Jeff Appling (Clemson University) on A New Approach to Streamlining Academic Workflows

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Jeff Appling to discuss the evolution of curriculum management and building faculty trust. 

Transcript

Voiceover: Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Jeff Appling, who is Senior Associate Dean of Curriculum at Clemson University. Jeff and podcast host Shauna Cox discuss the evolution of curriculum management and building faculty trust. 

Shauna Cox (00:03):Jeff, welcome to the Illumination podcast. I'm so glad you could join me today.

Jeff Appling (00:06):Thanks for having me.

Shauna Cox (00:08):So we are here to kick off this conversation with the evolution of curriculum management in order to support the modern learner. So the first question I have for you is how have curriculum management systems kind of evolved to enhance workflow efficiency and support faculty productivity?

Jeff Appling (00:29):Well, first of all, I'd like to say that my answers are going to be pretty specific to my situation here at Clemson University. Clemson University is a R one land grant university, about 25,000 ish students. So it's reasonable size university and our problems are probably pretty similar to what other people are going to see, but we may be doing things a little differently than some others. The curriculum management using electronic workflow has been a game changer for us. So we were fairly easily able to get our leadership to adopt an electronic catalog because everybody was doing it. And so we said, Hey, all the cool kids are doing electronic catalogs, we need to do it too. The next step from that was to convince leadership that we should be doing electronic curriculum management. And so that was a little bit more of a push because it's not something you have to have because we were doing it with paper and everybody seemed to be surviving from month to month.

(01:43):We saw a demo of the company that provides our curriculum management system. At the time the company was called Dig Arc. They're now called Modern Campus. And when I saw that demo, my jaw dropped because I could see that doing things electronically while being a fundamental change to how we would move the information along, it would provide us options that we just couldn't do with paper. And the big thing I could see was that it was going to save us time. And so I went out on a limb to faculty when we adopted it, and faculty don't trust administrators. They think we're trying to make them work harder and do stupid things. And I promised them, I said, look, this is going to save you time.

(02:34):They don't like to change. They like to stay with what they know. And I said, look, we're going to go away from paper, we're going to go to electronic stuff, and you're going to be able to realize changes that you were not even aware could happen. So for example, our December curriculum committee meeting is our biggest one of the year because we're hitting a deadline for program changes. When we were on paper, we would literally have an agenda that was a ream of paper. I would get that on a Monday and I would have to go through that ream of paper for the meeting on Friday. And if something didn't work on Friday, it would take another year for it to happen. But with the electronic system, what happens is we see the information ahead of time, and so I can look at the proposals and say, oh, this little thing needs to be changed.

(03:27):Send, put a comment on the proposal. Somebody picks it up, sees the change needs to be made, they make the change. And by the time we get to the meeting, we don't even talk about that proposal. We don't need to because it is fine. So with this last December meeting, we had 180 proposals, which is typical for the types of changes we need to make. And our meeting lasted only about maybe 50 minutes, whereas in the past with that ream of paper, our meeting was like five and a half hours. I mean, the dean would always bring cupcakes and things to the last meeting just to try to lighten the load a little bit.

(04:05):So it's really fundamentally changed the way we do things. And the other big thing is that we can make changes in real time during a meeting. If something comes up, say at a college meeting and somebody raises an objection or some little change needs to be made in the old days, we'd have to send that back, have everything reprinted, new signatures, and it was just a really complicated mess. Now we can make the change in real time in the meeting, we can open up the proposal, we can make the change, vote on it, say everything's fine, and then it moves to the next step. So it is really made a huge difference. And I look like a hero because I promised time savings to the faculty and I delivered. And that's one of the few things. As an administrator, I can say that I actually looked good in the end, but it worked. It works great.

Shauna Cox (04:56):Well, I still hope you guys get cupcakes on your meeting. You still deserve it. After all that work,

Jeff Appling (05:05):The dean no longer chairs our meeting. He has given that job to me. And

Shauna Cox (05:10):Now it's your responsibility.

Jeff Appling (05:12):Now it's my responsibility to bring cupcakes.

Shauna Cox (05:15):And I want to talk about the challenges. I know that you mentioned despite the type of institution that you're at, your challenges might be similar. So let's talk about it and ask what challenges do academic institutions face and ensuring that the curricula remains current and reflective of those disciplinary advancements?

Jeff Appling (05:37):That's a really important question, and it does not have a very simple answer unfortunately. Now at Clemson, we encourage faculty to update their courses all the time. If they want to add updated learning outcomes, they can do that. And they don't have to go through a formal curriculum review to do it. So we encourage evolution for their courses. They don't have to go through a formal curriculum change unless they're doing something big like changing a prerequisite or changing the description or changing the number. So we want them to do that. So in order for that to be effective though, we are relying on the department as the oversight. It's not a university oversight, it's a departmental oversight. So we need the departmental curriculum committees to be watching the syllabi for the courses that are being taught in their department to make sure that they are meeting the needs of their own students and their major, also the students that they're serving from other majors, and they may be hosting minors or other programs that they have some oversight for.

