"External constituents are demanding not only that departments
say they are doing good things and not only that they measure how
hard they are trying, but also that they measure outcomes."
Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#547 ASSESSING THE PRESSURES FOR DEPARTMENTAL
CHANGE
Folks:
The posting below looks at several forces for change now impacting
academic departments. It is from Chapter 2, Assessing the Pressures
for Departmental Change, in Academic Departments: How They Work,
How They Change by Barbara E. Walvoord, Anna K. Carey, Hoke L. Smith,
Suzanne W. Soled, Philip K. Way, Debbie Zorn. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education
Report Volume 27, Number 8 Adrianna J. Kezar, Series Editor. Copyright
© 2000 Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Company, 989 Market Street, San
Francisco, CA 94103-1741 All rights reserved, <www.josseybass.com>.
Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Publishing Your Research
Tomorrow's Academia
---------------------------------- 1,690 words -------------------------------
ASSESSING THE PRESSURES FOR DEPARTMENTAL CHANGE
The first of four steps for change this volume supports is to access
the pressures for change. We mean assessment here to include the
gathering and interpreting of information about the department's
structures, outcomes, or environment for the purpose of improving
the department. Pressures for change may come when the department
sees that it is not prospering or not serving its mission effectively
for its current constituencies, when old constituencies disappear
or change their demands, or when new opportunities arise. The purpose
of this section is to help departments in any of these situations.
National Pressures for Change in Higher Education
Not all departments face the same external pressures for change.
The following paragraphs summarize some that operate nationally;
each reader must access his or her own department's situation.
* Political and economic pressures
College costs to families have risen sharply in relation to family
income as costs to colleges rise. Parents and students believe that
colleges are expensive and wasteful (Goethals and Frantz, 1998;
National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 1996a, Table 37;
1997b; Institute for Research in Higher Education, 1997; Reisberg,
1998; Pubic Agenda and others, 2000).
Government funding for higher education has decreased (NCES, 1997c,
1998), offset bu a significant rise in federal funding for research
(NCES, 1998).
Publics are concerned about student learning, access, graduation,
productivity, and faculty work (Anderson, 1992; Schmidt, 1998a,
1998b, 2000; Smith, 1990; Sykes, 1988; Zemsky, 1993).
Stakeholders demand collaboration with business and industry and
flexible delivery of education (Schmidt, 1998a, 1998b).
New for-profits compete on the basis of cost, flexibility, and
curricular relevance, and they experiment with new departmental
and faculty roles (Marchese, 1998; Winston, 1999).
Accreditors, legislatures, and boards increasingly demand evidence
of student learning (Dill, 1998; Green, 1997; Michael, 1998; Schmidt,
2000).
* Technological advances
Beyond bricks and mortar and beyond the virtual university, visionaries
imagine a "global learning infrastructure where millions of
students interact with a vast array of individual and institutional
suppliersŠthrough multiple technologies including the Internet,
broadband cable, and satellite" (Heterick, Mingle, and Twigg,
1997, p. 4). Some observers predict that technology will challenge
the most basic assumptions behind traditions instruction (Privateer,
1999; see Bates [2000] for a discussion of technology issues for
department chairs).
* The student population
Student bodies increasingly are female, part time, minority, and
older than traditional college ages (NCES, 1996b, 1997a, 1998).
* Students' reasons for attending school
The percentage of students who view "developing a meaningful
philosophy of life" as essential or very important has sharply
declined (Astin, 1998).
* Students' expectations and attitudes
Contemporary students may view education as a product to be purchased,
insist on quality, have only a temporary and provisional commitment,
and see little need to spend time on campus beyond class contact
hours (Levine and Cureton, 1998). They are more individualistic:
They want their own dorm room, and they do not socialize in large
groups as much as previous generations (Levine and Cureton, 1998).
They desire personal growth and creativity (O'Connell, 1998). They
are also technoliterate (Plater, 1995; Green and Gilbert, 1995).
* The academic belief system
Educational concerns, beliefs, and processes are being reexamined:
* From a teaching to a learning paradigm: The pedagogical field
is constantly infused with
new disciplinary insights, such as those from neuroscience (Marchese,
1998). The
historically dominant instructional paradigm is slowly being replaced
by a learning paradigm
(Barr and Tagg, 1995) in which learning outcomes matter more than
inputs.
* Flexible time and space: New technologies allow transcendence
of the boundaries of time
and space that led to the current structure of higher education.
Reformers question
whether education should rely any longer on credit hours as the
measure of education
(Ewell, 1998; Guskin, 1994; Plater, 1995).
* Emphasis on interdisciplinary knowledge: The need for multidisciplinary
approaches to
societal problems encourages aggregations of disciplines into multidisciplinary
institutions
and, as well, increasing fragmentation within disciplines as researchers
adopt new and
diverse modes of inquiry (Plater, 1995).
* What do these pressures imply for departments nationally?
