| AQIP
Initiates Category Improvement Project |
Begun
in December 2007, the Category Improvement Project is intended to
allow all AQIP stakeholders to collectively help improve the items
that comprise AQIP's current nine Categories. Organized as
a Wiki (similar to collective works like Wikipedia), it allows anyone
to suggest improvements in the Categories by going to AQIP.pbwiki.com
and making the additions or deletions they believe will make the
Category items better. It also allows anyone to comment on any of
the Categories.
The
project goal is to present a revised set of AQIP Category items
by the April 2008 Higher Learning Commission Annual Meeting, and
allow AQIP organizations and reviewers to reach consensus on the
proposed changes (in April and May 2008) and settle on a revised
set of AQIP Categories by July 1, 2008. These new Categories would
be mandatory for use in Systems Portfolios submitted for appraisal
beginning June 1, 2009, but institutions could begin using them
at any time after they are adopted.
Where
did the AQIP Categories come from?
When we first designed AQIP, over 100 higher educators and quality
experts participated in the creation of the AQIP Categories and
their respective items. We crafted this set of nine Categories to
serve as buckets or baskets into which we could
sort similar processes that exist at all colleges and universities.
We then created items about processes, results, and systematic improvement,
identifying each (e.g., 1P4, 5R2) to indicate the Category, item
type, and item number. Each item consisted of one or more open-ended
(how or why) questions that would be appropriate
for any higher education organization, (regardless of level, type,
control, or mission) to ask itself.
Why
do the AQIP Categories need improvement?
When we did this, we hoped that every item we created would stimulate
participating organizations to discover and describe their key processes,
to identify or choose measures that reveal how well each process
performs, and to think through how to use performance results systematically
to target those processes needing improvement. We did our best,
but time and experience has shown that we weren't perfect.
Like all processes, AQIP can be improved, and now we need to focus
on how better, tighter, less redundant Category items can help.
What
is wrong with the current Category items?
Most are fine, and have proven their value in stimulating organizations
to ask themselves tough, revealing questions leading toward improvement.
Collectively, the items help an organization ask itself "Are
we doing the right things to achieve our goals?" and "Are
we doing those things as well as we could?"
But not every Category item works as well as it might. Some are
vague, and confuse people. Some ask several questions, and would
be easier to work with if the questions that compose them were asked
in separate items. A few ask questions that don't actually
produce a thoughtful discussion or analysis. Some items are redundant,
and invite an examination that has already been stimulated by another
item. We might cut some, revise others, combine a few, and split
a few apart — and make the resulting set more useful and easier
to work with.
What
about the Context items? Are they open for revision in
the same way as the Process, Result, and Improvement
items?
Yes, but we may need to rethink them more fundamentally than the
others. When we created the original set of Category items, we created
Context items last, using them to ask for essential contextual
information necessary to understand how an organization's
processes operated.
For
example, the processes used to hire and manage employees may be
very different in organizations with 50 or 500 employees; knowing
this context may help readers understand why an organization has
chosen to hire, orient, review, reward, or develop personnel the
way it has.
We
never intended Context items to be appraised as strengths
or opportunities, nor did we expect organizations to devote many
of the 100 pages in their Portfolio explaining the context for their
processes, results, or improvement systems. But Systems Appraisal
teams have often reported the urge to provide feedback on organizations'
responses to these items, and often those responses constitute 10%
or more of a Portfolio.
So
AQIP is looking to your suggestions to improve this whole area.
Do we reduce the Context questions (perhaps to one —
"Provide the context to understand what you say about the
P, R, and I items in this Category")? Do we drop them completely?
If we keep them, should we encourage Systems Appraisers to give
organizations feedback on their responses to Context items?
Can
we propose additional Category items?
Yes. There may be items we should have included from the outset,
or others that we should now add because of the changing nature
of the higher education enterprise. Critics have noted that the
Category items seem a bit "light" in dealing with organizational
finance and budgeting, or with extended operations (off-campus sites
and distance education). But we don't want the total number
of items to become unwieldy; a 100-page Systems Portfolio ought
to be able to contain the responses to the items an institution
addresses in depth.
