Hansen Study Shows Impact of CTE Programs on Faculty Participants

Dr. Steven Hansen, associate director for faculty development in the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) recently conducted a study of full-time faculty participants in CTE programs, documenting the perceived impact of CTE on their teaching and academic careers.

“There is a movement to assess our work in higher education, particularly where it relates to student learning and program impact,” Hansen said. “We, as a center, wanted to assess our impact with faculty and students here at Duquesne.”

The results of the study were presented at the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) annual conference in November. Hansen’s findings were also cited in the Nov. 11 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For the study, Hansen sent a questionnaire to 116 “active participants” in CTE programs. Of these, 61 faculty responded to the the survey. The participants had attended three or more CTE-sponsored sessions, accumulated two or more hours of consulting, participated in a CTE retreat and/or been a member of a faculty learning group over the past three years.

More than 80 percent of the respondents agreed that CTE had helped them try new teaching techniques; document their teaching effectiveness; increase their confidence as a university teacher; and feel as if they are part of a community. Faculty also reported a strong impact on clarifying their identity as a teacher and navigating third-year review and/or promotion and tenure.

Faculty also said that CTE helped them to implement teaching practices that are known in research to correlate with deep student learning. More than 40 percent of the respondents described specific improvement they had seen in student learning: strengthened mastery of skills; improved performance on quizzes and tests; and higher-quality papers, assignments and projects.

“If you are engaging your students through active learning; if you are designing better assignments, syllabi and courses; and if you are giving students solid feedback then their learning will be better,” Hansen said. “The practices that our faculty implemented result in better student learning.

“Our survey showed that our impact wasn’t so broad around scholarship and diversity,” Hansen added. “But for those whom we did help, they described a deep impact. While our focus is on teaching, CTE seeks to support faculty in all areas of their professional development.”

Spring CTE programs begin soon. For more information, call 412.396.5177 or email cte@duq.edu.