Understanding the Impacts of Departmental Action Teams on Sustainable Departmental Culture Change and on Undergraduate Student Experiences, Success, and Outcomes

该项目旨在通过扩大对STEM部门文化和课程改进模式的分析，为国家利益服务，特别注重持续变革。改革本科教育的努力往往无法产生持久的影响。这些变革努力被组织变革研究者批评为忽视了文化的影响。部门行动小组(DAT)模式提供了通过外部促进支持部门小组来实现本科教育变革的过程。这些团队包括学生、教职员工和教职员工，他们合作改善他们的本科课程，并发展他们作为变革推动者的技能。该DAT模型遵循六项核心原则，这些原则描述了支持长期可持续变化的理想部门文化。这些原则包括多样性和包容性、让学生成为合作伙伴、协作、数据驱动的决策和持续变化。DAT项目支持了两个校区的17个DAT，这推动了本科教育的积极和持续改善。这些小组中有一半以上在DAT项目促进结束后继续进行。这项计划将研究这些行动计划的长远影响，以及部门成员如何维持这些行动计划。此外，将调查DAT部门对学生的影响，以寻找在短期内影响学生的文化变化与后来学生成功衡量标准变化之间的潜在相关性。对文化变迁的研究需要相当长的时间框架才能充分研究。这项研究特别及时，因为现在可以研究2014年成立的DAT对学生成功的长期影响(例如，时间到学位)。将采用混合方法收集和分析数据。数据将包括对现有部门教育和领导力转型评估(Delta)调查的答复、对部门成员的采访、来自DAT及其部门的人工制品(例如，会议纪要、部门政策声明)和机构数据。这些数据将被用来确定一个系发展支持本科教育持续改进的文化所必需的结果。关于这些结果的假设构成了DAT变革理论的第三阶段。(前两个阶段作为之前研究的一部分进行了改进)。定性数据分析将允许对这一阶段进行测试和改进。这项工作将为制定本科教育的系级改革提供详细的理论资源。将使用三种不同的方法来特别关注DAT对学生的影响。将开发学生版的Delta调查，以收集学生对部门文化和变革的看法。此外，将使用Civitas Impact工具对有关DAT对学生持久性的潜在长期影响的假设进行定量测试。最后，通过对数据来源进行三角测量，将审查DAT活动与强烈影响并维持在各部门的变化之间的相关性。这一混合方法分析旨在将学生体验的短期测量与特定的文化变化联系起来，这些变化预示着学生成功的增加。这样的信息可能是有益的，因为它不需要学生的长期指标，如时间到学位。总体而言，这项工作旨在提供方法来衡量一个系学生的文化变化，检查短期变化影响和学生长期成功之间的关系，并更好地理解如何在赠款资助的倡议结束后很长一段时间内保持和催化变化。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该计划支持高等教育机构和学科社区转变和改进STEM教育的努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by extending the analysis of a model of cultural and curricular improvements in STEM departments, with a particular focus on sustaining change. Efforts to transform undergraduate education often fail to have lasting impacts. These change efforts have been criticized by organizational change researchers for ignoring the influence of culture. The Departmental Action Team (DAT) model provides processes for effecting change in undergraduate education by supporting departmental teams through external facilitation. These teams include students, staff, and faculty who collaborate to improve their undergraduate program and develop their skills as change agents. This DAT model is guided by six Core Principles that describe an ideal departmental culture that supports long-term sustainable change. The principles include diversity and inclusion, involving students as partners, collaboration, data-driven decisions, and continuous change. The DAT project has supported 17 DATs across two campuses, which have initiated positive, sustained improvements in undergraduate education. More than half of these groups carried on after DAT project facilitation concluded. This project will examine the long-term impacts of these DATs and how departmental members sustain them. Additionally, the impacts on students in DAT departments will be investigated for potential correlations between cultural change that impacts students over the short term and later changes in student success measures. Studies of cultural change require a considerable time frame to research fully. This research is especially timely because it is now possible to study the long-term impacts on student success (eg., time to degree) of DATs that were formed in 2014. A mixed methods approach will be used for data collection and analysis. Data will include responses to the existing Departmental Education and Leadership Transformation Assessment (DELTA) Survey, interviews with department members, artifacts from the DATs and their departments (e.g., meeting minutes, department policy statements), and institutional data. These data will be used to identify outcomes that are necessary for a department to develop a culture that supports sustained improvements in undergraduate education. Hypotheses about these outcomes comprise the third stage of the DAT theory of change. (The first two stages were refined as part of a previous study). Qualitative data analyses will allow testing and refinement of this stage. This work will contribute a detailed theory-based resource for enacting departmental change in undergraduate education. Three different approaches will be used to focus specifically on impacts DATs have on students. A student version of the DELTA Survey will be developed to collect students’ perceptions of departmental culture and change. Additionally, the Civitas Impact tool will be used to quantitatively test hypotheses about potential long-term impacts of DATs on student persistence. Lastly, by triangulating among data sources, correlations between DAT activities and changes that strongly impact and are sustained in departments will be examined. This mixed methods analysis is designed to relate short-term measures of student experiences with the specific cultural changes that are predictive of increased student success. Such information could be beneficial since it does not require long term student metrics such as time to degree. Overall, this work aims to contribute ways to measure cultural change among students in a department, examine the relationships between short-term change impacts and long-term student success, and yield better understanding of how change can be sustained and catalyzed long after a grant-funded initiative has ended. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.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.