Changing the Culture: Developing a Guide of Effective Practices to Improve, Assess, and Review Undergraduate Physics Programs

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In recent years there has been a growing emphasis on accountability in higher education. In response, college and university accrediting agencies have increasingly emphasized the need for performance measurements that are based on established learning goals and robust assessment processes. Most physics departments engage in a program review every five to seven years. To support such reviews, this project will create a guide for assessment, review, and improvement of undergraduate physics programs. The guide will aid physics faculty in more effectively using: (1) documented effective practices to improve their departments and programs, aligned to their local context, mission, and resources; and (2) externally imposed requirements for programmatic review and accreditation as an opportunity to develop a strategy for improving educational practice. The guide will collect relevant literature and effective practices, and that information will be distilled by experts. This information will be valuable for faculty who wish to design or improve program components. It will also help departments prepare for accreditation and promote the wider use of evidence-based educational practices. Over time, the expectation is that this guide will positively affect most, if not all college and university physics department in the United States. Thus, it has the potential to provide a model for promoting program improvements in other STEM disciplines.The project is a collaboration of two professional societies: the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The investigators are at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Oregon State University, the University of Maryland at College Park, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. The project team will create a guide for program assessment, review, and improvement that is compact and that offers practical advice without assuming prior expert knowledge. The guide will recognize the following principles: effective practices depend on the goal and local context; effective practices are based on the best available information; users' goals and problems drive the structure and content; guide content is descriptive, not proscriptive. After the guide is developed, the project will host workshops, online learning communities, and other activities to engage and support program leaders and reviewers in using the guide. The project will develop and implement a sustainability plan to ensure that the guide is regularly updated, and that programs continue to be supported in adopting its principles. Finally, the project will conduct and publish research studies that explore the impact of the guide and associated support mechanisms on culture and practice in physics programs. In this way, the project can contribute to understanding how to promote institutional changes that improve undergraduate education.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.