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Accountability within faculty regarding student progress; communication with students about progress We
have identified through discussions with students that there is uneven
communication to students about their overall progress in the program.
Students receive individual feedback from professors regarding progress
in particular courses, but overall progress is not necessarily
communicated. Likewise faculty members do not always discuss a
student's progress with other faculty members and thus even a faculty
advisor may not realize that a student is struggling perhaps in a
particular area or needs to gain a certain set of skills.
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How do we know that this is an issue? In
2003, the Ph.D. students in Educational Policy addressed a letter to
the faculty. The letter outlined students' belief that the
communication between faculty and students regarding student progress
could be improved. Likewise, the letter indicated that in particular
research preparation and appropriate goals before ascending to
candidacy were not clear. In response, the department of Educational
Policy held a series of retreats to discuss student needs. From these
retreats, the idea of the annual student review (as recommended by one
of the CID partner institutions last year) emerged.
Current guidelines for student progression
These are the current guidelines used by faculty in the Policy Studies program for assessing student progress.
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Innovation Proposal: Annual Review of doctoral students in collective faculty meeting The
program we would like to pilot would require the faculty advisor for
each student to present that student's progress annually to a meeting
of all program area faculty. The progress will be discussed and other
faculty members will be able to add their opinions. Minutes of this
discussion will be included in the file of the student after the
faculty advisor meets with the student to discuss with them the faculty
consensus. If any serious problems are brought to light, the student
will be able to meet collectively with members of the faculty to
address the issues.
Feedback form for students
This is the working draft of a form to help faculty provide feedback to students after the annual review.
Checklist for faculty
This is the working draft of the checklist faculty will use in preparing the review.
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Why did we select this approach? We
selected this approach because it was felt we needed to create a formal
process which allowed faculty to explicitly communicate with each other
before the creation of the dissertation committee. While the faculty
strongly felt this already took place, the students felt a formal
process would provide a means for the students to be included in the
process without removing the right of faculty to hold discussions
without the student present. By requiring the faculty member to meet
with the student and sign off on a summary of the report and when
necessary create goals, a certain degree of accountability is
guaranteed. As with most things, we expect that some faculty and some
students will take advantage of the process more than others, but that
the written record will become important. Likewise, we believe that the
conversation between faculty members may allow faculty to better
identify problem areas early on.
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What is the intended effect of the innovation? This
innovation would create an explicated system of accountability both to
the students and to the other faculty members. It strengthens the
faculty advisor/mentor relationship by adding a formal element to it.
We feel student learning and progress will be strengthened and fewer
students will fall through the cracks.
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What data or evidence will demonstrate the effect of our innovation? After
the process we will survey the faculty and students involved and ask
for suggestions. As the attached survey shows, we are interested in
open-ended responses to the process at this point. The program area we
have selected for this pilot has a relatively small faculty (10) and
therefore will be better served by this type of evaluation, at this
point. We have about 25 active students and they tend to be very active
so we expect they will provide us with appropriate feedback based on
these questions. These survey questions will be sent out via email and
then collected centrally. We will summarize the results to insure some
degree of anonymity. We
will also make it a topic of the fall retreat and take notes on the
responses there. We will adjust the checklist and feedback forms at
that point. We will re-pilot at the end of the spring semester in the
same program area and hope to include 2 other program areas in the
second pilot. At that point we will present the idea to faculty council
so that other programs can decide whether it would be an appropriate
project for them to undertake.
Post-pilot survey
This is the working draft of an open-ended question survey we will adminster to the pilot participants.
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