Products (& Reflections …) UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? NW-PULSE @ NW Biology instructors Conference 2015 PROGRAMMATIC CHANGE THROUGH PULSE INVOLVEMENT UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING Brianna Wright, Mark Lyford and Gregory Brown VISION – Provide opportunities and support for faculty involvement in life science education reform to improve student success. . MAIN GOAL– Since we’ve become involved with PULSE in October 2013, our motto is to become “the best in the West!” Our goal was to identify areas of weakness within our program and address those areas to improve opportunities for students. Photos should be at least 300dpi, but not more than 5-12 mgs each. Your poster is set to be enlarged 200% so do not change the page size to fit another poster size. Posters (3’ x 4’) will be printed at WWU using the same purchase order at the same time. Please email your poster as a PPT file to by Joann Otto at WWU by April 20, 2015. Please contact Joann Otto (Joann.Otto@wwu.edu) with questions about poster printing. Also please put your institution “logo” on your poster. Please note that this template is provided to simplify your effort to prepare a poster for the NW Biology meeting. You can change the font size, colors, column widths, add photos, institutional logos, graphics, etc. This template can also be used as a starting point and you can be as creative as you want in your poster. However, we would like to have all of the posters the same size and we will be printed at the same time, at the same print shop in order to easily pay for printing with one purchase order. ACTIONS STRENGTHS & LEVERAGE Products (& Reflections …) Review of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) across curriculum in light of Vision & Change. Implementation of instructor-independent assessment tools (Critical Thinking Assessment Test or CAT). Will also allow us to begin tracking students. Development of “modules” to expand active learning opportunities. New STEM lab facility and Science Initiative (SI) to construct active learning classrooms (ALCs) on campus & enhance undergraduate research opportunities. SI will also allow for training of faculty and students on ALCs. Dedicated UW faculty & administrators who support a culture of student success. Products: Established SLOs for all courses in Life Sciences curriculum; learning modules for our general biology course. Assessments: CAT results from fall 2014 & spring 2015. BARRIERS & CHALLENGES Finding the time to develop modules and plan for improvements. Challenging to bring faculty together for discussion. Difficult to establish MOUs at this point in time. SUSTAINABILITY Regular articulation meetings with faculty to discuss SLOs across the curriculum. Development of programs to support active learning in lecture & lab settings. Continued support through the PULSE community. RESOURCES & ALLIES Dedicated faculty & students at UW Assessment of Student Learning coordinators UW administrators NW-PULSE collaborations PULSE community FUTURE GOALS UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? Continued use of Vision & Change as we move forward with SLO discussions. Assessment of SLOs next year. Establishment of MOUs for faculty and GA allocation to the program. Students asking for modules for all topics in the course. Will be developing more student learning modules for fall 2015, and expand to other courses. This work was supported in part by an NSF RCN UBE award # 1345033.