What is the AQIP Category Improvement Project?

It is a project begun in December 2007, intended to allow all AQIP stakeholders to collectively help AQIP improve the items that comprise its current nine Categories. It is organized as a Wiki (similar to collective works like Wikipedia) that allows anyone to suggest improvements in the Categories by going to http://AQIP.pbwiki.com/ and making the additions or deletions they believe will make the Category items better. It also allows anyone to comment on any of the Categories.

The project goal is to present a revised set of AQIP Category items by the April 2008 Higher Learning Commission Annual Meeting, to allow AQIP organizations and reviewers to reach consensus on the proposed changes (in April and May 2008), and settle on a revised set of AQIP Categories by July 1, 2008. These new Categories will be mandatory for use in Systems Portfolios submitted for appraisal beginning June 1, 2009, but institutions can begin using them at any time after they are formally adopted and published.

Where did the AQIP Categories come from?

When we first designed AQIP, over 100 higher educators and quality experts participated in the creation of the AQIP Categories and their respective items. We crafted this set of nine Categories to serve as buckets or baskets into which we could sort similar processes that exist at all colleges and universities. We then created items about processes, results, and systematic improvement, identifying each with a label (e.g., 1P4, 5R2) to indicate the Category, item type, and item number. Each item consisted of one or more open-ended how or why questions that would be appropriate for any higher education organization, regardless of level, type, control, or mission, to ask itself.

Why do the AQIP Categories need improvement?

When we did this original work in 1999-2000, we hoped that every item we created would stimulate participating organizations to discover and describe their key processes, to identify or choose measures that reveal how well each process performs, and to think through how to use performance results systematically to target those processes needing improvement. We did our best, but time and experience has shown that we weren’t perfect. Like all processes, AQIP can be improved, and now we need to focus on how better, tighter, more probing, less redundant Category items can help.

What is wrong with the current Category items?

Most are fine, and have proven their value in stimulating organizations to ask themselves tough, revealing questions leading toward improvement. Collectively, the items help an organization ask itself Are we doing the right things to achieve our goals? and Are we doing those things as well as we could?

But not every Category item works as well as it might. Some are vague, and confuse people. Some ask several questions, and would be easier to work with if the questions that compose them were asked in separate items. A few ask questions that don’t actually produce a thoughtful discussion or analysis. Some items are redundant, and invite an examination that has already been stimulated by another item. We might cut some, revise others, combine a few, and split a few apart — and make the resulting set more useful and easier to work with.

What about the Context items? Are they open for revision in the same way as the Process, Result, and Improvement items?

Yes, but we may need to rethink them more fundamentally than the others. When we created the original set of Category items, we created Context items last, using them to ask for essential contextual information necessary to understand how an organization’s processes operated.

For example, the processes used to hire and manage employees may be very different in organizations with 50 or 500 employees; knowing this context may help readers understand why an organization has chosen to hire, orient, review, reward, or develop personnel the way it has.

We never intended Context items to be appraised as strengths or opportunities, nor did we expect organizations to devote many of the 100 pages in their Portfolio explaining the context for their processes, results, or improvement systems. But Systems Appraisal teams have often reported the urge to provide feedback on organizations’ responses to these items, and often those responses constitute 10% or more of a Portfolio.

So AQIP is looking to your suggestions to improve this whole area. Do we reduce the Context items (perhaps to one — Provide the context to understand what you say about the P, R, and I items in this Category. or Describe your organization's level of maturity on this Category.)? Do we drop them completely? If we keep them, should we encourage Systems Appraisers to give organizations feedback on their responses to Context items?

Can we propose additional Category items?

Yes. There may be items we should have included from the outset, or others that we should now add because of the changing nature of the higher education enterprise. Critics have noted that the Category items seem a bit “light” in dealing with organizational finance and budgeting, or with extended operations (off-campus sites and distance education). But we don’t want the total number of items to become unwieldy; a 100-page Systems Portfolio ought to be able to contain the responses to the items an institution addresses in depth.

Are there limits on revising the Category items?

Yes there are. We want to maintain AQIP’s current style of inquiry — open-ended how and why questions that honestly cause an organization to explore whether how it now does things makes sense, given its mission and situation. We don’t want to switch to questions that “beg an answer,” include hidden assumptions, or force institutions to adopt others’ specific processes.

