Helping Faculty Visualize Outcomes of Afive-Year Curriculum Evaluation

A 5-year curriculum evaluation project treated students'course ratings, exam reliability coefficients, and item discrimination data as a battery of data points for determining annual revision efforts. The data permitted the curriculum coordinator to make decisions about precise tasks regarding specific courses that substantially improved the coordinator's chances of effecting improvements. A great number of common problems were eliminated. Histograms were constructed that presented 5 years of successful effort like a series of snapshots. These were immediately understood by the curriculum coordinator and program faculty as valid demonstrations of their successful efforts.