Departmental Action Teams

The three examples illustrate the possible focus and outcomes, as well as the structure of the Departmental Action Team’s membership. These examples highlight the variety and scope of the focal issues addressed in DATs, as well as the aligned outcomes and the diverse membership across relevant department roles.

Example A – Generative AI

• Focus: Consider the use (and implications for student learning) of generative AI in student work across the department; consider discipline-appropriate AI-use policies.
• Membership:
  • 2 tenure-track faculty
  • 2 instructors
  • 2 graduate students
  • 2 undergraduate students
• Outcomes:
  • Collect a searchable database with examples of assignments that measure/support a variety of learning outcomes subject to the constraints of acceptable AI-use policies (including examples/ explanation of how the assignment was adapted to be AI-aware)
  • Conduct a survey or focus groups with students to identify how students feel about their learning and if/how they are using generative AI
  • Develop departmental guidelines and/or policies on the use of generative AI

Example B – Student Skills Assessment

• Focus: Assessing majors’ disciplinary skills
• Membership:
  • 7 tenure-track faculty,
  • 4 graduate students,
  • 1 undergraduate student
• Outcomes:
  • Development of a long-term assessment plan
  • Development and piloting of a skills assessment
  • Departmental approval for two faculty members to implement a multi-year skills assessment

Example C – Community & Belonging

• Focus: Engaging undergraduates in the departmental community
• Membership:
  • 2 tenure-track faculty
  • 2 instructors
  • 2 graduate students
  • 2 undergraduate students
• Outcomes:
  • Welcome events for new and prospective majors
  • Establishment of departmental social media presence
  • Creation of an annual Industry Night
  • Improvements in ways to involve undergraduates in departmental committees

At a high level, the DAT analyzes the department’s current state relative to the selected focus and defines desired outcomes. Based on initial and subsequent analyses, the DAT selects activities to help achieve the outcomes. As the DAT engages in those activities, it monitors and reflects on the progress made toward those outcomes.

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The detailed outline below is one concrete example of the various steps of a DAT; however, because the model is rooted in a collaborative process with the department, these steps may be adapted according to departmental needs, resources, etc.

Step 1: Recruit members to the DAT

Department meeting presentation to recruit participants
DAT Membership
Year 1: two tenured faculty members, two pre-tenure faculty members, and one postdoc
Year 2 +: expanded to include two staff members, three graduate students, and two undergraduate students.

Step 2: Decide on a focus for the DAT

• The underrepresentation of women and students of color their area of focus (a STEM department)

Step 3: Set goal(s) for the upcoming year

• Collect and analyze data on attrition and representation among the department’s undergraduates, enabling it to quantify weaknesses in recruitment and retention of women and URM students.

Step 4: Meet bi-weekly for the entire academic year (15, 1-hour meetings)

• Designed and administered a climate survey for majors graduating that December and a survey of help room use among students in the department’s large introductory courses.
• Acquired a dataset from the university’s Institutional Research office that included demographic and academic information on all department applicants and majors over the last decade.
• Analyzed the collected data and reported their findings to the group over several meetings.
• Created a two-page summary of their findings and a list of recommendations to present at a faculty meeting.

Step 5: Make recommendations to the department

• The DAT recommended creating a new departmental Committee on Representation, Recruitment, and Retention (R3) charged with learning about and acting on the underrepresentation of marginalized groups among the department’s undergraduates.

Step 6: Repeat this process, starting with Step 3, for year 2 with a new goal

Goal: Implement specific changes within the department to address the underrepresentation of certain groups of undergraduate students in the department
The Changes:

• Contacting admitted students.
  • Following an analysis of admissions data, the DAT decided to launch a new recruitment initiative.
• Partnering with the university’s strategic relations (SR) office to improve advertising for the department.
  • SR will work with the IC to redesign the department’s website and other promotional materials to better reflect the opportunities the department provides for women and URM students and to make information about navigating the university easier to access
• Working with the department’s building manager to do a survey of the bathrooms in the building in order to designate some bathrooms as gender-neutral.

