2001
The Voice: Summer 2001
Program review aims to improve the curriculum
Sally Jongsma
You can't fatten a hog by weighing it,” a farmer once said at a public hearing on educational
assessment. Yet until the farmer weighs the hog, he doesn't know whether his feeding regimen
has given him a hog of the weight and size he hoped for.
A similar point could be made about the growing emphasis on assessment and program
review in education today. Feeling burdened by the addition of another major task to their already
heavy preparation and grading loads, faculty members often respond like the farmer. Program
review demands significant amounts of time and energy that can take time away from teaching.
But those who have gone through the process agree that it gives both faculty and the institution a
clearer picture of how effective their teaching is, how individual courses contribute to
departmental goals, and how the department's program contributes to the goals of the institution.
“We've always been doing assessment, making the best judgments we could,” says Dr.
Rockne McCarthy, vice president for academic affairs. “We're now doing it more formally than
before.”
Simon du Toit, chair of the theatre arts department, which is in the process of completing
its program review, believes that the effort has been good for the department. “It obliges us to
search for, examine, and reaffirm our most cherished ideas about what we do and why we do it.
We also examine how well those ideas are being carried out and then change whatever we can to
move closer to those goals.”
Dr. Paul Otto, chair of the history department agrees. “The process allowed us to lay on
the table what we thought our curriculum should look like.” It has also allowed them to dream.
“We claim to be distinctive in our approach, so we need to make sure we know why we are doing
what we are doing,” he says. The opportunity was particularly helpful for the history department,
whose members have all joined the faculty within the last ten years. They have worked with a
curriculum that has seen periodic changes but which was set up many years ago.
“We not only looked at how we concretely work out of the curricular perspective Dordt
has adopted, but considered our department members' international diversity and experiences,”
Otto said.
Of the psychology department's review, Dr. Sherri Lantinga said, “It allowed us to see
evidence of our curricular strengths and our weaknesses. It also gave us an opportunity to sit
down together to think about what we're doing in our individual courses and how those can be
improved.”
This more formal review process will benefit the institution, McCarthy says. Not only the
proposed changes, but the study and assessment results are now available to more people. This in
turn allows the institution to make better judgments about its overall program.
“For the first time, the curriculum committee can actually enter into the curricular change
process in a full way,” McCarthy says. With the formalizing of the process, departments affected
by changes in another area are given opportunity to respond as well. “It makes it easier to make
good decisions,” says McCarthy.
The process also meets the North Central Accrediting Association's requirement that
colleges demonstrate how they are accomplishing their goals.
Departmental reviews are supposed to occur every five years, and faculty are given the
time and resources needed to make their report. The department must interact with other
departments that have a direct interest in their course offerings, and they are to solicit outside
peer reviews. Students must also be involved in the process.
To give departments guidelines for conducting their reviews and to ensure consistency in
the process, the college has put together a document on academic program review and planning.
The four pages of guidelines, which have been revised based on the experience of departments
that have gone through the process, list issues to be addressed in the report. These range from
explicit program goals and assessment plans to how their curriculum is structured, from who the
students are to how they are advised, from evaluating teaching to encouraging cross-cultural
awareness.
“The process as it is laid out for us seems simple, but in fact is very complex, requiring
much thought, writing, reading, discussion, and planning,” says du Toit. “In going through the
review we discovered more about each other's values and teaching. We ended the process by
shaping a vision for the future of our department that inspired all of us and that is now guiding
many of our decisions and actions. But at this point he thinks that perhaps five years is too often
to do such a comprehensive review.
The first time each department goes through this formal review will be the most work,
McCarthy believes. Institutional documents such the “Educational Framework of Dordt College”
have been adopted only in the last ten years. Most departments have not had the time to
investigate whether and how their curriculum can contribute to a more holistic expression of the
college's goals and principles.
“You can build a house by just putting together walls and a floor and a roof, but sketching
out a blueprint first will give you a better one,” says McCarthy. The same is true for a
curriculum. Consciously making the parts fit together well will give students a better education.
“We want to formally demonstrate in a more systematic way that what we are doing is
based on the goals we have set. We need to ask how each course contributes to the goals of the
department and of the institution, how our introductory courses lead to intermediate ones, and
how they pick up on general education courses,” says McCarthy. And as departmental
assessment plans become a more integral part of the educational process, doing reviews will also
be easier.
McCarthy realizes that telling faculty who feel swamped with the review process that it
will get easier is a bit like telling a first-year faculty member drowning in work that it will get
better. It's small consolation at the moment, but it does happen. And he hopes that as
faculty see student learning improve, review will also become easier to commit to.
The concrete changes already occurring also demonstrate the value of the process. Several
departments have introduced new introductory courses in their major as a result of program
review. Others have added new capstone courses designed to encourage in-depth study, reading,
research, writing, and advanced problem solving. Changes have also been made in the core
requirements of some majors to fill holes or add depth. New practicums and internships are being
required, and new programs and emphases have been added in some majors.
The psychology department, for
example, restructured its one-size-fits-all major into a two-track program to better meet the
needs of students interested in pursuing careers in human services and students interested in
graduate school. They also designed a psychology minor, developed some new courses and
sequences, and wrote an advising handbook to help their students make more informed choices
about the courses and electives they choose. The history department added new required courses
on both ends of their major: an introduction to historical studies and a senior course in the history
of historical interpretation.
These and other changes brought about through the review process will give Dordt
students a stronger education. And by providing information about what their programs are trying
to accomplish, judgments about what they are doing well, and recommendations about what they
can do better, departmental program reviews will help the institution continue to plan for the
future.
