TRESTLE (TRansforming Education, Stimulating Teaching and Learning Excellence) is a 5-year, multi-institution, NSF funded project that began in Fall 2015 and is working to implement and evaluate a model to promote improved STEM education at research universities. There are a total of seven universities participating in the project, including the University of Kansas (lead), University of Colorado Boulder, Indiana University, University of California Davis, University of Texas at San Antonio, Queen's University, and the University of British Columbia. 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, and (3) collect and make visible evidence of the impact on teaching and learning.

Each campus is collecting a variety of assessment measures in order to evaluate the effectiveness of this model at the local institutions. This includes qualitative information from the experts and faculty with respect to the changes being implemented within individual courses, analysis of the syllabi to evaluate the distribution of time during the semester among different categories of assignments and learning activities, and lastly multiple campus wide surveys about teaching practices, attitudes and climate. In addition, classroom observations using the COPUS tool are being used to provide quantitative measurements of changes happening in the classroom, as well as DFW rates to gauge student learning and success. This presentation will highlight some of the major successes of this project to date, including a review of the number of courses and faculty impacted by the work, an evaluation of the COPUS data for courses being transformed and comparison courses, and lastly a case study review of the impact on DFW rates for courses being transformed at the University of Kansas.