What are the most effective ways for a higher education program to become a 'lean' operation?
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$4 Answers
The Business Process Reengineering (BPR) approach of Michael Hammer may not be the current, hottest, latest thing, but is founded on solid principles and works if done right. Good luck!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Existing management practices often lead to educators and administrators focusing on expanding their span of control in order to get more resources for themselves or their departments. This is often more about internal politics than improving education.
2. Embrace Creative Commons
Make your learning materials freely available to all in electronic format. Never put learning materials into a closed repository or enter into a publishing agreement that prevents free electronic dissemination.
3. Embrace Open Standards
Break free from closed LMS, CMS, VLE systems. Communicate with students using web applications/open source software that supports open standards. Never put data into a system that only supports proprietary formats. Use standard group calendaring, project and task management systems. Use collaboration software that is aimed at the general market to benefit from economies of scale.
4. Collaborate and Participate
Actively and enthusiastically use Knol, Wikipedia, SlideShare, YouTube, Archive.org etc. to produce, rate, tag and store very granular learning materials. Share and develop these with other institutions.
5. Focus on Contact
Having created, selected and validated an extensive collection of learning resources, focus almost entirely on interactions between students and instructors. Shift staff effort from transmission to understanding and guidance. Build a culture where course materials are read and explored, and where contact time is spent questioning and debating.
6. Prioritize
Use Pareto analysis etc. to identify the most problematic elements of the curriculum and focus a deliberately disproportionate amount of resource on those.
7. Focus on the Customer
Decide which stakeholders you're serving and adapt to their priorities.
8. Be Cozy
Education is stressful. Remove unnecessary sources of stress that distract from the education process. Make sure your students do not have to worry about accommodation, safety, security, health, finance, IT support or any other non-academic elements under your administrative control. Warm buildings, fast networks, realistic schedules and friendly staff help a lot.
9. Treasure your Staff
They are your most important service differentiators. Treat them appropriately.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
I appreciate your thoughtful response to my question. I wonder if it's less 'lean' oriented and more 'open source' oriented. This may raise a related question (that you should pose or that I should pose) about the relationship between lean and open.
Do you have references for Pareto analysis and other technical items you mention in your response?
The lack of instructional design in higher-education is pathetic. Old-school model is to get subject-matter experts to teach. Unfortunately, these people rarely have the ability to design a course... or teach it.
I believe it to be most effective to pair an instructional designer with a subject-matter expert to design/develop a course (or curriculum) that is very effective and high return on investment.
Master's degree in education (Instructional Design) and 15 years experience designing/developing courses and curriculum.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$Institutions need to get back into the old make-do mindset: no more multi-million dollar building projects--they no longer please the alumni, who see right through that. If the faculty and staff get raises at all, it should be at half the rate of inflation to make up for the last couple of decades when tuition was rising at more than the rate of inflation.
And perhaps we should start to consider that maybe everyone shouldn't be in college, so that all the kids who need remediation will land where they'll be much more happy, at lower expense to all involved.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
I actually had a very good experience in both my undergraduate and graduate work. But it was over 10 years ago, and since then tuition seems to grow out of all proportion to the rest of the economy.
I'm not the only one to suggest that there are kids that are being thrust towards college who really don't belong there, that would be happier owning their own businesses, or as hairdressers or mechanics. They really don't have the desire to learn, the curiosity and drive, and certainly don't have the skills to be there. The dumbing down of the government schools is so widespread it's affecting the universities; but surely we'd benefit from having a stronger trade school track.
Was a starvation-wage graduate student
Family in higher education and very involved with both private and public institutions
I'm sorry that you've had less-than-satisfying experiences with higher ed. I read your response to my question as more of a reaction than an answer, which is OK. Before you continue to call for the college to be less accessible to citizens, I ask that you think about the role education plays in a country's health, its economic competitiveness, and the ability of its citizens to act democratically (as opposed to be acted on by their government).
Your response appears rather generic, as opposed to being targets to higher education. Can you supply some references for BPR and, perhaps, some competing methodology?
Yes, it is a generic answer, because our business processes in higher ed should be treated as business processes are in "the real world."
The difficult truth is that there are no simple formulas to become lean, no silver bullets. We must critically examine what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. We must utilize technology as the "essential enabler" (Hammer's words) that allows us to re-invent our processes.
Here are some links to examples of looking at processes and their supporting technology infrastructure in higher ed: http://www.pitt.edu/~laudato/docs/CEM9546.pdf,
http://www.pitt.edu/~laudato/iao/iao.htm