Kim Pearce
We are, as educators, not always clear with our learners, what we expect of them. With a view on what we expect of learners at the completion of their program, they are able to integrate their specific course-based learning into an integrated whole, which we believe will be a much greater result than a simple collection of course competencies. The faculty that we have talked about this with have been very excited about that opportunity, to have the learners see a greater whole, than just the sum of the parts that are course competencies.
Value of Learning Outcomes Transparency
Being very clear on what we expect of learners, being very clear that we measure the demonstration of course competencies and outcomes, and that we will publish those results out— not just at the end of a measurement cycle, but also in real time—which is critically important for many audiences. The learners will be able to see how they have demonstrated course competencies—how they might demonstrate program outcomes, so that they can see where they exist within the whole bundle of courses and course competencies.
It also shows faculty where learners are really performing well, and where they need some improvement, either through different instructional strategies; different content in courses that map to certain course competencies; or they might see a whole course sequence that is either very, very strong and acknowledge that; or that might need some improvement, and so can use those data from the outcomes and competencies demonstrations to improve teaching and learning. Employers will also be able to see where learners have demonstrated outcomes very well, and where some of their growth edges are, in relation to competencies or outcomes that are specific to that industry or that discipline.
So we see many different, very positive outcomes of this work, and it takes some courage to say that we are going to publish the outcomes externally, and let our audience, our external audiences, judge us on how well we do what we say we are going to do.
Stage One
There has been a learning outcomes transparency core team that has met for over a year now, conceptualizing what learning outcomes transparency is, for Capella University, and for our faculty, for our instructors. And we have built out the stages in which we believe we can best accomplish learning outcomes transparency over the course of several years. So, we are really just in the first stage of that plan now, which is to build all of our capstone courses, or capstone, or the end-of-program experiences at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, to very explicitly measure program outcome demonstration by our learners.
So that is the first stage, although we want to eventually get to a fully embedded assessment model, because we know that program outcomes, and all program outcomes, will not be sufficiently demonstrated at a capstone level, only because there is only so much time that you can spend in one course.
So, if there are ten outcomes, which is likely in a ten-week course, (they) might not have significant or meaningful opportunity to demonstrate all of those outcomes very well. So, a better approach could be to have different milestones across a program, or throughout the course work, that capture outcomes-demonstration for different outcomes, rather than all at the end. And so we can do some more formative assessment that way, to improve not only the curriculum, but that individual learner’s learning and competency demonstration, because they know where they sit in relation to the final goal.
Goal of Learning Outcomes Transparency
The whole goal is to start publishing the outcomes demonstration results in 2009. And when we publish those results, we are committed to a year’s worth of data. So that, for this first stage, where we will ask instructors to assess program outcomes at the capstone level, we need to have those courses analyzed and revised, to meet that goal by January, 2008.
So, it is a pretty aggressive timeline, and we have plans to meet that goal. It is going to require a lot of teamwork and collaboration, and some significant energy, support, leadership, and guidance to make that happen. So it feels—it is very ambitious. It is an aggressive timeline, and we are preparing to meet that goal. But, it is going to require a lot from us.
Faculty Response
There is so much to say about learning outcomes transparency, the one thing that I am probably most excited about is that, as a core team, we have laid out these plans; we have anticipated the benefits and the outcomes. And yet, when we bring our plans and our ideas to the faculty, they make links that we did not believe could be made, at first. For instance, the link between understanding outcomes demonstration and teaching and learning improvement, or the whole learner experience. The faculty that know about this project, right now, have internalized these ideas that it has taken us months to get to, and are moving ahead in ways that we really could not have seen coming. Their enthusiasm and their excitement is contagious, and I talk to faculty and I get energized about the work again. And I am just so excited for our faculty and for our learners to be a part of this. It is really—it is a revolution and it is an exciting time for assessment, in general, and it is an exciting time to be at Capella.
