Student-Centered Pedagogy and Course Transformation at Scale: Facilitating Faculty Agency to Impact Institutional Change

In response to national concerns a decade ago, driven by research that showed that higher education was making little impact on students' development of broad competencies and critical thinking, the provost and president of Purdue University, a research university, instituted a program whose goals were to build on the accumulated knowledge on effective teaching to facilitate student learning, improve outcomes, and change the institutional culture around teaching and learning - objectives to which many institutions aspire, but which few consistently attain, or attain at scale.

This book describes the development of Purdue's IMPACT program (Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation), from its tentative beginning, when it struggled to recruit 35 faculty fellows, to the present, when 350 have been enrolled and the university has more applications than it can currently handle. Overall, more than 600 courses have been impacted, many of which have seen significantly reduced DFW rates.

Chantal Levesque-Bristol, whose Center for Instructional Excellence is part of an institutional team that comprises the Provost's Office, Teaching and Learning Technologies Unit, Institutional Assessment, the Purdue University Library and School of Information Studies, and the Evaluation and Learning Research Center, describes the evolution of IMPACT, lessons learned, and the central tenets that have led to its success. The purpose of this book is not only to describe the program, but also to highlight the importance and implications of the underlying motivational theoretical framework guiding the initiative.

Having started as a course redesign program that faltered in achieving its objectives, the breakthrough came with the introduction of the fundamental motivational principles of self-determination theory (SDT) followed by the applications of these principles to the research in higher education leadership and pedagogy. Giving faculty fellows the autonomy to build on their disciplinary expertise, pursue their interests and predilections, within a guided framework, and leveraging interactions with colleagues through FLCs, stimulated faculty fellows' motivation and creativity.

This book describes the core and structure of the IMPACT program, presents details of faculty learning curriculum, explains how the focus on SDT principles shaped the program's evolution and transformation from a course redesign to a professional faculty development program, and covers the considerations behind the formation of faculty fellow IMPACT teams.

A concluding chapter addresses how the IMPACT program, having helped faculty pivot to emergency remote teaching when the campus closed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, is being modified so it can be successfully sustained online if circumstances require, or as a means to expand its reach in the future.

While the principles behind this initiative will be of compelling interest to its primary audience of faculty developers, several chapters will have appeal to instructors and administrators.