[The following article appears in the December 1994 edition of _TQM_in_Higher_Education_, pages 3, 5, 6, and 7.] CQI PROJECTS AT THE U. OF MARYLAND Geno Schnell As one of the nine recipients of IBM's Total Quality Award, the U. of Maryland at College Park partnered with Westinghouse Corp. in the quality challenge to train 100 faculty in quality improvement methods. Here's a look at what UMCP has accomplished. In the spring of 1992, a campus-wide commission recommended that the campus undertake formal efforts to integrate continuous quality improvement (CQI). Some 18 months later, the university sought to expand the integration of CQI principles and practices. While pilot activities had existed, the CQI initiatives had not been systematically structured or coordinated. The CQI council, composed of 11 members--the president, who chairs the group; the divisional vice presidents; representatives from the campus senate, undergraduate and graduate student gov- ernments; alumni; and faculty and staff at large--decided to focus on undergraduate students as the primary customer. The council chose to examine where different "pain points" existed for students and to develop problem-solving teams that would serve as demonstration projects. To determine the pain points, the council used a portfolio of student satisfaction data, which included a two-year follow-up of graduates; surveys of students in their senior year and those who had disaffiliated prior to graduation; and small samples of student feedback collected from other campus CQI initiatives. With the student satisfaction data, the council looked for trends and developed a list of issues which appeared to be captured in the data. The list was then matched to the criteria the council wanted to use in creating these first "top down" projects--data sufficiency, cross-divisionality potential for impact on student retention, complexity, and readiness for change. The selection process developed for the projects resulted in various areas that could be addressed using teams with cross-divisional membership. Three of the areas were: 1. effectiveness of the student financing process; 2. instructor and student frustrations with large classes; and 3. interference between academic requirements and student employment situations. The council developed team charters--which included a problem statement, possible project scope, and potential team membership--around these areas. Each team of six to eight people would report to the CQI council with a final presentation within 120 days from the team's first meeting. Team leaders would also be asked to give an interim report to the council. Each of UMCP's vice presidents agreed to sponsor a project. The sponsors: --selected the team leader and team members, --arranged for administrative support for the team, and --assisted the team with focus and integration into other campus initiatives. The office for continuous quality improvement: --arranged for each group to have a team facilitator, --provided a basic orientation to CQI, -- consulted with team leaders and team sponsors throughout the process, and --arranged for technical assistance for data gathering and analysis. As a means for closure and celebration, each team's presentation was immediately followed by a luncheon and group photographs. Each team's activities and recommendations are being documented and shared with the campus community through the weekly faculty and staff newspaper. Accountability for implementation of team recommendations lies with the sponsor and the council. Student Finance Team Led by the bursar, the student finance team included members from financial aid, undergraduate admissions, and residence life, as well as a representative from the provost's office and an officer from the Student Government Association. The team began its work by gaining a baseline for student perceptions of the financing process captured from those students waiting in financial service areas at the start of the spring semester. Using CQI tools and techniques, the team recommended that the university: --give greater access to student account and financing process information via workstations in student computer labs; --expand outreach to parents and students about financial management via summer orientation programs, freshman orientation courses, and public displays in high traffic areas-for example, dining halls and the student union; --improve advertising, clarify written materials, and create a student financial planner; --expand site locations to include the residence halls and the student union for bill payment and financial aid application; promote alternative student payment options such as workshops and payment plans; --create a consolidated student financial service center that would combine front desk operations for the bursar's office and the office student financial aid; --simplify the late payment and severance policy; and implement a centralized withdrawal process to create a single office visit for students who need to separate from the university. While the team was confident that its recommendations would benefit students, it took the extra step of conducting focus groups to evaluate and refine the ideas. In fact, students who had complained about the process earlier in the year composed one group. Immediate action on several of the recommendations was possible, given the direct participation of key process owners. Large Classes Team The large classes team was led by the director of our center for teaching excellence and included faculty from physics, history, English, government and politics, and chemistry, as well as staff from the resource planning office and the counseling center. The team decided to expand its own membership beyond the eight members, to include both undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants who were assisting faculty in