From time to time, I'll post an example of improving institutional performance. I'll typically describe a real example but in hypothetical terms -- in order to avoid any unintentional misrepresentation on my part or any accusations of misrepresentation by the "real" institution. So ...
Consider a community college or public university that is having to cap enrollments in a significant number of required and other high-demand (high-enrollment) courses due to constraints on both physical classroom facilities and faculty teaching loads. Assume also that these courses have a high attrition rate which is contributing to retention issues. The problem has two performance components: capacity for access and learning accountability. An innovative solution, however, can achieve performance improvements in all six of the performance categories above described in a previous post, Six institutional performance obligations. The common course redesign strategy and the flex program and service redesign strategy can be applied to the over-enrolled, high-demand courses in question to help simultaneously improve learning outcomes, reduce attrition, increase the student/faculty ratio, and reduce contact hours (more online or hybrid course delivery). Such a solution would then address each of the six performance obligation by improving learning accountability (improved learning, lower attrition, higher retention), program accountability (increased access to courses required by all or many programs), expense accountability (lower direct per-enrollment expenses through increased student/faculty ratio), affordability of access (tuition rate stabilized or reduced by the decreased expense of high-enrollment courses), convenience of access (the convenience and flexibility of online or hybrid courses), and the capacity for access (increased classroom capacity through online or hybrid courses and increased faculty capacity through increased student/faculty ratios).
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