The pressures we have described lie behind the five demands for
change we summarized in the introductory section: (a) improve undergraduate
education, (b) collaborate across disciplines, (c) apply knowledge
to community and workplace needs, (d) be more cost-efficient, and
(e) use technology to provide education by alternative means. In
addition, the department in a free society must protect core values,
freely pursue knowledge, and question society's mores. It must balance
the loudest demands with those not currently in the public eye,
such as pure research. It must position itself to respond to the
next round of demands. It must make faculty life rewarding and enticing
for the next generation that will have to staff higher education.
The Need for Assessment of Outcomes
External constituents are demanding not only that departments say
they are doing good things and not only that they measure how hard
they are trying, but also that they measure outcomes. Further, departments
themselves, if they are to use their resources most efficiently
to serve their missions, need information about the outcomes of
their efforts. Gone are the days when it would suffice to assume
that all the work on inputs such as curriculum, hiring, teaching,
and budget allocation must certainly be producing the outcomes hoped
for.
Implications for Change
Departments differ widely. Not all need to change in the same ways,
but in an environment so volatile and so demanding, most departments
may have to do things differently and be something different. Assessment
of the environment and outcomes helps the department to decide what
changes are needed.
* Read the departmental environment
The wise practitioner will ask how the department gets its information
about the national and regional environment. For example, is someone
in the department reading and reporting information from such national
resources as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Educause, the Pew
Roundtable, and listservs such as that maintained by the TLT Group
(aahesgit@list.cren.net)? Is someone bringing back information from
national conferences and national journals? Is someone watching
trends in relevant granting agencies and in the state legislature
and the board of trustees? What do the institution's own president
and offices of development, public relations, and institutional
research know about the environment, and how is the department getting
and using that information? How is all this information integrated,
discussed, and acted on within the department? What further information
does the department's success in serving its rapidly changing world?
In addition to ongoing reports, a department might consider a retreat
or strategic planning session. For example, a German department
with which we have worked faced the imminent retirement of a cohort
of faculty who had brought the department into the top ranks of
reputation in research. The department had not been allowed to rehire
enough top research faculty to replace them. Further, the environment
was changing in other significant ways, including new institutional
resources devoted to undergraduate student learning, which the department
had largely routinized and placed in the hands of adjunct professors
and graduate TAs. To help the department examine its environment
and decide on a new mission, structures, and strategies, the chair
engaged Walvoord, and outside consultant, to lead a daylong retreat.
Walvoord adapted a retreat model described by Schein (1992). She
asked the department to name the various "pots" from which
it received resources of reputation-for e!
xample, granting agencies, publications, undergraduate language
requirements, and so on. Then small groups of department members
generated, for each of these pots, what the department had to do
to achieve those resources and how the resources themselves were
changing. They wrote all this information on newsprint sheets and
taped the sheets to the walls of the room. Then, literally surrounded
by their environment, they assessed their situation. Alarm-the outcome
the chair had wanted-led to plans for change to place more emphasis
on undergraduate student learning. Such plans require further assessment-gathering
specific data on undergraduate learning, exploring best practices
in other language departments, and scanning the environment more
carefully-but the on-day retreat got the process started and catapulted
department members' thinking to new realms.
The German department began with the "frame" of the department
as a resource/reputation-seeking entity. Alternatively, using the
frame of the department as a mission-driven enterprise, one may
start with mission, then goals, then strategies. Missions explain
what the department does, for whom, and what its focus is. Goals
are targets relating to key indicators of departmental success derived
from the mission. For example, a department may establish as its
goal that it place 30% of its graduates in the top ten firms in
its field. Strategies are the means by which the goals are achieved.
When mission and goals have been defined, the department can ask,
"How is our mission served or undermined by our reward system?
By our organizational structure? Our recruitment and socialization
of new faculty?" And so on. Again, this assessment integrates
analysis of the external pressures, the department's strategies,
and outcomes such as student learning, national reputation, inc!
ome from grants, and the like. Diamond (1993, 1999) outlines a mission-driven
process of planning for change.
* Assess outcomes
In addition to reading its external environment, a "learning"
department must assess its outcomes and determine how its structures
and strategies help it to fulfill its mission. An extensive how-to
literature addresses this process. Especially useful are Gardiner
(2000) for an overview of the assessment of educational effectiveness
and Nichols (1995a, 1995b, 1995c) for extensive how-to guides. Tobias
(1995) has formulated a set of review questions explicitly designed
to help the department focus on the experiences of its undergraduate
students. Banta, Lund, Black, and Oblander (1996) provide examples
of departmental assessment practice. Watch for new materials from
the American Association for Higher Education, from regional and
disciplinary accrediting agencies, ongoing issues of Assessment
Update (http://www.josseybass.com),
and proceedings of conferences such as AAHE's annual conference
on assessment (http://www.aahe.org)
and the annual national Indianapolis Assessme!
nt Conference (http://www.hoosiers.iupui.edu/paiimain/conferen.htm).
Other assessment resources are listed in Gardiner, Anderson, and
Cambridge (1997).
Once the department members and/or external change agents have
considered what sorts of change are needed, they must continue their
exploration of how the department's own structures and cultures
suggest strategies for change. Such exploration is the task of the
next sections.
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