Keith Koch
The ten-week project was a project initiated out of our mock self-study, where we learned that our twelve-week quarters were unusual. Not that they were bad, but the site reviewers identified that we were different than other organizations, since most of the organizations on the quarter system were ten weeks long. Mike Offerman and the leadership said, “What if we were to go to ten-week, what sort of benefits would we receive from becoming more in-line with the rest of the academic community on the quarter system?” We thought that by reducing our quarters from twelve weeks to ten weeks we might be able to positively influence persistence.
They also realized that this twelve-week calendar was also impacting faculty satisfaction—faculty do not have much of a break between each quarter—and our operation’s effectiveness. The group that runs the next quarter, the academic operations, the registrar’s office, the enrollment services team, and the IT team, did not have a point in time where they could take a breather, or do that maintenance that they needed between quarters, because there was no time.
Resize vs. Redesign
Resize was a term that we came up with to ensure that we did not truly redesign all the courses. We did not want to change the competencies; we did not want to change the outcomes of the programs. We simply wanted to take the course from twelve weeks long to ten weeks long.
We examined each course, aligned them all to the competencies that those courses were supposed to have taught. Then, all the activities that were supposed to have been taught during that course, we would map to each of those competencies. If there were activities that were not mapped to one of those competencies, those were an opportunity to cut from the course.
We had to come up with a methodology that we were going to do something consistently to all of them, but achieve this larger goal, which was learner persistence and faculty satisfaction.
Scope
Over six-hundred-and-fifty courses were resized between April of 2005 and July of 2006, when ten-week launched.
Some of the scope items were to balance the workload across all of the courses; make them consistent from a look and feel standpoint, as well as items like the syllabus, so that they were organized in the same manner. Then, from there, we could really make decisions as to which activities were cut from the course, if they were either duplicative (covering the same competency twice in the same course), or they were not. There were activities in the courses that were not actually mapped to certain competencies; those were areas where we had the ability to make a decision as to whether we would cut that activity from the course without damaging the integrity of what we were trying to teach.
Surprises
A couple of things that they find most surprising is, first of all, that we were able to accomplish it in the timeframe that we were. In the AQIP visit, I presented on ten-week and resize, and one of the things that they noted was we completed the project within the timeframe. We not only decided we were going to do something, we decided how we were going to go about doing it, and we actually completed it within that sixteen to eighteen month period of time.
Another surprise would be how much quality we built into the courses, while we were trying to keep the scope to just resizing them. From an assessment standpoint, we built rubrics into all of the courses, to objectively measure each of the learner’s assignments on criteria that were part of the learning objectives. This made it easier for the faculty to grade, but it also gave learners a lot more feedback about how they were doing on their assignments. It was a piece of scope that was added late in the project, but it was something that we accomplished for all of six-hundred-and-fifty-plus courses.
Insights
Another item that I have heard since, and may not have been an intended outcome of the three goals that we talked about: the learner persistence, the faculty satisfaction and the operational effectiveness. We have had enrollment success actually, because learners are able to enroll in the programs during those weeks that we are on break.
So, for instance, we used to start our winter quarter on January second. Well, that meant a lot of prospective learners did not have a chance to enroll, because they were either on Christmas holiday or the enrollment directors were not able to get in touch with them, to get them signed up on time. But now that we start on January eleventh, instead of January second, we actually saw an increase in enrollment in winter quarter.
I am really proud about the ten-week project, not only because my team played such an instrumental role in achieving this lofty goal, and all of this work, but I do not think we have seen all the benefits of ten-week just yet. There are lots of unintended consequences that continue to arise. For instance, we are able to take the courseroom down, now, for upgrades in minor patches, much more regularly than we were before. So, that intangibly has made the experience better for learners and faculty.
Kim Pearce
We revised the grading policy so that we would be explicit in what we expected from our instructors’ grading of learners’ work. And that is that we expect the learners to demonstrate course competencies. And so, we expect instructors to grade the demonstration of those competencies. And there were three motivating factors to revise the grading policy; one, was to comply with our outcomes-based model, which translates into course competency models at the course level.