large class environments. Large classes were defined as sections with 100 or more students. The team developed a comprehensive list of issues. With the help of the college of education, the team identified five categories to the problem. The categories were: -- administration--selection of best teachers, evaluation of teaching effectiveness, rewards and supports for teachers; --teachers--teaching skills, ability to manage TAs and multiple recitation sections, comfort with using different delivery mechanisms, knowledge of large group interaction techniques, approachability; --students--transition from small classes in high school to large classes in college, willingness to take responsibility for learning, initiative; --university context--communicated importance to cover lots of material vs. ensuring proper comprehension, merit recognition, lack of emphasis on teaching in promotion and tenure; --physical context--adequate space, availability of teaching aids, need for more technologically advanced teaching environments. The team decided to use these categories as a template for surveying faculty and students. The team surveyed faculty who were currently teaching large classes or had done so the previous semester. They were asked to identify sub-causes in each of the categories. A separate student survey, which assessed the views of the students and their attitudes toward large classes, was distributed in large classes and in the residence halls. Faculty identified the five most frequently selected root causes as: conflict between the large class format and learning goals, perceived lack of accessibility to students and personal contact, lack of student motivation and preparation for the large class format, lack of reward structure for successful large class teaching, and lack of accountability for student classroom performance. Student feedback focused on the lack of personal contact with instructors, the lack of structure in lectures, poor discussion sections, problems with classroom facilities, and a desire for more testing and feedback. Interestingly, the students also reported that they didn't believe they were taking too many large classes or that the quality of instruction was poor. Contrary to expectations, 56% of the students reported that they didn't like to buy lecture notes (from a campus service) rather than attend class. These results, as well as personal conversations with students, alerted the team to the fact that large classes contained many positive features. Using these data, the team suggested a list of potential solutions and then invited input from the faculty. While the faculty were supportive of the recommendations, they also provided several refinements. For example, the faculty alerted the team to more closely consider a set of recommendations about teaching facilities, citing problems such as the availability of equipment and lecture hall maintenance. They also revealed their awareness of techniques for creating more interaction and feedback in the large classes, but asked for assistance in adapting them to specific course content and individual teaching styles. The large classes team made a series of recommendations to the council: -- that the existing facilities improvement committee systematically assess teaching facilities with the active involvement of the actual classroom and lecture hall users; -- that the transition to large classroom environments as well as the positive aspects of large classes be discussed during freshman orientation; -- that a "large classes" handbook that could be used in student preparation and in advising sessions be developed; -- that new learning assistance workshops about succeeding in large classes be offered; -- that a committee at each college level be created to periodically review the college's assurance of quality in large classes, recitations, and teaching assistant preparation; -- that funding be available to assist individual instructors of large classes with strategies for enhancing learning; -- that a summer seminar on large class teaching techniques be offered for new and returning faculty assigned to these types of courses; and -- that a "large classes" grant fund be established to support faculty who wish to introduce innovations in large class settings. Faculty are excited about the prospect of improving large classes. The team conducted an additional analysis which identified those colleges and departments offering the most large class sections, the enrollment in such courses, and the academic rank of assigned instructors. These data can be used to focus improvement efforts, rather than undertaking simultaneously an improvement of all large classes across the university. At the sponsor's request, the large classes team was asked to address the council of deans and appear before the academic planning advisory committee. Student Employment Team The director of the physical plant served as the leader for the student employment team. Also on the team were representatives from financial aid, career center, commuter affairs, college of engineering (which supports a large cooperative education and summer student employment program), book center (a large student employer), and faculty from college student personnel and organizational psychology programs. This team faced the initial task of clarifying whether an improvement opportunity existed, since only one prior data collection effort had directly examined student employment issues. Student employment had traditionally been regarded as a type of extracurricular activity, mostly undertaken to generate income for "extras." Yet, trends in national data suggested that students were working more hours and also depending more on their incomes to pay for large portions of their essential costs, such as tuition, room, and board. It appeared that these changes could be interfering with academic progress. Issues about interference with job situations appeared in several: campus surveys-usually in the open comments--but the issue had never been systematically explored. Using CQI tools and techniques, the team defined the problem and proposed three fundamental areas of conflict between academic success and student employment: 1. Students work much longer today because they must help finance their education. 