Engaging Faculty in Evaluative Inquiry

As the sun is rising here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, I want to draw your attention to an evaluation capacity building approach called CLIPs, which you may want to incorporate into an ATE evaluation. My colleagues and I developed the process through an NSF grant (grant #0335581), which has been used now in several community colleges.

We developed Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice (CLIPs) at Bakersfield College in California. CLIPs are self-determined groups of faculty and staff who learn together about their professional practice by gathering and analyzing data about a topic of importance to them. For example, one CLIP investigated the question, “Do peer study groups enhance student learning?” Another CLIP asked, “What assessment methods are most effective in computer studies courses?” Yet another explored “Are students who take developmental education courses successful in subsequent courses?” You might be asking similar questions in an ATE evaluation.

Each CLIP consisted of three to seven faculty and staff with one person as the group facilitator. We set it up so CLIP members learned a basic evaluative inquiry process with three steps: (1) design the inquiry, (2) collect data, and (3) make meaning and shape practice.

Within a given CLIP, the members simultaneously answered important evaluative questions and built their capacity to collaboratively address issues about their work on an ongoing basis. This set the stage for continual renewal of their teaching practices and ongoing inquiry about instructional processes and student learning and success.

Click here for an overview video and modules about the CLIP process. They are available to you on our InSites website.

The seven modules feature video vignettes in which CLIP team facilitators and members share their CLIP experiences and observations. The modules include downloadable resources to support individual and collaborative inquiry. These include examples of CLIP documents and in-depth reference materials. Many of these resources may be useful to you in any evaluation work you are doing, whether or not you are using the CLIP process. For example, there is a tip sheet on conducting focus groups and another on writing questionnaires.

The process has been used in several other community colleges since it was developed and is also being used in a medical school situation.

All in all, CLIPs are a great way to embed evaluation into the learning process for faculty and accomplish many of your evaluation tasks. You can also read about the theory behind CLIPs and other information in an article in the OD Practitioner. That article, Evaluative Inquiry for Complex Times, can also be accessed through our website.