The second factor that motivated us for the change was transparency. We want all instructors and learners to know exactly what those grading criteria are for the projects, the case studies, the research papers, in each of the courses. And then, the third factor, related to the second one, is really the belief that assessment can drive learning. So, that if learners understand exactly what is expected of them (in their research paper, for example), that they can better gauge their learning, in order to prepare themselves to demonstrate course competencies. So that, if we are all clear on the final product, we will have an easier time getting there.
Outcomes
There are at least two outcomes of the policy revision that we saw. One was that it really made visible how much instructors were grading outside of the course competencies, things like participation, or timeliness of project submission, which might be important pieces to grade, but does not really align with our competency-based, outcomes-based models. An outgrowth of that outcome was that when we were not grading things like writing or critical thinking, which to our faculty are extremely important, it raised that issue that, ”Well, why is not writing included in our course competencies, if it is critically important to learners’ success and the successful demonstration of other course competencies?” Same thing with critical thinking. So that the faculty then became aware that those pieces (specifically, writing critical thinking) should be in many more courses than had been, before the grading policy was revised.
We have actually seen, through course evaluations, that learners appreciate seeing those grading criteria upfront. So, we have seen an improvement in the learner experience that way, and we have also seen faculty comments that congratulate us, as a university, in making those grading criteria explicit and upfront, for their sake, as well as the learners’ sake. So, we are really happy about that outcome, which really was not anticipated. And I think it just goes to show that assessment can drive learning, as well as experience.
Rubric Grading Tool
We decided to go with rubrics, and in some cases, we have checklists, because those are helpful in showing learners and instructors the specific course competencies, and the grading criteria associated with those course competencies, along with the levels of performance for those course competencies. So, it is a basic rubric or checklist, and in our environment, because we are Web-based, we have made this an interactive rubric. So that, we have criteria on the left hand side that map to our course competencies for that particular assignment. We have, across the top, our levels of performance that indicate different levels of proficiency, or demonstration of those course competencies.
Instructors can use these rubrics to judge learners’ work, or their assignments. And because it is electronic, they can simply click on the cell that best represents the learner’s demonstration of that particular criteria; and once they click on that cell, then automatically some HTML code is pushed out to the learner, so they see that they met a certain criterion, at a certain level, and get some explanation of that.
The faculty then also has the ability to write free form comments. And our motivation for using this tool was—well, we had a couple of motivations. One was, it complied with our desire for transparency of grading criteria, and how those map to course competencies. The other was an administrative improvement for the faculty, so that they could more quickly provide that formative feedback, specific to criteria to the learners. And then third—and the thing that we were most excited about—was what becoming more administratively efficient meant for us, that the faculty could have more time, and more energy to give that really rich formative feedback to the learners, that they so need and crave, in order to improve their learning.
This is a very innovative function that we added to our online courseroom. So, not many institutions at all are using this technology, and in fact, we built this ourselves. We understand that other online course-management systems are building on this functionality. I cannot say that we are the first, but we are pushing some of our vendors in that direction, and they are getting onboard with it, but we built this tool ourselves.
Results
The clickable rubrics and checklists are in almost every one of our courses, and so, because we are collecting data from those tools on every graded assignment, we have millions of data points that would allow us to map criteria to course competencies, and see where each learner at the criterion-level, how they are performing against course competencies. So, it is very exciting from the data-analytics perspective. We know that many, many faculty really enjoy the rubrics, and how much more efficient they are, and how much more transparent their grading is to their learners. And we know that many learners have had an improved experience because of the rubrics, and that they are getting formative feedback that is really helpful for them, and they are getting the rich feedback necessary to improve their learning.
Insights
Since I have been here, we have made so many advances; it is almost hard to count. We went from not (from a central location, at least) not being able to influence grading, or competency demonstration, or outcomes demonstration, to now having dedicated staff that supports the faculty to improve our grading, to improve the way we assess competencies and outcomes. And it shows an institutional commitment to assessment, and it has really set the groundwork, and the pace, for what is happening in the next few years for us. And I am just thrilled to be a part of it. It is a fantastic opportunity to influence not only our learners and our instructors, but all of the academic community at large.
