Office of Institutional Effectiveness

AQIP Action Projects

How Action Projects Function in AQIP

Action Projects were never envisioned as part of a "cycle" — a closed loop, in which an institution attended a Strategy Forum, chose three projects, completed them, and then put quality improvement efforts into hibernation until its next Strategy Forum. The first Strategy Forum and the selection of Action Projects was designed to be the kickoff for a continuous series of projects, and successfully completed projects, accumulating into a visible record of the institution's quality improvement activities.

For AQIP, the knowledge that institutions are working on a series of concrete improvement projects provides minimal evidence that quality improvement is alive at the institution. For that reason, AQIP asks institutions to always have underway, and share with AQIP at least three Action Projects. If an institution completes a project, AQIP assumes it will begin a new one, using the knowledge and skills gained from its earlier projects to select, shape, and scope the replacements.

The logic behind Action Projects is threefold.

1. Means of focusing institutions joining AQIP and working on three or four projects to devote their efforts to quality improvement; force institutions to develop the superstructure(s) necessary to organize and oversee a quality initiative; make institutions engage faculty and staff in selection of projects, and empower employees by using them on project teams; open an avenue for peer interaction, feedback, and review beginning with the first Strategy Forum.

2. Second, Action Projects provide institutions a finite and concrete place to begin their quality improvement efforts, without the extended deliberation and delay that often comes with larger strategic planning activities in higher education. For many institutions, action is the antidote to continued stagnation , and the specific choice of project is less critical than the communication of a shared sense of activity, movement, and purpose. A demonstration of shared efforts will change things for the better, and is an important result of these first projects.

3. Third, in the design of Action Projects, the institution would have time to gather data for Systems Portfolio, working towards an institutionally-understood summary of current processes and performance, and the benchmark for future improvement efforts. The concrete activity of the projects, and the fruit they bear, quickly serves to balance what might otherwise seem a long-term, rather theoretical, but essential activity with a deferred payoff, creating the Systems Portfolio. For institutions to join AQIP and spend the first three years solely gathering data and producing a portfolio has little likelihood of becoming an appealing accreditation program.

An institution, attending its second (or subsequent) Strategy Forum will have:

• already made a serious commitment to continuous improvement,
• completed at least three (and hopefully more) Action Projects,
• three or more Action Projects underway when they attend the Forum,
• have completed and kept up-to-date a Systems Portfolio describing the current organization and performance of the major work systems within their organization,
• received and studied feedback from Systems Portfolio Appraisal Report.

This is quite a different situation from an institution's first Strategy Forum, where AQIPs goal is to stimulate the institution to action, both on projects and on creation of the Systems Portfolio. At the second Forum, an institution should turn attention to larger strategic issues; clarity of mission, relation of strategies to the mission, internal processes for selecting and prioritizing strategies, mechanism for creating Action Projects, making sure they implement strategic decisions, processes for shaping and improving institutional culture. An AQIP institution should only need minimal outside help in choosing and shaping Action Projects.

NWACC Action Projects

How to Submit AQIP Project Proposals

 

 

AQIP Project Application (word doc)

Quality Council's (QC) AQIP Project Rating Sheet

Steps in the Life of an AQIP Project

 

For questions/comments on this content, please contact:  Shauna Sterling  (479-619-3136)