Proceedings of ICLT 2022
Collective System Design in Higher Education: Lifecycle Approach to Achieve Desired Student Outcomes
David S. Cochran; Noor O. Borbieva
Systems Engineering Center and Department of ECE, Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA; Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
International Conference on Logistics & Transport 2022, Krabi, Thailand, pp. 116-122
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Abstract
Purdue Fort Wayne (PFW), a public university in northeast Indiana (USA), faces challenges including demographic shifts, financial strain, and staff turnover. These challenges hinder its ability to achieve its mission of student success. The Student Success Standard Process Lifecycle (S3PL) uses systems insights to improve the institution’s ability to foster student success. Design: The S3PL Team uses a method called Collective System Design (CSD), which is informed by the Deming method and the Lean movement. CSD aligns workers in an enterprise around shared goals, calls on workers to define “normal” processes used to achieve those goals, and initiates continuous improvement using the “plan-do-check-act” (PDCA) cycle. To meet this challenge, the team created diverse groups of PFW personnel and conducted system design sessions and ethnographic interviews. These efforts facilitated creative problem-solving, which led to several notable breakthroughs. Findings: Several breakthroughs were critical as the Team adapted CSD for use at PFW. One breakthrough was devising the “Student Lifecycle,” which describes the stages successful students move through toward graduation. The Team focused attention on cross-unit collaboration and information flow rather than the successes and failures of individual units. University personnel were directed to define collaborative processes, diagram them on a flowchart, and verify each process. The verification method was another breakthrough and involved gathering documents from relevant units and confirming student impact. Early indicators have been positive; administrators report improvements on key student success metrics. Research limitations/implications: This project is significant because CSD had never been used at a university before. One challenge faced in the project is the diverse pathways that bring students to the university and that they take as they progress toward graduation. Some students arrive as freshmen right out of high
Keywords
System design; higher education; organizational leadership; logistics; systems engineering lifecycle
Citation
David S. Cochran; Noor O. Borbieva (2022). Collective System Design in Higher Education: Lifecycle Approach to Achieve Desired Student Outcomes. Proceedings of the International Conference on Logistics & Transport (ICLT 2022), Krabi, Thailand, pp. 116-122.