Are
there limits on revising the Category items?
Yes there are. We want to maintain AQIP's current style of
inquiry — open-ended how and why questions
that honestly cause an organization to explore whether how it now
does things makes sense, given its mission and situation. We don't
want to switch to questions that "beg an answer," include
hidden assumptions, or force institutions to adopt others'
specific processes.
We
want to keep AQIP's strong focus on key processes and the
performance results those processes produce. And we want to keep
the universality of the current set of items. The Category
items ought to provide a means for organizations of very different
kinds to communicate with each other about the things they have
in common — processes, results, and their techniques that
drive improvement.
How
big a change in the Categories does AQIP envision?
We don't want to set off a major overhaul of the nine Category
scheme — although we might find that everyone agrees
we need to change a Category's name, expand a Category's
scope, or add a Category that we neglected to create in the beginning.
But more likely, we envision a 2008 revision that will perhaps affect
5 – 10% of the Category items, mostly in minor ways. We expect
that the revised Categories will look very similar to the current
set. An institution that already has its Systems Portfolio together
ought to be able to tweak it to fit the revised Categories with
minimal effort. And we expect that existing Systems Appraisers will
be able to absorb and incorporate the change into their work without
disruption — or additional training.
Will
revision of the AQIP Categories occur again?
This 2008 revision of the Categories can't be the last. As
the issues and challenges facing higher education continue to change,
the AQIP Categories need to keep up with them. But how — and
on what schedule — we create an ongoing process for updating
the Categories are questions we'd like everyone to consider.
One possibility: we might solicit ideas for improvement every fall,
publish a revision each spring at the Annual Meeting, and expect
institutions submitting Systems Portfolios the following fall to
use the revised Categories. Another might be to focus improvement
on one Category (or two) each year, limiting the scope of change.
We're guessing that revising annually would relieve the pressure
(which has built up from 2000 to now) for extensive modifications,
and that changes in each new edition would be relatively minor in
impact.
Ultimately
it's AQIP's colleges, universities, and peer reviewers
who are most affected by the Categories, so let us know what you
think make the most sense.
How
can I comment on the Category Improvement Project or on any one
of the Categories?
At the top of each page in AQIP.pbwiki.com
is a Comment button that indicates the number of
comments already submitted and published concerning that page. Click
the button and you'll be able to read others' comments,
and a form will open for you to add your comment. Comments are identified
with the name of the commenter (if logged in) and the date.
How
can I suggest changes in one or more of the AQIP Category items?
Send an email to AQIP@hlcommission.org
with the subject AQIP Category Improvement and we will send you
a password that makes you a Contributor to the Wiki. With the password
you can log in and select any of the nine Categories to revise.
(You can jump to any Category using the Sidebar
at the right of the page, or by clicking on a Category at the bottom
of the Home page. To suggest changes, click the
Edit Page button (found at the top and bottom of
every page), then add what you want to add and delete what you want
to remove. (Once in editing mode, you'll find a simple editing
menu at the top of any page you edit — use it to mark italic,
underlined, or boldface type, or to color text or highlight it.)
When you are finished suggesting changes to a Category, click the
Save button at the bottom of the page — and
your revised version will become the version everyone sees
when they visit the Wiki.
How
do I edit the original 2007 version of a Category? Can I edit an
earlier revision that was saved by me or by someone else?
Previous edited versions of every Category are preserved and available
to you — for viewing, comparison, or editing. At the bottom
of every page, under the heading Wiki Information,
click the link Show All Pages. A list of all 13
pages will appear, and next to each will be the date and creator
of the latest version, as well as a link indicating how many revisions
have occurred. Do not, under any circumstances, click the Delete
or Rename buttons at the right.
Click
this Revisions link, and you'll get a page
listing all the revisions, with their dates and creators. You can
click the 'radio buttons' in front of any two revisions
and click the Compare button to see the text with
deletions in red, crossed out, and additions in green.
