RE: Homework-Education-Training/Optimization/Economics . . . and process improvement

["Ivan Webb" <Ivan.Webb@bigpond.com>]

Alan Meekings wrote

"Might it be better to think first about things such as the nature of
demand, or how to change the way the work gets done and the organisation
is managed, instead of automatically assuming that the appropriate first
step in process improvement is bringing processes into "a state of
statistical control"?"

Alan then asked for "Any thoughts?".  Well I have a couple.

I suspect that bringing some human processes into "a state of
statistical control" (or similar) may well be an outcome of education
rather than a starting point. I suspect that we have much to learn about
higher order human processes before we will be ready to use such an
approach across the board - at this stage of our understanding human
processes are more complex, uncertain, and usually iterative....

And there is a significant difference between run charts for physical
processes and run charts for human processes -  the person can respond
to a run chart depicting his/her process. And this can be useful: WED's
golfing story is one.

And here is another: consider as an example see Ben's story.  Ben and
his classmates kept three 'run charts' on their number fact knowledge
and his story is explains the impact of this as a feedback mechanism:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/ivan.webb/quality/schools/ben's_story.htm

Unfortunately this method seems to work better with lower order
learning. Expanding the strategy to higher order learning is problematic
because of lack of agreement on measures and units of 'production':
does anyone use run charts to monitor learning to use SoPK?

In the interim our best approach is to work WITH students to help them
continuously improve their learning systems by increasing their
awareness of 
	- what their aim is, 
	- what are doing to achieve it 
	- and how they are doing it (their processes)
	- how they might improve their processes
	- and how they can know.. 
Feuerstein and Greenberg provide useful guidance in this regard. Myron
Tribus has written a paper elaborating the connections between
Feuerstein and Deming

For more on this see
http://www.users.bigpond.com/ivan.webb/quality/schools/about_learning.ht
m
And follow links from this page. 


Ivan Webb