October 2004: BI Program Strengthens Student Learning

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Revising the Program Portfolio: Elevating Academic Program Performance and Strategic Alignment

At many institutions, program review is an underproductive exercise. Review of existing programs is often a check-the-box formality, with inconsistent criteria and little connection to institutional priorities or funding considerations. Decisions about where to concentrate resources across the portfolio can be highly politicized. This report profiles how academic planning exemplars use program review as a strategic tool, integrating data on academic quality, student demand, and resource utilization to improve the economics of challenged programs and prioritize programs for investment and expansion.

Managing Dual Enrollment Programs: Review of Program Models, Operations, and Outcomes

Universities that offer dual enrollment programs for high school students must manage increasing student demand in the face of changing state legislation. This brief examines how institutions finance their dual enrollment programs, and how they ensure academic rigor as their programs continue to grow. The report also considers how dual enrollment programs ensure that students can transfer credits, and what strategies they use to encourage DE students to matriculate as undergraduates.

Impacts of Graduate Student Enrollment Increases

As graduate schools seek to increase enrollment, faculty and staff must consider the impacts of enrollment increases on program curricula, faculty workloads, and course delivery methods. This brief examines how other institutions prepare for and implement increases in graduate enrollment. More specifically, the report reviews how graduate enrollment goals and rates impact faculty workloads, program curriculum and course delivery methods.

Faculty Instructional Quality Assessment Practices Incorporating Teaching Portfolios and Peer Review with Student Course Evaluations

Program directors and department chairs require different means of assessing faculty quality due to the unreliability of student course evaluation data. This report outlines alternative strategies for review committees to assess faculty instructional quality. This report also details incorporation of annual performance reviews for tenure-track faculty into tenure decisions.

Expediting New Program Development: Meeting Market Demand and Leveraging Internal Resources

Expediting new program development can help universities meet student and employer demand while gaining an edge over competitors, but coordinating program development and approval requires careful preparation and execution. This report profiles strategies to measure market demand for new programs, choose programs for accelerated development, and leverage internal resources. The report also suggests ways to structure and staff program development to maximize speed and effectiveness.

Developing a Credit for Prior Learning Program: System-Wide Strategies for Program Creation, Operations, and Recruitment

Credit for prior learning programs help students complete degrees more quickly and for less money. This report addresses the challenges of scaling up a credit for prior learning program at the university system level, and explores the delineation of responsibilities between system staff and institutional staff.

Online and Hybrid Course Prioritization Guide: 10 Strategies for Promoting Enrollment Growth and Student Success

Institutions of all shapes and sizes are investing significant sums to expand their portfolio of online and hybrid courses without specific institutional priorities in mind, often resulting in a mix of arbitrary, sub-scale offerings. This creates an unsustainably expensive disconnect between the institution’s online portfolio (largely steered by unit-level interests and capacity) and its overarching interest in using technology to increase access, improve student success, and grow revenue. This guide is designed to help institutional leaders prioritize scarce resources devoted to online and hybrid course development toward the most promising available opportunities. By targeting specific curricular "gaps," institutions can improve retention, reduce time-to-degree, regain or expand their share of currently enrolled student credit hours, or even attract new students to existing programs.

Student Reactions to Professor Use of Facebook

Mazer, Murphy and Simonds (2007) recently demonstrated that high self-disclosure, compared to low self-disclosure, on a fictitious professor's Facebook profile was related to students' expectations of a positive classroom environment and high levels of motivation. These findings raise the question of whether all types of self-disclosure would have the same effect. This study examined college students' perceptions of specific ways that professors might use Facebook. We created six Facebook profiles for a fictitious male professor, each with a specific emphasis: Republican, Democrat, religious, family- oriented, socially oriented, or professional only. While viewing a printed version of one of the randomly distributed profiles, participants responded to questions that assessed their perceptions of the professors' teaching ability, classroom demeanor and appropriateness of self-disclosure, as well as their own Facebook use. Students responded most negatively, but sometimes with greatest interest, to professors' posting of social and political information. Appropriate use of Facebook, including professional and family information, increased students' respect for the professor and his classroom. These findings could be very helpful in guiding professor Facebook use.