To
work with an earlier revision, click the link with the date and
time of the revision (e.g., December 10, 2007 at 4:03:19
pm). To send an email to the creator of an earlier revision,
click the name that is a link. If you revise and save this version,
your work will become the most recent (top) version in the list.
The original 2007 version of each Category is at the bottom
of the list — the version saved by Steve S (i.e., Steve Spangehl)
on December 10, 2007.
| Courtney
Hill Leaves AQIP to Pursue New Career Opportunity |
After
six and a half years of invaluable service to PEAQ and AQIP, Courtney
Hill, AQIP and Commission Process Facilitator, said goodbye on December
7, 2007. Courtney joined the staff of The Higher Learning Commission
in June 2001 as an administrative assistant. A recent graduate of
Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL) at the time, she welcomed
the new challenge of learning about accreditation. After going on
to earn an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management, Courtney
continued her work with the Commission. She assumed an expanded
role touching both AQIP and PEAQ, and involving administrative,
IT, and financial responsibilities. Courtney leaves big shoes to
fill, but we wish her well in her new position as Department Manager
of the Clinical Psy.D. program at The Chicago School of Professional
Psychology.
An
Action Project Eulogy
Presented at the Oct. 2007 Strategy
Forum Sharefair by the Garden City Community College Team |
Brothers
and sisters, friends, fellow AQIPians, lend me your ears. We gather
today on this solemn occasion, not to bury our old action project,
but to remember him. His given name was "Imbedding Principles
of High Performance Institutions in a Systematic Approach to Continuous
Quality Improvement." We knew him as Fred.
Like
that creepy uncle whose memory still sends shivers down your spine,
Fred touched all our lives. Even though he's rigid now, he
was once the very definition of agility.
Fred
was the bastard child from the frenzied coupling of a seasoned but
grumpy administrator and a voluptuous yet naïve accreditation
process after a night spent in collaboration with their good friend
Jose Cuervo.
Conceived
in love, but periodically neglected and abused in his youth, Fred
was raised to maturity by a team of half-crazed administrators,
over-protective faculty, stressed-out support staff, and a custodian
who wondered who he pissed off. However, as Hillary reminds us,
it takes a committee to raise an action project.
Adolescence
was a troubled time for Fred. He was the center of much yelling,
arguing, wailing, screaming, cussing, thrown objects, dug in feet,
temper tantrums – and general pissing, moaning, and groaning.
Fred
often wondered what he would eventually grow up to be and what his
true destiny was. Assuredly, there where those who swore he'd
never grow up at all. His committee supported him, but they desired
that he grow up in their own image and likeness. Fred had ideas
of his own and outside influences often caused him to stray from
his true vocation. Brothers and Sisters, I don't have to tell
you about the devastating effects that funding can have on a young,
impressionable action plan. This was indeed a troubled time in Fred's
life. Give me a heartfelt sigh, Brothers and Sisters.
As
Fred matured to adulthood, he came into his own and began to attract
a following. Even grouchy old Ralph in the science department had
to admit that someday – maybe – Fred might actually
amount to something.
Fred
found much pleasure and success in the company of his supporters
but never understood those who refused to accept him. Problems plagued
Fred throughout his life. His teenage squeeze and eventual wife,
Broomhilda from the cosmetology department abandoned him claiming
she just wasn't married to the idea of Fred anymore.
Fred
died a tragic death. How could he know that stepping into the mainstream
on the highway to continuous improvement would eventually result
in being run over by the 2:47 bus of change. Upon his demise, however,
everyone had to admit that his contributions were valuable. He will
be missed, but never forgotten.
Fred's
dying wish was to be cremated and have his ashes placed in a pilfered
hotel vase which will be returned after his ashes are spread in
this very hotel. He wanted to leave a trail from meeting room to
meeting room so future AQIPians could find their way.
Fred
is survived by his two sons, Retention and Transition, and his lovely
daughter Data. They have committed themselves to carry on in their
father's legacy for the next three years.