John Moye
Essentially, Capella decided, a few years ago, that they wanted to go to a centralized model of curriculum development, which means instead of having everything created in schools, according to various models, and little (if any) consistency, they were looking to come up with a much more consistent delivery model, as well as a curricular model. So, the decision was made to go to centralized process, kind of unusual in higher ed. Usually, you do not find that. But in this case, because we are an online university, we cannot walk into a classroom and make it up as we go along. We have to plan everything out ahead of time, and make deliberate decisions about what should work, what could work, and then evaluate its effectiveness down the line.
So, what we basically provide in our office is the format for the curriculum. We ensure that everything is in competency-based model, which is what we follow. Then, we make sure that it demonstrates all of the attributes that our curriculum development policy states that the curriculum should demonstrate. So, essentially, it is one large quality-assurance process. What we are trying to do is to make sure that we build curriculum that delivers the outcomes that the external environments are looking for, ensure that we deliver those in an effective, efficient manner. And so, what we have had to come up with, since no one else has done it, is criteria to actually evaluate curriculum. We have come up with a set of criteria we put in place last year, we have been using it, testing it, and it seems to be working very well right now. And it basically emerges right out of our curriculum development policy.
So, when we finish a program and send it forward, we can say, with confidence, that this program reflects the standards that we say we have, throughout the university. Then we can make sure that all curriculum in the university rise to that same level. At the same time, we have different disciplines, so the way they rise to that same level has to vary by the structure of the discipline. So, that is another piece that we are working into it, at this point. But, probably the biggest contribution or change that we put in place in the last year has been to put in an effectiveness planning, evaluation, monitoring process—where we actually gather data on the performance of my department, on the performance of curriculum, on the performance of courses—and use that information to feed back into the system and improve it.
One of the things that we did this last year was we discovered we were asking some questions in the wrong part of the process. And oddly enough, we were not getting answers to those questions, because the people did not have the information. So, we changed that, after doing some careful analysis, and discovered that if we moved it further down on the process, then it did not hold us up at the front end, and people actually had the information, when we asked them for it. Well, that came out of our assessment process, where we were looking at how often the courses are getting through the curriculum committee on the first try, and this sort of thing.
So, what we try to do then is use that information to really make the process more dynamic. Two years ago we put one hundred and seventy two courses (I believe it was) through the new and revised course process. In the first quarter of this year, we put one hundred and three through that same process. Last year we created sixteen new programs throughout the year, this year we created sixteen new programs in the first quarter. So, we have essentially quadrupled our capacity, by making sure that we have an efficient process, but at the same time providing the structure to assess the curriculum and the process, to make sure it lines up with what we say we are doing.
Celeste
We have spent about a year-and-a-half creating an authoring system, which is basically a process-flow control system, which means that when the school decides that they want to have a course designed, they give us basic information about that course. They put it in this authoring system, which we call Celeste. It goes forward to my office, we add to that information the curricular information that we gather from the school as we are working with the subject matter experts. Then, that same document goes to the curriculum committee. That next document goes to the course development side, and essentially, one document is flowing all the way through, with parts being added to it. So, it builds a great deal of consistency into the system, at the course development level.
This is all done electronically. So if we have to send it to a subject matter expert that is in Florida, it is a couple of key strokes, as opposed to putting in an envelope and sending it off. And sometimes these analyses are one-hundred-and-seventy pages long, so what the system does is really make it possible for us to work at the capacity that we are working, and control the quality, and ensure that mistakes do not inadvertently creep in.
Challenge
One of the challenges that we have is finding a way to have non-curriculum trained people see the structure of the curriculum; this is exceedingly difficult to do, because we simply do not have the kind of visualization tools that we would need to have to see, for instance, an entire grid come on one page. So, what we have come up with is a form that allows us to see various views of the curriculum. In this case, there is about six different views that we look at; we have to see them one at a time. We are hoping, in the future, to have another system, where we could see it in one page, but right now, we just take one view at a time.
