Program Improvement Process
Program improvement is a structured process for making changes that can lead to measurable and equitable improvements in student outcomes. Led by a small “core team” and facilitated by two co-leads (deans, program coordinators, department chair or other appropriate individuals), the process centers racial equity as an organizing principle, incorporates tools of improvement science and takes an emergent strategy approach to move through three phases of work: (1) understanding the problem, (2) developing a theory of improvement, and (3) conducting a small test of change.
This site contains resources for departments undergoing program review in the 2023-24 academic year. Please direct questions to Justin Dampeer (jdampeer@highline.edu).
The one-pager and Toolkit documents provide an overview of how the program improvement process works at Highline College. The Improvement Science Handbook serves as a resource for departments as they work through the process.
Core team members begin this phase by developing shared definitions of racial equity and antiracism. They then dive deeply into data from a range of sources — an optional faculty survey, student enrollment and success data from Tableau and qualitative information collected from students themselves — to surface and explore a “problem focus area.” The problem focus area is slowly narrowed to a specific “problem statement” which then becomes the focal point of the program improvement process.
During this phase core team members work together to establish a goal (or “aim”) and then develop a “theory of improvement”: a summary of how specifically they think their action/s will lead to that goal. This logic is documented in the second deliverable – the driver diagram – which also specifies an intervention (or “change idea”) with which the group plans to experiment in the next phase.
The third phase is focused on action. Faculty work to implement their intervention (change idea) in structured plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles. They document their lessons learned in the third deliverable – the PDSA form. At the end of the quarter, team members take a step back to reflect on what they learned and chart a path forward to continue the work in the maintenance phase (years 2-5). This thinking is documented in the fourth deliverable – Leadership reflection and next steps.
In the fall quarter of years 2-5 (“maintenance years”), the core team schedules a meeting to reflect on lessons learned from the previous year’s change efforts and set priorities for the coming year. The core team documents their thinking in the Updated Priorities form. As needed, the team should (a) update/conduct new analysis of quantitative data on student success and racial equity gaps, (b) reconnect and build empathy with students, (c) update/re-administer the faculty survey to understand if/how the departmental culture/mindsets have evolved, (d) select a new problem statement, (e) revise/create a new driver diagram, (f) revise/conduct a new small test of change or (g) take some other action to help them continue on their improvement journey.