How Action Projects Function

The Strategy Forum and the selection of Action Projects are designed to be the kickoff for a continuous series of projects with the successfully completed projects accumulating into a record of the institution’s quality improvement activities.

AQIP institutions working on concrete improvement projects provide minimal evidence that quality improvement is occurring at the institution. For that reason, the Commission asks institutions to always have underway, and share with the Commission, at least three Action Projects. When an AQIP institution completes a project, the institution then begins a new one, using the knowledge and skills gained from its earlier projects to select, shape, and define the scope.

The reasons for Action Projects are threefold. First, the projects are a means to:

Focus institutions new to AQIP into working on three projects and demonstrate their efforts to quality improvement.
Compel institutions to develop the superstructure(s) necessary to organize and oversee a quality initiative.
Drive institutions to engage their faculty and staff in selection of projects and empower employees by using them on project teams.
Open an avenue for peer interaction, feedback, and review beginning with the first Strategy Forum.

Second, Action Projects provide institutions a finite, concrete place to begin quality improvement efforts, without the deliberation and delay that may come with larger strategic planning activities in higher education. For many institutions, the specific choice of project is less critical than the communication of a shared sense of activity, movement, and purpose. An important result of early Action Projects is a demonstration that shared efforts could change things for the better.

Third, Action Projects allow the institution time to gather data for its Systems Portfolio, working towards an institutionally-understood summary of current processes and performance, the benchmark for future improvement efforts. The concrete activity of the projects, and the quick results, serve to balance what might otherwise seem a long-term, rather theoretical but essential activity with a deferred payoff — creating the Systems Portfolio.

An institution attending its second (or subsequent) Strategy Forum will:

have already made a serious commitment to continuous improvement,
have completed at least three (and hopefully more) Action Projects,
have three or more Action Projects underway when they attend the Forum,
have completed and maintained a Systems Portfolio describing the current institution and performance of the major work systems in their institution; and
have received and studied the feedback from their Systems Appraisal.

This is quite a different situation from an institution’s first Strategy Forum, where the goal is to stimulate the institution to act — both on projects and on creation of the Systems Portfolio. At a second Forum, an institution should turn its attention to larger strategic issues — the clarity of its mission, the relation of its strategies to its mission, its internal processes for selecting and prioritizing strategies, its mechanism for creating Action Projects and making sure they implement strategic decisions, its processes for shaping and improving institutional culture, etc.

The Commission has created an AQIP Action Project Guide to help institutions get started.

Search the AQIP Action Project Directory.

AQIP Liaisons need to sign in to manage Action Projects.

To post on the AQIP Action Project Forum (rather than just read others’ postings), users need to register. See AQIP Forums Instructions and Tips.

Send the Commission (AQIP@hlcommission.org) suggestions that would assist the Commission to provide better help to member institutions that seek to collaborate.