Kate Hussin
Capella originally started out contracting for library services with the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and then most recently moved to a special group of library services providers at Johns Hopkins University. But because of Capella’s growth—and some plans that we had for making improvements to library services—as well as the need for the librarians to be able to work more closely with faculty, with school leadership, with colleagues in course development, and curriculum, we decided it was time to move to the third phase of the Capella University library, and bring library services in-house, and have them managed and provided directly by Capella University staff.
Last June, Capella then initiated a project to bring library services in-house, and that meant that, over the course of about six months, we would need to hire ten librarians, and transition all processes and services and operations from Johns Hopkins University to our in-house staff. So, that is what we did. That was, for me, the most exciting piece of the project—was recruiting and hiring our staff of ten librarians. We were able to get them on-board, and this group of experienced and highly qualified librarians jumped right in, learned the ropes, and made sure that our services and service levels maintained a high-quality, throughout the transition.
Another key point, or another key success of the project, was transitioning our inter-library loan services, again from Johns Hopkins University, to a new provider at the University of Michigan. So, we seamlessly transitioned all of those services from Johns Hopkins to Michigan with some facilitation by our in-house staff.
We used our library scorecard, during this whole transition process. Our scorecard measured some things, like reference response time, inter-library loan turnaround time, as well as usage of library services in general. So, we used this to track certain aspects of our services and service levels, to make sure that they were maintaining a high quality throughout the transition.
Challenges
I can think of two challenges with an online library. One is that, of course, not everything is online. So, we have to figure out ways to put our learners in touch with materials that they cannot get on line. One of those is through our inter-library loan service, which is facilitated through the University of Michigan libraries. Another is helping learners figure out if there is a place locally that they can access, or go, to get that information, and have it be useful to them.
The other challenge that I can think of is that our librarians do not develop a face-to-face relationship with our learners. Everything is done through email, and through the phone, so we have to be very careful and very intentional about developing a rapport and relationship, and getting to know our learners’ needs, through different channels other than face-to-face.
Effect on Faculty
It has affected faculty, because we have the liaison responsibilities for the librarians. So, they are beginning to develop stronger relationships with the faculty in each of the schools, working towards partnering with them in the courseroom, and at colloquia, helping them refine and enhance the librarian’s assignments within the courseroom. Also, just helping faculty to know what is available in the library, and how faculty can use it for themselves, and also how to direct the learners to the library, so that their discussion postings and their papers are of a higher quality.
Improvements
Increasing the number of reference librarians allowed us to make number of improvements. One of those was reducing the reference request response time. Johns Hopkins required a twenty-four hour turnaround time, but our staff of librarians is currently responding to reference requests in an average of about two-point-three business hours.
Another key improvement was that, most of the time with Johns Hopkins, learners had to leave a voice message, instead of talking directly to a reference librarian. But currently, only about ten percent of our calls go to voicemail, and most of those are calls that come in after business hours. We have also been able to add some weekend reference hours, to respond to the request and growing need of learners for weekend reference hours.
Another improvement is the liaison responsibilities that each reference librarian has been assigned. Each reference librarian is assigned a certain school, so they develop relationships with faculty and learners in that school, to collect information on resource needs, identify service gaps, and also to communicate, and just open the channels of feedback and interaction between the schools and the librarians.
In addition, we have expanded our instruction offerings for learners, specifically around information literacy. That means we have developed things like tutorials and modules and colloquia sessions that really focus on giving learners the skills they need to find information and use information and evaluate information. And that carries on through the courseroom, but also throughout their professional lives. This information literacy effort is a collaborative effort, it is ongoing, and we will be working with the faculty, with curriculum and course development to integrate this throughout the university.
Insights
I think one of the most interesting aspects is that we are totally online, we have no book collection yet we are able to offer the complete range of services that learners would get in any other library, but through different channels. The fact that we were able to do this successfully and seamlessly, moving from one way of providing library services, to another way of providing library services, and we completed the project two months ahead of schedule. So, we were not only successful in completing our goal of maintaining high quality library services throughout the transition, making some improvements right off the bat, but we got it done ahead of schedule.