In
closing, I would like to propose a toast. To Fred – Old action
projects never die, they just — never die.
| Improving
AQIP: Helping Organizations Check to Make Sure Their Action
Projects Made a Difference |
AQIP
is considering changes in how it asks institutions to register and
update their Action Projects, and wants your advice on whether its
ideas would actually benefit its stakeholders and avoid some problems
they have encountered in the past.
First,
a little background about Action Projects and why AQIP has them.
AQIP's
fundamental purpose is simple: helping the organizations it serves
improve their performance. Because we see improvement projects
as the keys steps to take to improve performance, we therefore
want institutions to take on as many significant Action Projects
as possible, and do each one as quickly as possible. AQIP expects
participating colleges and universities to share publicly at all
times at least three current Action Projects on which they
are working. Knowing about an organization's current Action
Projects provides AQIP assurance that its ongoing commitment to
continuous quality improvement is genuine. More importantly, doing
Action Projects moves institutions toward AQIP's fundamental
purpose: helping the organizations it serves improve their performance.
We arbitrarily limited the number of projects an institution can
share with us to three (or four) because we were afraid that allowing
more to be registered might overload our capacity, particularly
the software we created to managed the Action Project Directory
that lists information about each projects and allows people to
search the database of projects.
Creating
a Systems Portfolio and having AQIP review it through a Systems
Appraisal helps colleges and universities pinpoint where their
opportunities for improvement may exist, and the Strategy Forums
help them think through and focus the Action Projects that create
the mechanisms and momentum for real improvements to occur. They
still need to put together teams of creative, thoughtful, and energetic
people to come up with the ideas about how to do things differently
— how to take an existing process and tweak and mold it so
it operates more consistently and effectively, or how to invent
a new process that does what existing processes can't. But
higher education is filled with creative, thoughtful, and energetic
people who want their organizations to perform outstandingly, and
eager when given the chance to roll up their sleeves to work together
to make improvement happen by following the complete plan-do-check-act
(PDCA) improvement cycle (also called the Shewhart or Deming cycle).
Planning
and implementing a process change may not, by itself, solve a problem.
It would be nice if energy, imagination, dedication, and teamwork
were all it required to create improved performance. But the fact
is that sometimes even a team composed of the best and the brightest
comes up with a awful solution.
Implementing
it doesn't end an Action Project. You have to check
to make sure the improved results you wanted actually occur. If
you don't, you may join the ranks of what Phil Crosby (who
wrote Quality is Free, and many other fine books on improvement)
called Pee-Pee-Do-Do organizations: those trapped in a
continual sequence of planning and implementation, never paying
attention to whether the things they've planed and done made
the differences they intended.
In
How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World's
Greatest Car Company (New York: Penguin Books Portfolio, 2007,
pp. 43-44), David Magee explains how a successful organization stresses
this aspect of the PDCA cycle.
"There
is not a day I don't think about what Dr. Deming meant to
us," said Soichiro Toyoda, son of Kiichiro Toyoda and a
Toyota director and honorary chairman. "Deming is the core
of our management."
"Some
of Deming's ongoing contributions to Toyota are hard to
quantify, such as commitment to quality and to people. Others
are more specific and evident, such as his version of the improvement
cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). The PDCA principle is as vigorously
at work at Toyota today as it is when it was first introduced.
Most people in business follow only a sequence of Plan-Do, an
abbreviated cycle in which someone decides what should be done
and does it. According to the PDCA principle, if you continually
work only in Plan-Do sequences, you never get a chance to appraise
your mistakes and determine what isn't working. As a result,
action is never taken to fix problems, and performance rarely
improves.
By
following the complete PDCA sequence, standards continually rise,
providing a higher starting point for each cycle and yielding
continual improvement. The result of PDCA is illustrated by a
rising spiral, while those practicing just Plan-Do, who are unwilling
or unable to check performance and take corrective action, spiral
in circular motion in exactly the same spot, unable to move upward
because they never raise their starting point.
Certainly
Deming's business principles have been well-studied by many
corporations around the world. Thousands of organizations have
implemented various aspects of Deming's methods just as
has Toyota. At Toyota, however, these practices are taken very
seriously and have not been abandoned after years of practice.