(06:44):So we depend on the departments to be doing that. And faculty are under increasing pressure, particularly at a place like Clemson, which is an R one research university. They're getting pressure all the time to focus more on research, less on teaching and service, that sort of thing. So depending on the department, sometimes the department curriculum committee is very active in this way and sometimes they have difficulty being active because of all the other stressors on them. So that's probably what I would say is the main challenge at the university level is that it's not consistent. The challenges are affect to everybody, but they respond to the challenges in different ways. And so some departments are aggressive at maintaining their curricula and some departments are not as much able really to invest the time that they need to. I think that having the curriculum management on a workflow basis has improved things because faculty don't feel like it's as onerous of a problem to change curriculum. They used to. Now they know that they can make changes fairly quickly, so that sort of encourages them to be more nimble.

Shauna Cox (08:03):And I feel like one of the challenges just in higher ed overall is the fact that higher ed is known to be that traditional structure not really used to change, not really used to moving fast. So how can institutions balance the need to preserve academic rigor while trying to incorporate those emerging fields and technologies into the curriculum and trying to keep pace with industry and what's going on in the world?

Jeff Appling (08:29):And that goes back to these curriculum committees at the departmental level, again, they operate best if they can develop periodic reviews where they look at their own programs on some sort of cycle. It doesn't have to be yearly, matter of fact, it probably shouldn't. It should be like a three to five year type of term where they look at their curricula and they think about what are the changes that are happening in their discipline. Those changes are more easily seen probably in the graduate curricula. Those courses change a lot faster because those students are doing research in the department, and so they get wind of changes in discipline a lot quicker than the undergraduates do. But the departments also want to change their undergraduate curricula to keep pace of what's going on. So if they're doing periodic reviews, they can actually be, and if they're willing to shake stuff up to look at things with a critical eye, they can make changes. And rigor doesn't mean you have to teach outdated stuff. If you do a review on a periodic basis and you determine that you need room in your curriculum for advanced topics, it's okay to move some other things, either condense them or actually eliminate them. We still want the undergraduate degrees to be doable. They still need to be 120 credits. So we've got that limitation. They can't be an infinite number of credits, which means you're going to have to cut and trim and think and make some decisions, but our departments will do that.

Shauna Cox (10:22):Amazing. And talking about the innovation piece that's out there and today, innovation is a piece that is kind of needed, especially in what's going on in society in higher ed. So what strategies can be employed to adapt curriculum management practices in order to meet learner needs and prepare them for the future challenges and kind of future proof them as much as you can?

Jeff Appling (10:50):I think it goes back to these reviews and making sure that they're real. The university uses the term assessment all the time for these types of reviews. And faculty do not like the word assessment in part I think because they feel like it's a pass fail type of activity. And as teachers, they don't like to be judged and they don't like to fail. But what they need to understand is that good assessment is really not a pass fail type of activity. It's an effective ineffective type of thing where you look at your processes and you determine what things are making a difference in the way they need to be and what things are no longer making a difference in the way they need to. And then you can make changes. So if they look at assessment as a process of discovery, and I've seen several departments here at Clemson do this and it is been really wonderful to work with them.

(11:46):They look at it as a process of discovery so that they can find out how they can manage what they're doing and improve things and not think about it in terms of an evaluation of their personal ability to teach their courses. That's not what this is about at all. And the departments that do this the best are typically the ones that have an external accreditation agency that's associated with their work. Anything that has to do with medical, our chemistry department for example, and our business college, all the business degrees have external accreditation. So those tend to be a little more active in this way, but really everybody can get involved in it. It's just that it's one more thing that they have to do and it is not a whole lot of fun really. So it is good if you have somebody in the department who is sort of a leader in this and wants to take charge and say, Hey, let's modernize our curriculum this year and that type of thing. And often the dean's office tries to identify those leaders and encourage them to do these types of jobs. They're not really rewarded that very well, unfortunately. And faculty are very much like all other humans. They respond to the rewards and incentives. And so you have to make it so that it's worthwhile. And I think mostly when they see their changes turn into better programming for their students and then their students get great jobs and do interesting things, that's their reward usually in the end.

Shauna Cox (13:33):Absolutely. And you mentioned working together, which I think is a key component to all of this. So how can collaboration across departments, because oftentimes people work in silos, but how can that collaboration be effectively facilitated to minimize duplication of work and at the same time optimize resources in curriculum development?

Jeff Appling (13:58):I wish I had the answer to that. That is a very challenging question. I think for one thing, departments need to look beyond their own curricular borders as much as possible to see what the possibilities are. And that does happen. Usually the disciplinary merging between departments happens first in the research areas and then it trickles down to the teaching areas.