Karen Viechnicki
Prior to this, we had been talking about the notion of faculty management, and in fact, we have changed the term to make it more inclusive, and to talk about faculty engagement. Engaging faculty as a community—and that is both an opportunity and a challenge in a distributed environment, because most of our faculty are among fifty states, and in some European countries. And so, how do we build a community, how do we engage them in the process? Prior to 2007, we had about two events per year, where we brought in a large number of faculty, and we attempted, at that point, to both provide them with information relative to Capella, and what was new, what was different; and also to engage them in some thinking about how we can refine ourselves. When the strategic plan came out for 2007, that kind of initiative was not supported. So, then we had to look at ways where with our resources (which were limited) with our resources, how could we continue to engage faculty? So, with the help of Jim Wold and John Byrne, we pulled together the five deans, as part of the faculty management steering committee, and identified five initiatives that would, in fact, be able to be used, both across the university, as well as be embedded in the schools.
Philosophy of Education Initiative
Our initial efforts were around Chris Cassirer, with his working with the educational philosophy. As you know, we have had a concept paper around the scholar-practitioner that has been in place for several years, and now what we are saying is, “Okay, now how do we actually execute upon that, how do we implement that scholar-practitioner model, and make it part of an educational philosophy that would be clear, both to faculty as well as to learners?”
Teaching Standards Initiative
The second initiative that we are working on is one that involves best practices. What are effective instructional practices in the courseroom, what do faculty need to use, in order to be able to be effective, how to be an effective mentor? And that project has been led by Kurt Lindberg. And so, there was a small group of faculty that were brought in for about a two-day work session. The individuals that had been identified were a Harold Abel scholar, the professional distinguished scholars, and other strong faculty from the five schools. And they spent two days talking about this, and out of that, then, came some results, which were identified practices. One thing that we know is that faculty want to have input into the process. So, we are doing a number of what we call Road Shows, which are to go out to various schools, to various units. We take the work back out to colloquia, and re-engage the faculty, and say, “This is what we talked about the last time.” So, in Jacksonville, a week ago, we had a number of faculty, who were continuing to add to the best practice discussion. Out of that, we expect that there is going to be some sort of a white paper. Then, that we will be able to share.
Faculty Management and Leadership Initiative
Harry McLenighan and Barbara Butts Williams are continuing to develop chairs. The role of faculty chairs has been increasingly more important at Capella, and we have asked them to take on a lot of responsibilities. Oftentimes, these individuals come to the role with varying degrees of management and supervisory skills. And so, how do we get them up to speed? How do we engage them with the kind of technology that they need? How do we provide them opportunities to learn how to coach faculty and give them feedback? So, that has been a continuing project, and we are going to be bringing in some faculty, sometime this fall, to continue those discussions, along with the learning outcomes transparency, because we have had a separate initiative around the learning outcomes transparency. And one thing we have to be sure about is that we coordinate this among faculty leadership and faculty, so that the faculty do not get ahead of the leadership, or vice versa.
Operations Systems and Management Initiative
Another area that we are looking at is an area that has been led by Valerie Perkins which is essentially identified as, you know, what are all the things that we ask faculty to do at any one time? And, in terms of Capella, or any organization, we do not have a clear master calendar. So sometimes, there are a lot of requirements, or responses, that all fall on the same day, or fall within the same week. Sometimes we do not pay attention to the startups, the close of a quarter, the fact that there is a colloquia. And so, we put expectations on faculty that may be unrealistic. So we need clarity, and we are looking at ways to identify one master calendar. We, in fact, have gotten a small amount of money to pilot something, and perhaps this would be the answer to that question.
Metrics and Project Progress Initiative
Lastly, then, is the area that has been headed up by Garvey House, which is metrics, which is okay. We have all these initiatives going on. How, in fact, do we put together some sort of dashboard, so that we can show that we are moving the dial, and that we are engaging faculty more, that they are involved in more innovative kinds of ideas and strategies, and they feel more engaged with faculty leadership? Those are the data that we have found out through the climate survey, which is that, you know, they still express a desire to be more highly engaged and involved in innovative projects.
