Effectiveness is about producing desired outcomes InquiryAction Outcomes Question: How do you structure this To encourage actions that produce the desired outcomes Student Success Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

A robust Program Review process is half the battle Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

How to close the gap? Planning GapPerformance Gap Improving what we know about the organization Poor Performing College Good planning is a necessary but not sufficient condition for becoming a high performing college High Performing College Improving the ability of the organization to translate knowledge into action Planning & performance Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

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. Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College Its purpose is to inform decision making and action, and above all, to enhance student learning

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.

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 Inquiry framed toward action Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

We can’t 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

Often when there are no clear answers we need to experiment When it comes to improving performance enlightened trial and error trumps strategy-guided actions As part of our inquiry we need to encourage a culture of experimentation Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

Outcome Goal Starting Point Problem solving by experimentation does not yield shortest-path solutions

At one level we want to support inquiry everywhere How many students make it through our ESL sequence? Does a student’s math background effect performance in my economics course? Do students taking library orientation do better in English? What are the basic skills needs of students from our feeder high schools? Do students on Financial Aid persist at higher levels? What is the completion rate for MESA students compared to other STEM students? Do our Learning Communities help to increase student success? Does joining a student club help increase a student’s persistence? How do students receiving a C grade in English perform in History? Have rising book costs forced students to take fewer classes? How many high school grads visiting our campus actually enroll?

How can we increase the percentage of students completing the pre-transfer math sequence? Book Store: Would providing more open source material for developmental math courses help students persist longer? Placement Office: Does our math placement prep program help students place higher in math and do they succeed when they get there? Student Activities: Are there clubs or activities we can create that might improve persistence among pre- transfer math students? Counselors: Would pre-transfer math students perform and persist at high levels taking fewer or more units? 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? 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? Outreach: Can we work with our feeder high schools to identify early on which students are most likely to require math remediation at college? But we have to carve out time to address big questions from multiple angles