Quite frequently at meetings in Toyota offices from Tokyo to Toyota
City, managers ask their employees, "Have you done your
PDCA?"
Recognizing
the centrality of PDCA thinking to successful Action Projects, AQIP
would like to modify the use of its Action Project Directory to
better fit the desire of participating organizations to check whether
their Action Projects have caused the performance changes they sought.
One
possibility is to create a new status of "checking"
to go along with those already in use: "current," "retired"
or "cancelled." The "checking" status would
allow an institution that created an Action Project that led to
the planning and implementation of a new approach to keep the project
current while collecting evidence that it accomplished what was
intended. What we've heard is that organizations are loath
to retire projects until they are sure they have accomplished their
goals, and while they're waiting to see the results of the
checking phase, there's no real value in getting feedback
through the Annual Update Review process. If it turns out that another
PDCA cycle is needed to get performance up where it should be, the
organization could change the status back to "current."
Another
possibility is for AQIP to allow institutions to identify within
the Action Project Directory the Action Projects (a minimum of three)
it wants to receive feedback on through the Annual Update Review
process each year. A project in the checking stage could continue
to be listed, but with the "no feedback desired" option
selected.
AQIP
would appreciate indications from participating institutions on
this topic: how should we modify the Action Project Directory to
help you communicate your action agenda within your institution
and, at the same time, make the most valuable use of AQIP's
feedback on Annual Updates. Send your ideas and comments to AQIP@HLCommission.org
with the subject line "Action Project Directory."
Eleven
Colleges and Universities First to Have Accreditation Reaffirmed
Through AQIP
Katy Marre, Chair, AQIP Review
Panel on Reaffirmation of Accreditation |
During
2007-08, Academic Quality Improvement Program's Review Panel
on Reaffirmation of Accreditation, which I chair, will review a
total of 39 institutions using the process AQIP has created. As
each review is completed it is forwarded to the Institutional Actions
Council (IAC) for review and action. I am happy to announce that
the Panel is ahead of its own schedule, and that eleven institutions
were reviewed and approved by IAC at its December 3, 2007 meeting:
- Augsburg
College, Minneapolis, MN
-
Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque, NM
-
Dunwoody College of Technology, Minneapolis, MN
-
Edison State Community College, Piqua, OH
-
Glen Oaks Community College, Centreville, MI
-
Gogebic Community College, Ironwood, MI
-
Northcentral Technical College, Wausau, WI
-
Ohio State University-Agricultural Technical Institute, Wooster,
OH
-
Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN
-
San Juan College, Farmington, NM
-
Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM
Because
AQIP is a diverse program serving a broad spectrum of colleges and
universities, the institutions reaffirmed represent nine different
Carnegie classifications: Assoc/PrivNFP — 1; Assoc/Pub2in4
— 1; Assoc/Pub-R-L — 1; Assoc/Pub-R-M — 2; Assoc/Pub-R-S
— 1; Assoc/Pub-S-SC — 1; Assoc/Pub-U-MC — 1; Master's/M
— 2; and Master's/S — 1. Together, they serve over 55,000
students.
These
eleven are the first Recommendations for Reaffirmation that our
Panel of 20 peer reviewers has finished. But the Panel is also well
underway in reviewing the other 28 institutions, and has already
determined that no additional materials will be required
to confirm that each of them meets the requirements for reaffirmation.
We anticipate forwarding the Recommendations for Reaffirmation to
the IAC for these other 28 institutions for approval at its meeting
on February 18, 2008.
 Katy
Marre is Professor of English and Former Associate Vice President
for Graduate Studies & Research at the University of Dayton.
Her distinguished academic experience includes developing, coordinating,
organizing, and reviewing programs and proposals dealing with issues
within Graduate Studies & Research. She is prolific in her publishing
and presenting on matters concerning Joyce, Frost, higher education
accreditation, and graduate program development, including graduate
assessment. She has served as an HLC peer reviewer for years, and
also served on the Institutional Actions Council.
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