I have implemented it in a smaller level to a homogeneous group of students and achieved a significant improvement in the academic performance (expressed in Sigma rating from 3.35 sigma to 4.4 sigma in a 6 months period between two semesters). Accordingly, an Academic Performance Management Score Card had been developed using the concept of Balanced Score Card.
Interesting topic. I would only caution that population varies in an academic setting therefore the main focus should be on knowledge and skills rather than cycle time on completing courses. What do you monitor as KPI's?
Precisely I am doing some research on this topic. What I was found is that the application of DMAIC on the causes of low performance is a very good idea. I am almosta at the end of the Defie and Measure for which I was doing a clear definition of the problem and an extensive analysis of root causes on that performance getting some important data on course characteristics, professor expertise, course syllabus and other issues related to courses of low student performance.
How can you separate populations? Do you do questionnaire at the beginning?
Yes I do. I separate student populations according to the course level in the plan of studies. Moreover, I am doing this first for geneal courses like Calculus and Chemestry. Then I will do it for the course of most low performance in each bachelor.
I have made a presentation on this topic at the World Conference on Quality and Improvement. The presentation is available on ASQ's website. If you have any difficulty, I would be happy to provide a copy of the presentation.
First, I made a CTQ Tree (Critical to Quality) at the Define stange of the Six Sigma. It is like a mathematical Equation model. (Y=a+bX1+X2+X3.........Xn). All the 'X's are the KPI's contributing to the Academic Performance of the Students. In the Measure stage, the failure pattern of the students during the past 3 semesters were captured.Consequently, the Sigma rating was calculated for the Performance of the students. Then, at the analysis stage, a Pareto Analysis was carried out to find out the vital few 'causes' contributing to the Academic Performance and a Root cause analysis was carried to find out solutions for the each problem identified. Finally, a Academic Performance Score Card ( using a Balanced score model) was designed to monitor the Performance. It gave a drastic improvement in the Academic Performance of the Students. This project was carried out during my Six Sigma Black Belt Training and I am happy to share this to all the academic communities.
Hi Arun,
I tried implementing a six sigma project at my college here in India. I am working for IBM and have an interest towards student development and tired doing this out of my own interest. If its feasible can you please guide me through your methodology and how you applied DMAIC. I am considering our Indian education system .
Regards,
The idea of implementing Lean Six Sigma is to ensure that students are happy, get good results and that Education system has proven that quality, delivery, costs are all under control.
The way is presented looks as if the students require monitoring and control to finish the schools.
So, the ones that need to be monitored are teachers and academics, training curriculum, affordability as costs, environment, accessibility and engagement in communities etc.
Only then by modifying as an example the training curriculum over several groups that are not homogenous you will be able to see that results have been improved.
Dear Arun, Good initiative... Having gained expertise at GE & Championed Six Sigma, since 1998, I am currently using Six Sigma to impact Education... Couple of papers published in Journals are uploaded... few more are in pipeline...
There are good number of references which might be helpful to all of those who would be interested & working on this area.
It will be implemented in the same fashion as we generally implement. Just the processes will be different. You can read some of my research related to six sigma. Academic approach is dependent on organizational policies. You can achieve independent six sigma level for just few students but on larger level you will be struck in policies and processes improvement of the whole organization. Which will in your case as you took 6 months for the academic portion will be taking years to reach that level.
My suggestion is try to take whole academic process of your department or of a organization and improve using DMAIC, but it will again be a very low level project for a research. You can send me your research on my email address or for any kind of help, you can contact me on [email protected]
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