Next Steps / Sustainability

• The DAT has planned several activities to address community and culture within the department longer-term.
  • The coming academic year will begin with an undergraduate welcome event hosted by the DAT.
  • One of their goals will be to normalize conversations about inclusion across the department.
  • Monthly meetings open to all department members will be held to maintain the conversations started during the DAT process. One of their goals will be to normalize conversations about inclusion across the department.
  • The DAT plans to augment the current undergraduate advising process by partnering with a student-led mentoring program to provide its undergraduate mentees with faculty mentors.

In a typical academic year, the DATs are likely to meet once every 2-3 weeks for 60 – 90 minutes. Each DAT member is likely to spend 2-4 hours per month of DAT work (including meeting time) throughout the academic year. The timing and frequency of these meetings will be decided by the DAT as a group, with the goal of meeting often enough to support meaningful change and to foster a productive and rewarding collaboration.

A Departmental Action Team (DAT) is a team of faculty members, students, and/or staff that makes sustainable change by designing and implementing departmental structures and influencing culture to address an educational issue of broad-scale importance. We refer to this educational issue as the focus of the DAT project.

Once the team is assembled, the DAT will develop a shared vision of what undergraduate education should look like in the department, supported by TLL facilitators and activities designed to hone in on the interests and values of DAT members. Next, the DATs will set goals: specific outcomes that demonstrate progress toward the shared vision. Then, the DAT will take actions to achieve specific goals. The visioning and goal setting are derived from a combination of the DAT’s values and interests along with collaborative decision-making among the DAT members.

The role of the Teaching + Learning Lab is supportive: TLL staff will bring expertise in pedagogy, educational development, and organizational change to guide the process, rather than the focus, of the DAT project. The TLL staff are not DAT members; they are facilitators who provide support tailored to the DAT’s needs, interests, and goals. TLL facilitators will help the group cultivate a collaborative environment to carry out its work and manage the logistics for DAT meetings. By having facilitators positioned outside the departments’ community and culture, TLL staff can also ask questions that help DAT members explore the underlying assumptions about teaching and learning in their department.

The DAT model is an alternative approach to effecting change in an academic department, grounded in scholarly literature on organizational change that identifies academic units as key drivers of change (Reinholz & Apkarian, 2018; Ngai et al., 2020).

Several characteristics make the DAT model valuable:

• The scope of changes goes beyond single courses or one or a few instructors to influence the department as a whole.
• Explicit attention to thinking through and planning for change enables more sustainable change.
• Department members can continue to make changes even after the initial goals have been achieved.
• The model’s flexibility allows for adaptation to the departmental context, increasing the likelihood of sustained success.

Several core principles inform the work of the DAT. The DAT is:

• Guided by outcomes of a shared, long-term vision to create sustainable change
• Characterized by productive and rewarding collaboration among relevant stakeholders in the department, including students
• Grounded in analysis of multiple relevant forms of data, iteration, and continuous improvement

See Quan et al. (2019) for more on principles for supporting sustained change efforts at the department level.

The Call for Preliminary Proposals for the Alex and Brit d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education involves a brief (no more than 2 pages, PDF format) high-level preliminary proposal outlining the proposed work, rationale, opportunities and risks, resources needed and some ideas for assessment.

Given that the focus of the DAT project will be developed collaboratively in the early stages of the project, we’ve provided guidance below on what to include in the proposed work and rationale sections of a preliminary proposal:

Proposed work should include:

• A brief description of any former efforts in the department (formal or informal) focused on undergraduate education, and
• One or more educational issues of broad-scale importance that you think could inform the focus of a DAT in your department. Keep in mind that the DAT members will develop the focus after forming initial ideas about the composition of the members of the Department Action Team (e.g., faculty, staff, and students)

Rationale:

• Briefly discuss why you think a DAT project would be a good fit for your department. Here, consider the core principles and value of the DAT as well as interest and support from the department head and other members of the department.