Building Consensus for Change

1. Building Consensus for Change First-Year Engineering at The Ohio-State University

2. Topics • Strategies for success • Implementing the strategies • Some critical factors • Final thoughts

3. Strategies for Success • Up-front preparation • Involving the faculty • Follow-through

4. Up-Front Preparation • Carefully document why the change is needed • Select an appropriate team to lead the effort to develop the new program • Establish goals of the new program • Develop parallel, integrated plans to develop the program and get it adopted

5. Involving the Faculty • Faculty involvement must be early, continuous, and meaningful Note: This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Most faculty are too busy to be involved – but not too busy to complain that they weren’t involved after the fact.

6. Follow Through • Conduct assessments • Share results with faculty • Act on student and faculty suggestions • Be prepared for continuous assessment and improvement

7. Implementing the Strategies-- An Example This is a chronological list of selected activities that involved OSU Engineering faculty and staff. • Task Force on Core Curriculum created – involved faculty or staff from most depts. • Task Force members asked for time on the agenda at each dept’s faculty meeting – to talk about strengths & weaknesses of current core and faculty suggestions for changes.

8. An Example - (Cont’d) • Task Force drafted goals of new core – sent to all faculty, e-mail and hard copy, for comments. • Task Force prepared list of topics to be covered in the core (about 8 pages), and went to every dept’s faculty meeting again to ask faculty to rate importance of each topic

9. An Example – (Cont’d) • Task Force’s report recommended several changes to the core, including adding introductory engineering course • Implementation Task Force formed – broader representation than original group • Developed plan for introductory course. In many cases, before decisions were made, Task Force members discussed issues at faculty meetings in their depts.

10. An Example – (Cont’d) • Full-day engineering faculty retreat held to discuss proposed introductory course. ~ ½ of the faculty and several staff attended • Faculty suggestions made at retreat incorporated into course proposal • Vote to pilot the course taken at college-wide faculty meeting

11. An Example – (Cont’d) • Team of 20 faculty and staff involved in developing materials for the course • Faculty from several departments recruited to teach portions of the pilot course • Assessment data collected and presented to each dept at faculty meetings • College faculty vote to require introductory course in the core curriculum

12. Some Critical Factors • Administrative support • Champion(s) • Feasible plan • Detailed transition plan and adequate time • Feedback and continuous improvement

13. Final Thoughts • Easier to start fresh than to modify an existing program or merge several • Faculty feedback must be taken seriously • Attention to the details is critical • Program needs a champion, but it has to be designed so someone other than the champion can make it work