Results
We are seeing results with the educational philosophy. We expect that it will be finished in the next couple of weeks, and it will be a document that we will be able to live with, we hope, for about a year. And then we will come back, and we will review it, and see if it still makes sense to folks. In terms of the best practices, I think we will be expecting to close that one out Q-four. In terms of the leadership development, that has part of a bigger blueprint agenda, and it actually is going to flow into 2008, because we do see a need to have leadership development, not just for the chairs, but assistant deans, associate deans, and deans as well. And so we are hoping that we can find resources for that. The managing of the calendar will be an ongoing process, and the metrics, I think, will in some ways be the most challenging, because a lot of this is more affective, it is more qualitative, it is more anecdotal. The proof that we have is in the attitude of the faculty when we engage with them and, of course, it is only a small percentage. The faculty that we see regularly are the faculty at colloquia, and oftentimes they are the same people who come back, but the level of engagement is very high around academic topics. They do not express unhappiness around some of the same issues that they might have expressed unhappiness with in the past. And I think we are doing a better job, overall, in the organization, of communicating the changes that we are making, so that there is fewer surprises.
What I am most proud of is the deans taking the initiative, and providing the leadership. With the organization, and the way it is evolving, the deans are going to become increasingly visible within the organization; and it is going to give them an opportunity to show their leadership. So, I am most proud of their moving the agenda along.
Wilson Garland
ASAP is really the program and process that we put in place for developing and launching new programs and specializations. The reason we did it in 2007 was that we were just coming off of a couple of years where we really pulled back on new program and specialization development. A lot of that had to do with we had some major projects in place, one being the 10-week project where we were comprehensively going through and restructuring our whole curriculum to the 10-week structure. So, when it came to the core resources that we use for program development and specialization development a lot of those were tied in up making those changes and even the faculty involved in making sure that the courses as we recast them still met all the outcomes and competencies.
As we came into planning for 2007, we realized coming off of the 10-week process we really had a lot of terrific new program and specialization ideas that we really felt we needed to take advantage of to better serve the markets that we serve. We also had a lot of resources in place coming after the 10-week project that we felt were good resources to have in place for new program development and so on. So, as a result of having so many things that we really wanted to capitalize on we felt that it was important to really step back and take a full, across the university, a cross functional approach to how we were going to be launching new programs and specializations.
So, we pulled together a cross functional team across all the key functions that have an impact on launching new programs and looked at okay, how can we improve this process and how can we do a better job of doing it well and making sure that we had the quality controls in place and different processes that would feed the quality and effectiveness of what we are trying to do, so that is what we did.
Process
One of the first things we did is really take kind of a market approach to what we were trying to do from a new programs and specializations area. So, looking across the portfolio or array of programs and specializations that we have serving each of our markets we looked for new opportunities, gaps in the program array that we had, or opportunities even to recast or redevelop some of the programs that we had that either were in need of revision or we saw a different opportunity out in the marketplace. So, we looked across all the different program areas that we were serving and said, what are the core areas that we need to build up and develop some new programs?
I think we set out with a goal of doing 20 new programs and specializations over 20 months. In the end we had so many good ideas and so many opportunities that we for 2007 have launched 27 new specializations and seven new programs. So, the scope of the project really grew as we realized how many opportunities we had to capitalize on needs out there in the marketplace.
One of our big concerns was we did not want to be biting off more than we could chew and really be able to accomplish in a quality way. So, that was a core part of our process is really understanding what was the organizational capacity to do this and do this well. So, part of our process is to have gating reviews at various points along the process, where we get together as a new product steering committee to say okay, here are the new programs or specializations that we have coming up. They have to go through a concept gate, a development gate, and a launch gate, before we are ready to say that they are ready to go. At each of those gates we are also, not just looking at the individual projects, but at the resources that we have deployed across all of the programs and specializations to say do we have enough resources in the right places to ensure that we are doing this in the right way. So, that is part of the rigorous process that we have put in place to ensure the quality as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of what we are doing with new programs.
