Date of Award
2002
Document Type
Practicum
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Programs for Higher Education
Advisor
Marion Gibney
Keywords
curriculum development, curriculum modules, curriculum writing, curriculum-writing workshop, dependent variable, faculty, faculty development, faculty participation, first-time faculty writers, independent variable, IPD, module quality, null hypothesis, overall quality assessment scores, OQAS, quality assessment, research question, statistical significance, t-test of independent means, training, workshop evaluation
Abstract
The problem for this study was that it was unknown whether faculty participation in an IPD curriculum-writing workshop resulted in higher IPD curriculum module overall quality assessment scores (OQAS) when compared to the OQAS scores of modules written by faculty who did not participate in the curriculum-writing workshop.
There was one research question for this study: Will there be a significant difference in the mean IPD curriculum module OQAS scores of modules written by faculty who have participated in an IPD curriculum-writing workshop and by faculty who have not participated in an IPD curriculum-writing workshop?
IPD records of curriculum modules were utilized to identify modules created between September 1, 2000 and September 31, 2001 by first-time faculty writers. Based upon internal training records, these writers' modules were then separated into two groups. Group 1 contained modules written by faculty who had not participated in IPD training (n= 41), while Group 2 contained modules written by faculty who had participated in training (n= 17). The IPD OQAS scores of each module for both groups was then used as the dependent variable, and participation in training was the independent variable. A t-test of independent means was used to determine if the difference in means was statistically significant.
With df = 56 and a level of significance of .05, the critical value oft was 1. 95. This resulted in a probability of .056, requiring that the null hypothesis be accepted that there was no statistically significant difference in the mean IPD module OQAS scores of modules written by faculty who had participated in an IPD curriculum-writing workshop when compared with modules written by faculty who had not participated in an IPD curriculum-writing workshop.
The results of this study indicated that the IPD curriculum writing workshop made no difference in the overall quality of modules written. It was recommended that IPD discontinue offering the curriculum writing workshop and that research be conducted to identify faculty development needs.