Program Review

Academic programs have a regular review process to focus on improving student learning. Each program is scheduled for a formal academic program review with the University Curriculum Council every four years, with an abbreviated written annual status update on the off years.

Resources to assist program leads with these reviews include templates and general guidelines for creating outcomes and assessments.

The program review process has seven main sections, as follows:

1. Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
2. Curriculum Map (including the assessment plan)
3. Assessment data table
4. Student learning data analysis and improvement plan
5. Outside industry input and/or advisory council
6. Course Review Schedule and status table with ICA, course-level outcomes and assessments identified, and a check for issues around licensing, ADA compliance, copyright, etc.
7. A review of course and program descriptions in the catalog

Over the winter and spring semesters leading up to the spring reporting period for program reviews, faculty in each program are asked to discuss the section of the template dealing with each of the above sections. Documenting those discussions is the ideal process for the review. In fact, we believe the most important part of the review process is the faculty conversation about their programs and the student learning taking place in their tutelage.

As part of the program review, faculty and academic leaders have access to several reporting tools that are constantly being refined and updated to help them evaluate their courses and programs:

1. Academic Reporting Suite to dive deeper into several areas at the department and college level. This tool was requested by academic leaders and has been a welcome help to all faculty and academic leaders to review the following metrics:
   
   1. Student success (retention, employment)
   2. Instruction (Learning Model and instructor ratings, instructors with sub-5 ratings)
   3. Curriculum (throughput, course rating, Institutional Learning Outcome assessment)
   4. Resource and reach (enrollment, student SCH, faculty SCH).
2. Program Data Library – Program leads, department chairs, and all faculty can access the student learning data as mapped to Program (certificate and degree level) Learning Outcomes. Within the Program Data Library, the Program Review Assessment Data Table and the Program Outcome Achievement reports are used directly in the annual status updates and the program review document. The Program Data Library also includes retention, persistence, and completion data to help identify gaps in student achievement. It is currently used to identify gaps in student achievement and student learning at the program level.
3. Course Data Library – Program leads and faculty teaching groups are asked to regularly discuss the information contained in the Course Data Library to evaluate how they might improve their courses. Similar discussions regarding online courses also take place at the course council level. The library link contains the following data:
   
   1. Course highlights (throughput, final grades, hours per credit hour, course rating)
   2. Students served and cost (enrollments; section size; seat utilization; expected material cost; and student demographics, such as campus degree comparisons, international degree comparisons, average age comparisons, and male percentage comparisons)
   3. Course directory (faculty and online course leadership)
   4. Student performance and retention (throughput comparisons; course trends; retake percentage, retention trends by student type, major, student location by country, and year in school; final grade distributions by various disaggregation; and student retention by section)

These tools have been invaluable for course councils, program leads, and faculty to discuss ways to improve student learning and to learn more about the students they are serving. Also, these new Power BI tools for program leads include filters for disaggregated data at the program level to find equity gaps in student learning within the academic programs.

A data table showing student performance on key assessments, feedback from industry or an advisory council, course outcomes, and a self-assessed rubric on institutional alignment are part of the program review report as well. Program reviews are reported to the Curriculum Associate Dean from each academic college—each of whom is an active faculty member with a teaching load, leads the College Curriculum Council, and is a member of the University Curriculum Council.

The main focus during the program review process is how well students are meeting the program learning outcomes and what faculty will do to improve student learning during the next couple of years.

Having common course outcomes and at least one common key assessment in all multi-section campus and online courses is a top priority for BYU-Idaho. As the university has been asking each program to report on these priorities, it has found that most programs work hard to see that the common outcomes and assessments are intact across all modalities. However, in cases where outcomes or key assessments in one section or one modality are found to be different, Assessment Services and Associate Deans for Curriculum seek to teach the importance of these common outcomes and key assessments.

As program leads and department chairs bring the program review report forward, feedback is received from curriculum designers and the college associate dean over curriculum. Further feedback may be sought from the Dean of Program Learning Improvement, the AAVP for Curriculum, and the Director of Institutional Effectiveness & Accreditation.