Overview

TRESTLE is a multi-institution, NSF-funded project that studies and implements a model for improving STEM education at public research universities. Each institution is testing a local adaptation of a model with three core components:

  1. Support discipline-based educational experts in departments to catalyze course transformation.
  2. Build intellectual communities around evidence-based educational improvement, within and across departments and institutions
  3. Collect and make visible evidence of the impact on teaching and learning. 

TRESTLE is one of several collaborations of the Bay View Alliance. The project embodies the core principles of the BVA, including the idea that the academic department or program is a key unit for implementing and evaluating interventions to improve the culture of teaching and learning.

Project Status

The TRESTLE Project has been carried out in two phases:

  • The Intervention Phase (2015-2019). The partner campuses applied the TRESTLE interventions to support department-level course transformation efforts
  • The Evaluation Phase (2019-2022). We are pooling and analyzing data to study the impact and sustainability of the course improvements and the new pedagogical practices, attitudes and culture among faculty in the participating departments.

Our current work is focusing on studying the impact of our interventions to identify lessons about both cross-cutting strategies and how to adapt strategies to local institutional context.

 

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DUE1525775 (KU), DUE1525331 (CU) and DUE1525345 (UTSA). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.