Academic Dashboard AASCU Academic Affairs Summer Meeting July 28, 2006 Kichoon Yang, Provost Northwest Missouri State University

Nomenclature Institutional (or enterprise) performance management – the application of business intelligence (capability to track, understand, and manage information across the organization), indicators, and metrics to improve organizational performance Metric – a quantified performance indicator Key performance indicator – a strategically important indicator Scorecard – a collection of metrics A balanced scorecard (popularized by Kaplan and Norton) contains the following four types of metrics: financial, customer satisfaction, internal process, and organizational learning and growth Dashboard – a visualization of scorecard information concentrating on KPI’s Northwest Missouri State University uses an academic dashboard as part of its continuous quality improvement process.

Continuous Quality Improvement Manufacturing and engineering context – simultaneously increasing efficiency and reducing variations Business context – simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction and the bottom line Educational context – simultaneously improving student learning and accountability

CQI in Higher Education Evidence or fact-based decision making Visible accountability Continuous rather than sporadic improvement process Tension between the public good and the private good

Institutional Context Three times Baldrige Award finalist Three times Missouri Quality Award winner Presidential leadership Strong institutional research office – tradition of excellence Vision and mission statements – consensus building process and Culture of Quality

Vision Statement Northwest Missouri State University will be an international leader in improving higher education. We will be a student-centered community of scholars with high expectations. Advances will be driven by our robust Culture of Quality, the use of leading edge technologies and an unyielding commitment to continuous improvement.

Dashboard Basics Visual summary of key performance indicators Action-ability Leading and lagging indicators Scalability Alignment and collaboration across the organization

Northwest dashboard gives a real-time summary of KPI’s on a single screen using the following four categories of KPI’s: 1.Academic performance – nationally normed and local 2.Student success – recruitment, freshman success and retention, graduation, and placement 3.Satisfaction surveys – student, alumni, faculty, and staff 4.Financial – ratios of FTE, SCH, and instruction cost

Northwest dashboard is color-coded relative to annually adjusted targets, and has links to: Unit level and segmented data for root cause analysis Ten year trend data Data warehouse for additional data

Provost’s Dashboard

President’s Dashboard

Additional Considerations and Caveats A dashboard is a monitoring tool, not a substitute for strategic planning and assessment – priority setting versus implementation Qualitative versus quantitative indicators – longitudinal data, trace studies, and analytical reports Inconsistent goals (ill-posed optimization problems) – e.g., graduation rate versus academic rigor Widely varying discipline-specific considerations – e.g., music and mathematics