2. The university tends to view student employment as a "necessary evil," rather than as an educational opportunity. 3. Student employment can cause students to withdraw from the university, especially when they work off campus. To substantiate and clarify these conflicts, the team examined current campus data about student employment and collected data using a mini-survey distributed to student employees, focus groups with on-campus student employees and employers, telephone interviews with off-campus employers, campus payroll information, and responses to an automated phone-in survey from students calling the on-line registration system. The team also examined several national student employment reports. These data were used to define improvement gaps that surrounded each of the three issues. -- Sixty-six percent of the seniors held jobs while enrolled and 29% of them held two part-time jobs; -- Students and campus employers recognized that there was a lack of coordination among the numerous on-campuses offices; -- Students responded favorably to offering academic credits for structured job experiences, linking jobs to academic majors, and utilizing jobs as a means for career exploration; -- Only 25% of campus departments offered experiential learning credits; -- Longitudinal research showed that students who worked off-campus had higher attrition rates, took longer to graduate, and felt less connected to the campus; and -- There were no systematic campus benefits for student employees and no programs in place to induce students to take on-campus jobs rather than off-campus jobs. Using the improvement gaps and the issues, the team recommended: -- Creating 24-hour access to information about student job openings on the campus electronic information network; -- Consolidating the currently separate employment centers that post on-campus vs. off-campus job opportunities; -- Requiring all departments to offer credits for experiential learning; -- Designating a lower-division experimental credit course that can be taken by freshmen and sophomores; -- Providing faculty with class profiles that include aggregate data about the average number of hours worked by students in their courses; -- Developing student employee benefits, such as priority parking, advanced registration, workshops, a competitive wage scale, textbook discounts, and leadership development opportunities. The team recognized that no one office on campus currently assumed ownership for the student employment issue. As an extension of its recommendation to consolidate job posting services, the team proposed that current job referral services be enhanced to create a comprehensive student employment center (SEC). The SEC would be a centerpiece of the campus career center, which had expertise with experiential learning programs and could assume ownership for student employment issues. The team developed the SEC's mission and described how it might organize itself around new services, programs, advocacy, and research. Given this mission, the team made a final recommendation that the career center change its reporting to the vice president of student affairs. To support this point, the team conducted brief programmatic benchmarkings against 14 universities similar to UMCP regarding placing the SEC in the student affairs division. Continuous Improvement of the Process The very structure of these teams--with the use of deadlines, management presentations, limited membership, and sponsorship--was the outgrowth of prior experiences with CQI projects at the department and division levels. There was an explicit attempt to involve many of the faculty and staff who had participated in past CQI projects and training or had shown an interest in CQI. UMCP maintained the continuity of learning during the evolution of these projects by using regular meetings of team facilitators to share lessons learned in each of the groups. During those meetings, progress would be shared, techniques evaluated, questions raised, and learning documented for future improvement. Since each of the teams was launched over an eight-week period, it was possible to pass the advice of an advanced group to a group working in earlier stages. The brief update by all team leaders on the same date at mid-semester also allowed the teams to receive some general feedback and make mid-course corrections. As the teams began to make their final presentations to the CQI council, the remaining leaders and facilitators who hadn't yet completed were invited to see and learn from preceding teams. This phasing allowed for quick adjustments in the format and process of team presentations. With all presentations now completed, the office for continuous quality improvement is working with an institutional studies staff member to conduct a multi-method evaluation of the projects. When the evaluation is finished, the CQI council will review the feedback, discuss plans for acting on the recommendations, and prepare a direction for future actions. For more information, contact: Geno Schnell, Associate Director, Office for Continuous Quality Improvement, 1131 Engineering Classroom Building, U. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; Ph: 301/4053866; Fax: 301/314-9867; Email: eschnell@umdacc.umd.edu [For for information or to subscribe to TQMHE, contact: TQM in Higher Education Magna Publications, Inc. 2718 Dryden Drive Madison, Wisconsin 53704-3086 Phone: 608-246-3591 or 800-433-0499.]