Quality
I think the strength comes from this being really truly a cross functional effort. So, we have faculty involved right from beginning. We also have the business management people involved to really define the market need and to make sure that we are serving a need that is out there in the marketplace, because that is core to quality for us. For us quality is about outcomes and we need to make sure that we are serving people, specific people, out there in the marketplace that have specific needs for specific outcomes.
So, that upfront definition part is really important. We put a lot of focus on the concept phase, because that is really where we assess is this right for Capella, is it right for the marketplace, and have we put the right kinds of thought behind what this program or specialization is going to deliver? Then beyond that it also crosses all functions within the organization. Everything from the curriculum development office, obviously faculty I mentioned before, but they are very involved throughout the process. Course development, regulatory is a huge important step for us in launching all new programs and speculations, because it is not just at the accreditation level, but also in each state that we deal with has a slightly different way that they handle new programs and specializations. So, we have a number of people in the regulatory area dedicated to just doing the ASAP process.
Role of Faculty
I think one of the things about this project is we tend to think of it as a university project or a business management project where we decided we are going to launch a bunch of new programs and specializations. One of the things is after we decided that new program development was going to be one of our core initiatives there was really a lot of excitement and enthusiasm generated across the organization, but particularly amongst the faculty. I think that they are the ones that are really closest to the marketplace and to our learners and prospects. They were the ones that really were able to generate a lot of terrific ideas.
I think in our first list of potential opportunities we came up with there were probably close to 100 different programs and specializations that we thought boy, this would really be great for us to launch this new program and specialization. When we looked at the list it was really reflective of a lot of the knowledge and thought that faculty had put into what can Capella deliver to the marketplace that would be impactful.
So, the faculty really have had a lot of investment and energy in this whole process. It is really exciting to see people take an idea from the beginning and turn it into something that is truly amazing. Some of these programs and specializations start from such a little idea but they really develop into really world-class market leading programs that are really unique out there in the marketplace.
Surprises
There are really two surprises and they are sort of related. The first surprise was boy, how big a challenge this was going to be. Even for some of the specializations that we probably had the farthest along there was a lot of learning as we went, initially as we were developing the process, because we were trying to develop the process at the same time we were trying to use the process initially upfront. So, in order to make sure we were doing it well and really laying the groundwork for the future programs and specializations that are going to come along, it took us a little longer to lay that groundwork and get that framework put in place.
But I think once we did, I think the surprising part and the exciting part is that we were able to really see the potential of the process and the program to really help us to identify where the future programs and specializations were going to be, as well as then really having a good process and strong collaboration across the organization to make it happen. I think when we initially set out to do it we thought we would be able to tackle the scope, but I think we were surprised at how quickly we were able to really launch a lot of really big new programs and specializations that will have a big impact for Capella and their learners.
Insights
We have grown tremendously as an organization. When I think back to some of the initial programs and specializations that we launched when I was first joined Capella it was very cross functional, but it was a very small entrepreneurial effort. When I look at what we have been able to do now where really designing and developing and revising programs has been such a core part of what we do, we have resources across the organization dedicated to doing it and doing it in a quality way.
So, in the past we did not have the same types of resources and capacity and things like curriculum development, course development, and certainly I think the faculty and the breadth of faculty that we have now makes it a whole different process. I think the fact that we have so many faculty who are experts in so many different areas and can collaborate both within the faculty and then across the organization to really take a new program or specialization idea and develop it into something that is really unique and differentiative for Capella and the marketplace is something that is really exciting. It is exciting to see that Capella has developed into an organization that can really do this well and really lead the industry in developing new programs and specializations.
We started out the project with a lot of people from different functions who did not really deal with each other very often, but it was more on a sporadic basis because as I mentioned we had not really launched a lot of new programs and specializations in the prior two years. So, when we first got everybody together there was a little anxiety about how many people should we have on the team, do we have the right players in the team, and all those sorts of things.
One of the things I am proud of and I know that we as a team are proud of is how well we were able to come together with so many disparate functions and really be able to collaborate and put together a good process for developing, not just programs and specializations, but the business moving forward over the long-term.