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1. What this Innovative Practice does and how it works.
Employees served as "reviewers" of the portfloio and of the feedback report as a means to promote understanding and progress. Please see question # 8 for details.
2. What motivated us to develop or adopt this Innovative Practice.
We were motivated by our commitment to expand employee development and institutional capacity to use our tools for continuous imporovement and our interest in "digesting" the feedback we received from our Portfooio submission.
3. How long it took us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.
It took only a few weeks to design, and implementation occurred in phases of a couple weeks each.
4. What it cost us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.
Employee time.
5. What resistance we faced in developing and implementing this Innovative Practice, and how we reduced or overcome it.
It was an addtional assigment for employees. Departmental supervisors were used to promote understanding and excitement over the opportunity to shape the institutional effort. Standing committees provide peer to peer pressure to participate.
6. What it costs us to maintain and operate this Innovative Practice, and what it saves us.
It has been incorporated into our portfolio process and cost is employee time. We will incur expense as we proceed to our next Portfolio submission and train employees how to conduct a portfolio review.
7. How we measure or check whether this Innovative Practice performs the way we intend it to.
We survey employees regarding thier perceived level of various continuous improvement prcatices at the institution and look for improvement in thier perception. Anecdotal feedback from employees has been positive regarding the experience. Category experts report the information has been helpful to them in updating the Portfolio, and the standing governance committee managing our Portfolio reports a greater level of understanding among employees since the practice was implemented.
8. Print or web documents available that provide more detail and explanation about this Innovative Practice.
Cleary
University was interested
in promoting an understanding of its Systems Portfolio and the conditions it
represented beyond the category leaders and writing teams that produced the Portfolio.
Toward that end, the Portfolio was posted on
the University’s Intranet and all regular (full & part-time continuing
appointment) employees were asked to read the completed Portfolio and identify
three significant strengths and three significant opportunities for
improvement.
While this task was
completed, it became apparent that we had not adequately trained our employees
to conduct an analysis similar to that provided by outside reviewers.
So, while it provided some introduction to
the document and our system descriptions, it lacked the impact we desired.
In due course, the University received its external feedback
report.
Leadership saw this as another
opportunity to promote employee understanding of the processes documented, the
nature of external review, and this phase of the AQIP reaccreditation
process.
The Feedback Report was also
posted on the Intranet, along with three forms (attached) for employees to use
in analyzing the feedback.
(We note we
have attached the actual forms we used in our process.
As such, they represent the feedback we
received and not all items are referenced.)
Employees were first asked to indicate their agreement or
disagreement with the Strategic Issues suggested for consideration by the
external Review Team and to rank in order of importance those which the
employee agreed would be beneficial.
This information was presented to employees at one of the University’s
standard day-long retreats (three are held annually).
The data was also provided to the University
Cabinet (one of our standard governance committees) for its use in strategic
planning.
Since the University had
completed its update of our Strategic Plan at about the same time it submitted
the Systems Portfolio to the Higher Learning Commission, the potential
strategic issues were assessed against the previously completed planning work
for integration into the current plan, expansion of the current plan, or
rejection as a key strategic issue.
Employees were then asked to analyze Opportunities for
Improvement and later, to analyze Strengths.
All regular employees were asked to complete the feedback documents and
return them to the chair of the System Portfolio Committee (one of the
University’s standing governance committees) for compilation.
Department supervisors were asked to discuss
and clarify the task with their employees and to encourage participation &
response.
Virtually all regular
employees participated.
The compiled data were also posted on the University
Intranet for all employees to review and were also discussed at one of the
University’s standard day-long retreats.
The data was also given to our Category leaders (the individuals who
took the lead in compiling the various categories within the Portfolio from the
assigned parties) to use as one
additional
source of information in prioritizing efforts at the University.
Since we ask the Category leaders to become
more knowledgeable experts within their area, we were interested in providing
them additional information and reaction to the feedback rather than
prescribing direction to them.
The Category leaders have successfully integrated this
information into their continued work to maintain the Portfolio, and the
Committee has offered guidance and monitoring to the process.
One category of our employee feedback, for
example, identified items which employees felt we simply describe poorly for
the reviewers and suggested a simple re-write.
These were readily accomplished.
Other items were identified as needing improvement and significance was
assessed.
More simple process improvement was completed by process
owners, while more complex or critical issues became an input point for new
Action Projects for the University.
Our
AP process allows any employee to recommend projects to our Institutional
Effectiveness Committee (another of our standing governance committees), and
those believed to be most important and valuable are included among the
University’s new Action Projects.
The University anticipates more thorough and structured
training for employees prior to submission of our next Systems Portfolio update
with departmental staffing configurations forming “review teams” to reach
consensus on our process strengths and opportunities for improvement.
We anticipate completing this while we await
our formal external feedback.
Once that
feedback is received, we will repeat the employee reaction analysis process for
continued improvement, and anticipate extending the review to adjunct faculty.
The formats for the employee feedback analysis are included
below:
Cleary University
Systems Portfolio
Feedback Report Analysis
May 2007
Strategic Issues
Analysis
Column 1: Do you agree this should be one of the
University’s strategic issues over the next three years?
Column 2: Rank order all those items you have marked “yes.”
Column 3: Summary of the Strategic Issues (for detailed
explanations
see Systems Feedback Appraisal Report on the Intranet).
Y / N
#
Suggested Strategic Issue
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Cleary may benefit from a more systematic focus on
long-term strategic planning to meet the vulnerabilities in the local
economy.
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Cleary should carefully consider the cascading alignment
of institutional mission, objectives, and measures to the departmental level.
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Cleary may benefit by having a wider range of information
for goal setting and improvement.
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Cleary may benefit by setting improvement targets and
priorities that address the long-term.
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Cleary may enhance its assessment of student learning
using a more robust set of outcomes directly relating to program level and
course level objectives.
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Cleary might find further opportunity if it were to more
systematically collect and analyze data related to employee concerns specific
to its region.
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Cleary should gather more comparative data for key
measures to respond quickly to remain competitive.
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Cleary University
Systems Portfolio
Feedback Report Analysis
May 2007
Opportunities for
Improvement Analysis
When the Systems Portfolio was completed, all Cleary
employees were asked to read the document and identify issues upon which we
might focus.
Now that we have our formal
feedback, it is time to engage our employees in assessing the feedback we have
received. You will need to go to the Systems Portfolio Appraisal Feedback
report on the intranet to complete this task.
The Systems Portfolio Feedback Report contains Strengths
& Opportunities within each of the nine categories.
We will examine both the opportunities and
the strengths, but begin with the opportunities.
Please complete COLUMN THREE in the chart with the following
codes:
1 = I do not understand the comment offered.
2= This is not really an opportunity for improvement.
3 = I believe we do this well, but suspect we did not
describe it well – just clarify what we do.
4 = This is an opportunity for improvement, but it is not
critical and should not be a priority.
5 = This is a critical opportunity and should be addressed
as soon as possible.
Opportunities for
Improvement
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Leading and Communicating via the Systems Portfolio and Feedback Processes
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