Description of an Approach for Analyzing External Program Reviews to Inform Educational Planning

Post-secondary institutions are required to complete a variety of quality assurance activities including external program review, a process of inviting external reviewers from outside the institution to provide constructive feedback on all aspects of an academic program. While external program reviews have been completed for decades, there has been little work to ensure that meaningful change occurs as a result. Assessment of outcomes at the department level are limited and research specifically considering external academic program review as a primary quality assurance activity is scant. Each of these limitations is even more significant when considered at the institutional level. From our experience, there is minimal consideration in research or practice to ensure that external review recommendations have an impact on educational planning at the institutional level. To help address this concern, in this paper we describe an approach involving secondary research and thematic document analysis that can be leveraged to enhance institutional decision-making processes by uncovering institutional themes evident across external reviews. We suggest that our approach may be helpful for other higher education institutions striving to make sense of program review recommendations from an institutional perspective.