Exploring faculty members' experience of program review

Program review is an integral aspect of quality assurance in higher education. This qualitative case study explores faculty members’ experiences leading departments through program review at a British Columbia vocational institution, focusing on the agency of the involved faculty members, meaningfulness and manageability of the process, and the impact of explicit and hidden assumptions and power dynamics. Four themes are explored: purpose and impact, project structure and process, time and workload, and power and relational dynamics. Findings reveal that program review is meaningful when framed as a collaborative and reflective exercise focused on program improvement and connected to institutional planning, with consideration for equity, access, and decolonization. Additionally, program review is both meaningful and manageable when the process is well resourced with adequate time to support fulsome engagement and when data collection and analysis methods are robust and inclusive. Twenty-one recommendations and four suggestions for implementation are provided, emphasizing central coordination, adaptability to departmental factors, consideration of equity and access, and intra- and inter-institutional collaboration. The study concludes that, with adequate resources, time, and support, program review can be a catalyst for institutional and program improvement, benefiting faculty and students.