STLHE 2016 SAPES

Often, in addressing the immediacy of the day-to-day needs of faculty members and departments, individuals working at teaching and learning centres lose sight of the fact that they need to be strategic in programming if they are going to shape change rather than follow change. Fundamental to becoming predictive in their work by anticipating and effecting institutional changes and new directions, is the need to assess the centre’s activities in a different light (Gibbs, 2013). For this purpose, a comprehensive survey was developed and administered to Canadian teaching and learning centres. The survey was administered to the directors of all 88 centres as identified in the SLTHE listserv; 49 of which completed the survey. Even though, the survey asked some broad questions about the centres (e.g. professional setting of the centre, how long they have been established for, reporting structures, number of educational developers in the centre), the focus was on evaluation models that informed their practice, and the way centres evaluated their core services, programming, and resources. In this session, we will initially share centres’ approaches to evaluation that emerged from the survey findings and the artefact analysis. Participants will then be invited to critique proposed approaches to evaluation and discuss how they might be adapted, or used as springboard for further progress. Specifically, our goal at the end of this session is for participants to: identify existing evaluation practices of centres’ core services, programming, and resources; examine their centres’ evaluation practices in light of the study findings; and critique proposed approaches to evaluation. Educational developers in all institutions will benefit from this interactive session by acknowledging existing aspects of evaluation within their centres, and identifying where there are further opportunities to develop or enrich a more systematic and coherent approach to evaluation.