STEM discipline units have a history of poor student evaluation compared to those in non-STEM disciplines (Felder and Brent 2016). The study areas of computing and engineering rate among the lowest nationally (QILT, 2018) and often have poor rates of student retention (Watkins & Mazur 2013). At most Australian universities, students evaluate their units at the end of semester via standard survey instruments. Analysis of week 4 data indicates that at this early stage of semester, students’ sentiments of a unit is a reliable indicator of how they will evaluate the unit at the end of semester [Unpublished data]. Given this valuable insight, the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology have made the ‘Week 4 Checkin Survey’ compulsory, and partnered with the Learning and Teaching Unit to provide subsequent professional development to help academics examine ways to improve their units. This has involved applying a unit quality framework [Carbone, Camm-Evans and Ye, 2016) to analyse evaluation data and drive unit quality to positively impact students’ learning experience and outcomes.
The unit quality framework arose from an Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) sponsored National Senior Teaching Fellowship on the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme (PATS). The Unit Quality Framework outlines the facets, underlying foundations, aspirational standards, barriers and evaluation lenses that guide unit development, assessments, teaching and evaluation. The starting point for use of the framework commences with analysing data obtained through several lenses (e.g. peer review of the unit, student evaluation data, and learning analytics), enabling critical self-assessment against the framework elements. This presentation provides an overview of the use of Unit Quality Framework, in a partnership between a faculty and centrally-located university unit, for early analysis and diagnosis of teaching quality, leading to unit enhancement and course improvement.