(14:31):So when you have faculty that're active in research and looking at interdisciplinary ideas, they tend to be the ones that get the ideas about how can we change the curriculum to reflect these really interesting things that we're doing. But one of the reasons that this is a challenge is because at least our university has been very slow to adopt a robust approach to interdisciplinary work interdisciplinarity, if that's a real word. Interdisciplinarity covers everything faculty do, whether it's their teaching, their research, their promotion, everything they do could be affected by working with others. And the question always comes down to how much did this person contribute when they're being judged for things like promotion and tenure? And that's the key right there. They sometimes will turn away from an opportunity to do interdisciplinary work because they're worried that they won't get the credit that they need in order to get the promotion or move ahead in their own career. So we need a good vision from the academic leaders at the very top

(15:51):To get a university to address these issues and make a good robust plan and strategy of how interdisciplinary is going to be rewarded. I wish Clemson was there. I mean, we we're making strides, we've got pockets, we have pustules of excellence all over campus, people that are doing really interesting things. But it's been a struggle for us, and I think it's probably a struggle for a lot of universities trying to make sure that they can work out of a strategy that makes sure that faculty are encouraged to do these things and that they're well rewarded for it. I don't think we do it well enough. We will eventually, but it's going to take a

Shauna Cox (16:35):While. Absolutely. And I think a key component of this, kind of switching gears, a key component is data and how we use it and what we are using it for. So in what ways can data analytics support that decision making in curriculum design and enhance alignment with broader academic goals?

Jeff Appling (16:58):I think we're just at the beginning

(17:01):Of using analytical tools to help us make decisions that have to do with curriculum and strategies for student success. We've been lucky at Clemson that we've been able to adopt some tools. We've got a tool right now that we use to monitor student academic health. Our advisor, pretty much our professional advisors are all trained in using this tool. The challenge is getting the faculty trained to use the tool, and they are slowly, they're seeing the advantages, but this tool actually has some interesting features in it. It will show you bottlenecks in the curriculum, and a lot of people don't know that and haven't learned how to use that. So as people explore, they'll start sharing this disability. I'm not shilling for these people, but impressed with what they do. There's, there's a website called curricular analytics.org

Jeff Appling (18:11):Also provides a curriculum analysis tool, and I think it's free and it will show you things like prerequisite traffic jams and all sorts of interesting bottlenecks in your program. So those tools are out there for people to use. It's just a matter of people taking the time to play with them and figure out what they can do. I mean, it's like anything, we don't have enough time and we don't have enough personnel that are dedicated to doing these sort of things. But I think that once people do start experimenting and exploring these things, they can start making a difference. Our own institutional research office is they've got a little cottage industry building dashboards for various things, and luckily I'm privy to some of the early ones and they will show us some dashboards. Hey, we can look at this information and this data, and it's pretty impressive what we can do.

(19:20):It is just a matter of getting people sort of trained with the idea that they should spend their time doing it. I know that I have access to a lot of data that I don't play with like I could or should, but I think that that's the interesting thing about this is that it's now becoming sort of commonplace. And I think people are going to be starting to use it all the time. And it seems like we're still sort of flying blind, and I'm hoping that we're going to purchase some software soon that'll allow us to crack that nut so that we can really learn what the student patterns are so that we can make good decisions and be more efficient.

Shauna Cox (20:37):Well, Jeff, those are all the questions that I have for you. Is there anything you'd like to add about the evolution of curriculum management, the work you're doing, any advice you have, anyone trying to navigate this space? It's totally okay if you don't.

Jeff Appling (20:53):Well, I've been doing this for a while. I joined the dark side in 2005 as a faculty member. I was active in a lot of different things around campus. I liked getting out of my department, meeting others, learning what they were doing. I was really interested in working with others on improving teaching and improving opportunities for students. And so I joined the dark side in 2005, and I thought that would give me the opportunity to maybe explore student success a little bit more. And it has, I've been rewarded with that. I've felt good about that. But along the way, I have run into a lot of challenges because there is this built-in distrust of administrators by the faculty. And if I could leave the audience with one thing is really they want the same thing you do, it's just sometimes they're getting the message in a different way.

(21:57):And I love working with faculty and helping them solve their problems. And I think that there are administrators on all campus that want to do that. And so I would encourage everybody to seek out your local curriculum wonk and ask them questions and see if they can help you make some changes. Because I know that I've been instrumental in a couple places in the curriculum here at Clemson in what, 19 years I've been doing this job. And it's been very rewarding. I think that students have reaped the benefits and all it takes is a faculty member here or faculty member there that's got a good idea and is willing to have the discussion with others and then change can happen. And I promote that. I want people to do more of it.

Shauna Cox (22:46):Absolutely amazing. Now, Jeff, you have been in Clemson for quite a while now, and I know that we had a little chat before this interview about the food. Since our last question is always around restaurants. Now you may not have a specific restaurant recommendation, but how have you seen the food evolve in Clemson since you've been there?

Jeff Appling (23:22):Well, I came to Clemson in 1992, and we had one Chinese restaurant, and that was all the ethnicity that we had in the several years. As I've been here, things have gotten better, I must say. But we do tend to go toward one of the bigger cities nearby to get the really interesting food. So if I needed to take you out and take you to a nice dinner, I'd probably take you to Greenville. There we go. We wouldn't stay in Clemson.

Shauna Cox (23:56):Amazing. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for your time. It was great chatting with you.

Jeff Appling (24:00):Thank you. I appreciate it.