Program review is a faculty-led, collaborative, and evidence-based examination of a program or program area’s quality including things like curriculum, student learning experiences, assessments, teaching practices, collaborative activities, instructor qualifications and professional learning.
Institutional program review is one of NIC’s quality enhancement functions and is required by the Ministry’s Degree Quality Assessment Board (DQAB). DQAB conducts an audit of NIC’s Program Review process every seven to eight years to ensure compliance with the Ministry’s quality assurance requirements. NIC has formalized its institutional review of academic programming via Policy 3-11 - Program Review.
All NIC credit and credentialed programs undergo the program review process every seven years, but the process is flexible to meet the unique needs of diverse courses, programs, and disciplines.
Benefits of Program Review
Program review allows for a detailed analysis of a program or program area’s strengths and components for enhancement. Students, faculty, and alumni are given the opportunity to provide their perspectives, feedback, and suggestions during the review. Program review is:
- Formative: provides feedback that identifies program strengths and areas for improvement
- Collaborative: uses input from internal and external interest groups including current students, alumni, support areas, administration, program advisory groups, accreditation organizations, peers from other institutions, employers etc.
- Learning-focused: ensures students are receiving quality learning experiences with suitable assessments aligned with course and program learning outcomes
- Informative: helps inform discussions, decision-making, and action plans
- Evidence-based: follows evidence-based processes and methodologies
- Aligned: links to institutional strategic plans to provide examples of actions and initiatives
- Accountable: through the development and implementation of evidence-informed action plans and through the ongoing feedback and data to verify the progress of those plans
- Strategic: leads to co-ordinated action that strengths the program’s ability to support students in being successful with the program’s learning outcomes and course learning outcomes
- Iterative: draws on previous reviews and recommendations, looks for trends and patterns
Process
The Vice-President, Academic (VPA) oversees the program review process at NIC. The VPA establishes program review groups and annually, through consultations, produces the schedule. Programs progress through seven phases of the program review process with the assistance of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI). The phases of program review are summarized as follows:
Phases
- Planning – kick-off meeting, planning sessions to organize and outline the entire set of phases
- Data Gathering and Analysis - examine data that has already been gathered, engage with NIC support areas to learn more about students and learning, create questions for surveys and focus groups to gather additional data from interest group
- Self-Study - write a narrative reflection about program’s academic quality reflecting on feedback from data gathering and analysis phase, while considering future directions, recommendations, and actions
- External Review - three people external to the program/department engage in two days of interviews with students, faculty, and support members from across the College. The external review team provides an assessment of academic quality and comments on the self-study recommendations. The team writes a summary report with recommendations
- Final Report and Action Plan - report reflects on the data gathered, the self-study recommendations, the external review team’s report, and reflections about the entire student learning experience
- One-Year Follow-Up Report - update on the status of action plan items
- Ongoing Curriculum Renewal – the department engages in ongoing renewal activities such as completing action plan items, conducting student surveys and focus groups, continuing to meet with the Program Advisory Groups etc.
