Measurement Plan for Higher Learning

Choose a college or university and in a blog post, follow the steps in KDP's reading to setup a measurement plan. Explain any choices or recommendations you've made.

I'll use Lansing Community College for this blog post simply because using Lawrence Technological University would have been too expected. 

Step 1: Identify and Prioritize Your Audiences

The audience for this school would be the students, both new and old, staff, faculty, local communities, other schools, government and more. I would prioritize the students above all else since that is the 'consumer' so to speak.  Faculty and staff are also important as they will be the ones educating students and maintaining the overall functioning of the university. Government should also be prioritized high as they are relied upon for grants, loans, and other funding. LCC has education alliances with many other Michigan colleges/universities so it is also important to keep that in mind. A good relationship should be maintained with rest of the audience though the focus should always be directed at and around the students.
 
Step 2: Define Your Objectives and Get Everyone on the Same Page

LCC's main objective is to prepare students for success in their chosen field. This may mean the proper education and training to fulfill a specific job or offering some students the chance to acquire and transfer credits at a lower price than a larger school. Graduation rate and the rate of employment of further education are possible measures for this.

Step 3: Establish a Benchmark

A benchmark can be created with previous information as well as those from other schools. These will allow the organization to gauge whether it has improved as well as how it measures with other schools. Because the school is smaller it may need to compare its results to specific career fields or just to those of other community colleges.

Step 4: Pick a Measurement Tool and Collect Data

Measurements can be conducted with that is being said about the organization by traditional media or over social media sites. Web analytical tools can be done to this. Graduation rates are easily figured out from existing information within the organization. Surveys can also be used to get the opinions of students, communities, employers, and other audiences.  


Step 5: Analyze the Data, Glean Insight, Make Changes, and Measure Again

Once the data is gathered it can be transformed into relevant information. This information can then be used by the college to determine what needs to be altered to better steer the school towards its goal. If something is doing poorly then a deeper examination can uncover what is causing the issue. For example a particular department could be lowering the overall graduation rate so that department should be changed in some way and then measured again to see if the changes created the desired impact.