Effectiveness is about producing desired outcomes

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Effectiveness is about producing desired outcomes
Student Success
Outcomes
Inquiry
Action
To encourage actions that produce the desired
outcomes
Question How do you structure this
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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A robust Program Review process is half the battle
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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Planning performance
Good planning is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for becoming a high performing college
Poor Performing College
High Performing College
How to close the gap?
Planning Gap
Performance Gap
Improving the ability of the organization to
translate knowledge into action
Improving what we know about the organization
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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Institutional effectiveness Inquiry
Inquiry is a process of rigorous and systematic
thinking about professional practice , and the
context in which it occurs, in ways that question
taken-for-granted practice.
Its purpose is to inform decision making and
action, and above all, to enhance student learning
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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The role of evidence
Data do not enter a vacuum and suddenly
illuminate a hidden truth.
Data join the narrative that experts have
developed through years of observation
practice.
The narrative explains and reacts to the data and
the two coevolve to shed new light on the issues
we study.
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Inquiry framed toward action

• Process of inquiry
• Not a search for an absolute truth rather a tool
  for making better-informed decisions.

Goal Answer the questions that eliminate dead
end solutions
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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We cant get immobilized by ambiguity or too many
choices
What to do when you reach the limits of your
research and yet still face multiple choices in
how to proceed ?
Trust your intuition chose !
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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Often when there are no clear answers we need to
experiment
As part of our inquiry we need to encourage a
culture of experimentation
When it comes to improving performance
enlightened trial and error trumps
strategy-guided actions
Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College
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Problem solving by experimentation does not yield
shortest-path solutions
Starting Point
Outcome Goal
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At one level we want to support inquiry everywhere
Have rising book costs forced students to take
fewer classes?
What is the completion rate for MESA students
compared to other STEM students?
How do students receiving a C grade in English
perform in History?
Do our Learning Communities help to increase
student success?
Does a students math background effect
performance in my economics course?
Do students on Financial Aid persist at higher
levels?
How many students make it through our ESL
sequence?
Do students taking library orientation do better
in English?
What are the basic skills needs of students from
our feeder high schools?
How many high school grads visiting our campus
actually enroll?
Does joining a student club help increase a
students persistence?
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But we have to carve out time to address big
questions from multiple angles
Placement Office Does our math placement prep
program help students place higher in math and do
they succeed when they get there?
Tutoring Office Do basic skills math students
that come to us within the first four weeks of
the semester do better than those that come later?
Math Instructor Would an accelerated
curriculum/program lead to higher levels of
student learning and persistence?
How can we increase the percentage of students
completing the pre-transfer math sequence?
Math Faculty Would it be helpful to build
opportunities for our students to meet with
faculty informally outside of the classroom
would that improve student success?
Counselors Would pre-transfer math students
perform and persist at high levels taking fewer
or more units?
Student Activities Are there clubs or activities
we can create that might improve persistence
among pre-transfer math students?
Outreach Can we work with our feeder high
schools to identify early on which students are
most likely to require math remediation at
college?
Book Store Would providing more open source
material for developmental math courses help
students persist longer?