We want to keep AQIP’s strong focus on key processes and the performance results those processes produce. And we want to keep the universality of the current set of items. The Category items ought to provide a means for organizations of very different kinds to communicate with each other about the things they have in common — processes, results, and their techniques that drive improvement.

How big a change in the Categories does AQIP envision?

We don’t want to set off a major overhaul of the nine Category scheme — although we might find that everyone agrees we need to change a Category’s name, expand a Category’s scope, or add a Category that we neglected to create in the beginning.

But more likely, we envision a 2008 revision that will perhaps affect 5 – 10% of the Category items, mostly in minor ways. We expect that the revised Categories will look very similar to the current set. An institution that already has its Systems Portfolio together ought to be able to tweak it to fit the revised Categories with minimal effort. And we expect that existing Systems Appraisers will be able to absorb and incorporate the change into their work without disruption — or additional training.

Will revision of the AQIP Categories occur again?

We recognize that this current “2008 revision” of the Categories can’t the last: the issues and challenges facing higher education will continue to change, and the AQIP Categories need to keep up with them. But how — and on what schedule — we create an ongoing process for updating the Categories are questions we’d like everyone to consider and help us answer. One possibility:  we might solicit ideas for Categories improvement every fall, publish a revision at the each spring Annual Meeting, and expect institutions submitting Systems Portfolios the following fall to use the revised Categories. Another might be to focus improvement on one Category (or two) each year, thereby limiting the scope of change annually. We’re guessing that revising annually would relieve the pressure (which has built up from 2000 to now) for extensive modifications, and that changes in each new edition would be relatively minor in impact.

Ultimately it’s the AQIP colleges, universities, and peer reviewers who ultimately are most affected by the Categories, so let us know (through the comments on the main page and other pages of this wiki) what you think make the most sense.

How can I suggest changes in one or more of the AQIP Category items?

Send an email to AQIP@hlcommission.org with the subject "AQIP Category Improvement" and we'll send you a password. With it you can log in as a "Contributor" and select any of the nice Categories to revise. (You can jump to any Category using the Sidebar at the right of the page, or by clicking on a Category at the bottom of the Home page. To suggest changes, click the Edit Page button (found at the top and bottom of every page), then add what you want to add and delete what you want to remove. (Once in editing mode, you’ll find a simple editing menu at the top of any page you edit — use it to mark italic, underlined, or boldface type, or to color text or highlight it.) When you are finished suggesting changes to a Category, click the Save button at the bottom of the page — and your revised version will become the version everyone sees when they visit the Wiki.

How do I edit the original 2007 version of a Category? Can I edit an earlier revision that was saved by me or by someone else?

Previous edited versions of every Category are preserved and available to you — for viewing, comparison, or editing. At the bottom of every page, under the heading Wiki Information, click the link Show All Pages. A list of all 13 pages will appear, and next to each will be the date and creator of the latest version, as well as a link indicating how many revisions have occurred. Do not, under any circumstances, click the Delete or Rename buttons at the right.

Click this # Revisions link, and you’ll get a page listing all the revisions, with their dates and creators. You can click the ‘radio buttons’ in front of any two revisions and click the Compare button to see the text with deletions in red, crossed out, and additions in green.

To work with an earlier revision, click the link with the date and time of the revision (e.g., December 10, 2007 at 4:03:19 pm). To send an email to the creator of an earlier revision, click the name that is a link. If you revise and save this version, your work will become the most recent (top) version in the list. The original 2007 version of each Category is at the bottom of the list — the version saved by Steve S (i.e., Steve Spangehl) on December 10, 2007.

How can I comment on the Category Improvement Project or on any one of the Categories?

At the top of each page in http://AQIP.pbwiki.com/ is a Comment button that indicates the number of comments already submitted and published concerning that page. Click the button and you’ll be able to read others’ comments, and a form will open for you to add your comment. Comments are identified with the name of the person commenting (if logged in) and the date.

How can I get AQIP to add another FAQ to this page?

Click the Comment box at the top  of this page, and write your question. If you think you know the answer, add that too. AQIP will review your suggestion, and either add a new question to this page or reply to you directly (if yours is a question of limited interest to others).