Chris.

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the abilities that employers say they want in college and university graduates. Part of the job of faculty who develop courses and programs is to be responsive to this stakeholder, as well as students who seek a degree in order to get a job. Among the top […]

What is Lean Teaching? The application of Lean principles and practices to teaching. What are Lean Principles and Practices? The Lean principles are “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People,” and Lean practices are the tools and methods commonly associated with the Toyota production system (TPS). What is the purpose of Lean Teaching? To improve the […]

Compare these two approaches to improving the quality of teaching and learning and the value of higher education (click on images; both were published in June 2013). It is an interesting contrast between conventional thinking about a problem (left) compared and Lean thinking about the same problem (right).               […]

Below is a photo of me, Mark Robinson (left), and Steve Yorkstone (right) having lunch at The Single Malt Scotch Whiskey Society in Edinburgh, Scotland, one day before the start of the First International Conference on LSS for Higher Education in Glasgow, 24-25 June. Mark is the head of Lean University at University of St. Andrews, while […]

By Pascal Dennis Hi folks, recently I spoke with Brad Jeavons and the fine Enterprise Excellence podcast. Topic: Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World: Why Becoming an Ambidextrous Organization is so Challenging. Hope you enjoy it! 2 minute tip: Best regards, Pascal In case you missed our last few blogs… please feel […]

The conference here in Glasgow, Scotland, was chaired by Prof. Jiju Antony of the University of Strathclyde. The conference was attended by over 90 delegates from 13 countries in five continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America). Twelve papers were accepted and presented at the conference. The opening keynote talk was given by Prof. […]

It’s interesting to see Amazon experiment with different ways of summarizing and visualizing reviews, average ratings, and the distribution of the ratings — including those for my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. I see two different experiments right now, and those are maybe only seen by […]

Day two of the conference began with a 2-hour panel discussion with Bill Balzer, myself, and Tammy Sinha, moderated by Prof. Jiju Antony, that covered a range of topics related to Lean in higher education. We received numerous insightful and challenging questions. This was followed by late morning and afternoon workshops. I gave a workshop […]

Here are six reasons why current students and graduates should read The Lean Professor: Learn how Lean teaching would have resulted in a better educational experience. Support expansion of Lean into a new sector: higher education. So you can help bring needed changes to your university or alma mater. Let higher ed hear your voice, […]

Question: I looked at your undergraduate course syllabus. Could you tell me more about in-class group cases? Answer: The in-class group cases for the undergraduate course consist of one or more vignettes of a problem, typically a paragraph or two, that students read, discuss, and answer in 15 to 30 minutes. I write the vignettes […]

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to […]

Higher education is optional education for students. As a result of this alone, the norms and routines of K-12 education can be immediately and wholly abandoned if desired. This includes separating education from evaluation, to greater or lesser extents. Many years ago I began to separate education from evaluation to a lesser extent in order […]

In Part 1, I said that the people who helped cause the financial meltdown beginning in 2008 graduated from top schools and had high grade-point averages. Generally, one finds the same is true for other big failures such as: Boeing’s 787 development program, Baxter’s contaminated heparin blood thinner, General Motors’ bankruptcy, Johnson & Johnson’s drug […]

In Part 2 of the post “Student Evaluations,” I said: “…perhaps evaluations are better directed at faculty than students, to help assure that graduates have learned the skills that, if put into practice, will help them make fewer and less significant errors.” Teacher evaluations have a negative connotation and clearly disrespect teachers because they personalize […]

What is the purpose of the Lean teaching pedagogy? Fundamentally, it is to improve teaching so that students learn the material, retain the material, and apply the material in practice. It will also improve student engagement, and, importantly, the value of higher education for students and payers. The innovative Lean teaching pedagogy is a practical solution […]

In early 2005, I wrote a short article titled, “Lean in Higher Education.” In it, I said: “The time is right for higher education administrators, faculty, and staff to begin applying Lean management to their business. The consequences of not doing so could be fatal… University administrators, faculty, and staff have a choice. They can […]

What higher education leaders know how to do: What higher education leaders need to learn:

