the unit response and then discussed feedback as a group during regular weekly meetings and came to consensus on questions we had and suggestions for priority foci for each unit. After several weeks of reviewing individual unit submissions, we looked across departments to identify common themes to allow us to link groups with similar interests for collaboration. We then sent our summaries and questions to department heads for clarification and used those responses to edit our feedback. We then sent a template to each unit suggesting 1-3 items the Cabinet saw as priority items for action and asked units to identify 1-3 priority items for action this year (which might or might not be the ones suggested by the Cabinet). Some units chose to identify one priority per program whereas other identified 1-2 priorities for the department. There are dates for intermediate updates that will allow Cabinet to respond to needs for information, links to other units, or other matters that arise. The plan is for units to select 1-3 priority items each year for the next two years.

The timeline for the process was as follows:

September 11, 2023: Unit data sent
March 1, 2024: Units submitted responses to questions
March-April, 2024: Cabinet reviewed 1-2 unit responses each week and compiled our individual feedback into a summary for each unit
May 2024: Cabinet looked across unit responses and Cabinet feedback to generate common themes across units and suggest priorities for each department
June-July 2024: Summaries and clarification questions sent to department heads
August 2024: Cabinet feedback sent to department heads along with ~3 priority areas for the unit to consider along with cross-cutting themes. Units were asked to identify 1-3 priorities for focus during 2024-25.
October 15, 2024: Unit priorities submitted. We are in the process of compiling these priorities and will share the compiled list when it is completed so units can see opportunities for collaboration.
January 15, 2025: Units submit progress update on priorities for this year
May 1, 2025: Units submit progress update on priorities for this year
August 2025: Units identify 1-3 new priorities to address with intermediate updates
August 2026: Units identify 1-3 new priorities to address with intermediate updates