ThinkTank for Education

Building consensus through a Campus-wide Conversation on General Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha

Conducting a review of a university’s core curriculum can be a daunting task. Seasoned administrators know to expect a politically-charged, emotionally loaded process where many sacred cows receive uncomfortable scrutiny. It is a challenge to build an inclusive process that embraces the interests of many stakeholders, and that does not break down in acrimony or paralysis-by-analysis.

Deborah Smith-Howell, the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the University of Nebraska at Omaha turned to the university’s newly-founded Institute for Collaboration Science (ICS) for a solution. Working with the university’s General Education Task Force, ICS Professors Robert O. Briggs and Gert-Jan de Vreede designed series of workshops based on GroupSystems software. They called the series, “Campus-wide Conversations on General Education”.

On a snowy Martin Luther King holiday, Briggs and Vreede trained 16 task force members the techniques and tools for conducting the workshops. Over the next month, the university ran a series of 25 GroupSystems sessions. The two hour sessions began with the question, “What must every student know, and know how to do, when they graduate from the university?” The teams used the GroupSystems Categorizer to converge on the ideas they deemed worthy of inclusion in the core curriculum, and to organize their ideas under key themes. Then they used the Alternative Analysis tool to rate the importance of concept. Upon conclusion of the process, the 220 participants had developed more than 600 concepts for possible inclusion in the core curriculum. Negative emotions did not manifest in any of the sessions.

The Task force members met for two more 3-hour sessions where they used Categorizer to consolidate the outputs from the 25 sessions into a single non-redundant list, and to organize them under 19 key themes and several dozen sub-themes. Task Force Members divided into sub-teams to write definitions for each category and sub-category, then collected comments from their peers, and edited the definitions.

Says Dr. Briggs, “those who have gone through the review process before can’t believe the level of consensus we achieved.”

Next steps are to take the same workshop process out into the community to get input from leaders in the public and private sectors. Then a sub-team will converge on a clean draft of the new curriculum and ask for comments and elaborations from the entire campus community. The University, naturally, plans to tap into GroupSystems “magic” for this part of the process too.

Inspired by College President Carl Kuttler, St. Petersburg College in Largo Florida has created a Collaborative Lab that is attracting hundreds of local businesses and organizations for unique ThinkTank innovation sessions.  In the three years the center has been open, over 100 clients have passed through for more than 200 engagements. 

 The Collaborative Lab holds sessions on a wide variety of topics such as strategic planning, process re-design, branding/marketing, focus groups, and issue forums/consensus building.  Here’s an exerpt from a St. Petersburg Times article about the lab:  “David Feaster, the area president of Whitney Bank, said that the voting technology encouraged employees to vote candidly.  ‘If the CEO was in the room, you wouldn’t want to be the one raising your hand and saying, ‘This is a stupid idea, ‘ he said, comparing the response cards to a less-secret ballot.  Feaster was also impressed by the documentation: The Labs promise to deliver each session’s records - including minutes from brainstorming sessions, voting results and photos - by the close of the next business day. Feaster said he’s been in strategy meetings where the only documentation was papers taped to the wall.  ‘And what happens to those things?’ he said. “They get stuck in the closet.”

Read the full article from the St. Petersburg Times: “Team time: It has the place, the process and the technology”

Click here to view one of the best websites any GroupSystems customer has created to advertise their services:  The Collaborative Labs at St. Petersburg College

Professors Minh Hunh and Barbara Schuldt from Southeastern Louisiana University’s Department of Management have created a unique service learning opportunity thanks to ThinkTank. 

As part of their Systems Analysis and Design course, they are teaching students how to gather software requirements using GroupSystems collaboration technology.  To add even more impact to the course, the student-run project is for a real client, a local non-profit foodbank.  The goal is to create an inventory management product to help the foodbank, Tangi Food Pantry, run its business. 

“It’s a great match that we can provide this service to the community at no monetary cost to them, while our students are learning at the same time,” Huynh said.  “The students are not only applying their skills, but they are also interacting with people, which allows them to see the needs of a non-profit organization.”

ThinkTank helps streamline the requirements gathering process by enabling all of the stakeholders in an organization the opportunity to enter their needs simultaneously.  Participants start by reviewing and agreeing on the scope and business objectives of the project. Stakeholders then directly enter all of their own requirements. ThinkTank’s™ real-time, simultaneous idea submission greatly accelerates the process and supplements the ongoing discussions.  Stakeholders know they’ve been heard and nothing has been lost in translation by the project team. ThinkTank’s™ ability to collect ideas anonymously helps ensure complete openness.

 Read the full press release from Southeastern Louisiana University: “Mobile ThinkTank system teaches students, assists community”

On Monday, September 10 2007, GroupSystems partner Mick Blasik and Joe Walk from Penn State University’s Management Technology Group conducted a community outreach session in support of Centre County in Pennsylvania.  Over 100 people attended the session, which had a laptop at each table (20 in total) running GroupSystems.  With our software, the highly diverse group of citizens was able to prioritize quality of life issues down to a list of five in just a few hours.  Click here to read the article in the Centre County Daily that appeared about the session. (News Article)

To learn more about this GroupSystems customer: Penn State University’s Management Technology Group.

Campus Chair of the Business Department, David Grypp, at Milwaukee Are Community College shared a story with me recently about how they have streamlined their curriculum design process from two days to two hours. 

The process uses GroupSystems technology and is amazingly simple in its application.  When MACC needs to develop a new curriculum, they invite industry experts to participate in a panel or focus group.   A session leader then leads the industry team through a series of questions following the DACUM (stands for Designing A CUrriculuM) methodology.  The curriculum design methodology involves getting the industry panel to storyboard the appropriate skills needed for a graduate in the field. 

The panel uses GroupSystems software to simultaneously give input on the required Duties, Tasks, Knowlege, Skills and Traits needed to perform the occupation.  Working backward from this statement of job requirements, Professor Grypp’s team then designs a curriculum that will give their graduates the needed skills.  Since GroupSystems software enables all participants in the panel to enter their ideas on the job requirements simultaneously and instantly view the comments from others, the time needed to collect the input is collapsed dramatically. 

GroupSystems is used extensively to streamline the School of Business’ Program Assessment process at California State University at Chico.  ThinkTank helps capture feedback on their programs from industry, alumni and students.  Then, GroupSystems software helps the faculty build consensus on program goals, outcomes and measures.

Here’s what Gail Corbitt, Chair of the Accounting and MIS department had to say, “”CSU Chico has been using GroupSystems products since 1992.  We love the way meetings are more productive and we can get to the heart of issues without offending anyone.  For our assurance of learning program we have used ThinkTank^TM to brainstorm interventions given the results of our course embedded assessment activity and develop/validate the rubrics used in assessment activities.  In both cases we use the web interface to get feedback from our stakeholder groups including our Industry Advisory Board.  This has made our Business Information Systems (BIS) program current and relevant to our graduates.  As a result, nearly 100% of our graduates get jobs related to their major and our assessment efforts are documented in a readily available format for the re-accreditation team.  (We used prior products from Group Systems to develop, refine and validate our learning goals, student learning outcomes and comprehensive skill set needed by our BIS graduates.)”

Dr. Corbitt’s team has taken the program assessment process very seriously.  In fact, their approach was so widely praised they decided to turn it into a business.  Several professors created the Student Tracking and Evaluation Program  as a means to organize all of the materials needed for the Assessment Process.  ThinkTank is a key component in helping their team gather the feedback, build consensus and make decisions that are later documented in STEPS.