In this time of great challenges for higher education, the thing that worries me is: Overconfident college and university leaders who do nothing, or do wrong things that result in bad outcomes for people (e.g. students, staff, faculty, etc.), due to guessing at the causes of problems, using conventional problem-solving methods (budget cuts), and succumb […]

A common benefit cited for MOOCs is that short videos combined with frequent quizzes, synchronous with learning, emulates one-on-one tutoring or self-paced learning. This allows the student to gain “mastery” of one lesson before moving onto the next, and apparently leads to better exam scores and pass rates (no surprise there). The practice that students […]

For many different reasons, MOOCs have generated a lot of concern among faculty. Critics charge faculty care more about their jobs than they care about students. The prevailing view is zero-sum (win-lose) in that students gain at faculty’s expense. Let’s take a different view: How can MOOCs be non-zero-sum (win-win) for both faculty and students? MOOCs […]

Here is an example of a conventional approach to fixing higher education. This, along with most other articles proposing fixes to higher ed, focus on everything else but improving academic and administrative processes. It illustrates the supremacy of superficial analysis, herd mentality, and results-oriented thinking (basically, the seduction of taking shortcuts) in contrast to careful […]

A trend has recently emerged among higher education policy-influencers and policy makers that is succinctly captured by the phrase: “If the student hasn’t learned, then the teacher hasn’t taught.” The failure of students to learn is the teacher’s fault, so blame the teachers for this problem. It is a very simple cause-and-effect recognizable by any […]

“If the student hasn’t learned, then the teacher hasn’t taught.” In Part 1 of this post, I said: “Formal root cause analysis would quickly reveal numerous causes for the observed effect [“the student hasn’t learned”] – many of which will be of greater significance than how teachers teach.” Doing this would point the way towards practical countermeasures. […]

Have a look at this wonderful article, “What I’ve Learned in the Classroom.” It is written by Professor Paula Cohen, who has 30 years of teaching experience. She used teaching as a platform for conducting experiments for learning and improvement. The article contains several examples of teaching improvements that are consistent with Lean teaching. It will […]

Do you wonder why I focus on Lean and not Lean Six Sigma in teaching? Let me explain the reason for this first from a management perspective and then from a teaching perspective. I do not join Lean with six sigma as a management concept or practice for the following reasons: Lean is a management system, […]

Part-time faculty are a vital part of most academic programs. They bring specialized knowledge and practical experience that may not be possessed by full-time faculty. Many are generous in their desire to share what they have learned with others (the so-called “giving back”). Students enjoy part-time faculty because of their specialized knowledge and practical experience, and […]

Here is a short, insightful clip of Dr Seán Paul Teeling from his KaiNexus webinar from Tuesday. He raises an important point — is it always good when a leader, including the CEO, “goes to the gemba” (workplace)? It can be harmful if the leader doesn’t act respectfully to the team. Are they fully present and engaged… or physically […]

The article, “Law School Professors Face Less Job Security” (WSJ, 11 August 2013) suggests that law schools’ labor cost problem, the direct result of declining enrollment, can only be corrected by changing the tenure system to give administrators greater flexibility to reduce the number of faculty. Tenure, it appears, is the biggest problem that plagues […]

A new Moody’s Investors Service report says that “…enrollment at public colleges was essentially flat, revenues grew less than 2 percent, and expenses increased more than 3 percent—nearly twice as fast as inflation… ‘The developing trend of expense growth outpacing revenue growth is unsustainable’.” (CHE, 14 August 2013). The question is whether the highly educated […]

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on […]

In every place that I have worked, I have witnessed employers quickly and willingly allow much of recent graduates’ education go to waste. After several years of work experience, former students often say that only a fraction of their skills and capabilities are being utilized by their employer. At the same time, employers come to […]

Faults and problems can be frustrating and disruptive, but they can also be a valuable asset. In this article, we talk about how to perform an effective root cause analysis so that you can determine what’s really causing problems in your business. But first, let’s briefly get into what a root cause analysis is. What […]

When I started down the path of Lean teaching in the late 1990s, I was confident that students would see it as a positive change in teaching pedagogy. This was informed by my prior work experience in industry where the correct application of Lean principles and practices consistently yielded favorable outcomes. These outcomes were not […]