2015 Data Day
On September 11, 2015, Dean Ellen McIntyre hosted our first Data Day. The goal for this event was to share College of Education data results with our campus community, and discuss how all stakeholders can use the information to improve programs. Participants were invited to hear presentations reviewing candidate performance data available at that time. Dr. Kevin Bastian from EPIC (Education Policy Initiative at Carolina) shared data on how the P-12 students taught by UNC Charlotte alumni performed on state EOG/EOC tests, while Dr. Laura Hart from the College of Education shared initial edTPA performance results of current teacher education candidates.
After the presentations, participants divided into small discussion groups with three questions to address:
- How can your program use this data to inform continuous improvement of coursework and clinical field experiences?
- What specific data should your program examine more closely for program improvement?
- How can your program engage stakeholders in conversations about data and program improvement?
Results of the Data Day
Notes from the group discussions were recorded and then combined. Summarized results appear below:
1. How can your program use this data to inform continuous improvement of coursework and clinical field experiences?
- Data will allow us to focus on specific area of improvements, providing us with “evidence” to convince faculty of where and how changes are needed.
- Data will allow effective use of edTPA to improve programs by prompting where students can do better
- Data will better inform as to where and when students should be involved in internships
- Data will allow us to better establish more reasonable goals (such as 85% will be successful). Also allows us to target where, what, and how to move forward (more focusedà skill set, license track, population) and allowed us to be more specific about support
2. What specific data should your program examine more closely for program improvement?
- edTPA tasks and each rubric specifically
- edTPA formative “practice pieces”
- We can make faculty teaching assignments more appropriately
- The qualitative data were useful and should be continued for deeper insights
- We may be able to determine differences between outcomes related to online or traditional instruction
- Need to look at data in terms of scored and scorer feedback
- More assessment-related tasks in courses
3. How can your program engage stakeholders in conversations about data and program improvement?
- We can now better discuss these findings with our current students to improve their understanding. Teacher candidates à self-scoring, self-analysis (What did the data say about my teaching?)
- Employers of our graduates will better understand where we are working to sustain our strengths and improve our weaknesses.
- We will have important information with which to convince faculty that improvements are needed.
- Needs to be communicated to all stakeholders that this is important and valuable–including students. We shouldn’t view this as an extra or an add-on (and treat it that way in class) and expect the students won’t have the same attitude.
- Important to include university supervisors and cooperating teachers in these conversations
Next Steps
This information was used in developing goals for the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan. Included in that plan were specific goals about communicating with stakeholders and using data to drive decision-making. In addition, we planned a follow-up event for the next academic year to build and expand on this work.