My first exposure to the aims and tools of Total Quality Management (TQM ) occurred in a half-day workshop for the staff of my department. As Undergraduate Advisor, I attended along with the staff of the undergraduate advising office, and I seem to recall being the only faculty there.
The workshop did not go over very well, in large part because the presenter emphasized tools and drew examples from a manufacturing context. But two questions from his presentation deeply influenced me and our office culture: "Who are your customers?" and "What is your vision?" Answering these questions began to change our way of working, and when we later were able to gain more training appropriate to the academic context, we strengthened our quality emphasis.
When in May, 1996, I was invited to attend the UT Austin/Ford "Partners In Progress" Symposium, hosted in Dearborn, Michigan, by the Ford Motor Company, I considered that they were "preaching to the choir" in my case. But Ford aimed to inseminate the entire University with quality ideas, including the teaching function, and toward that end they invited Myron Tribus to share his vision for applying TQM in the classroom. I was deeply affected by his message, in which he called in question most of what I thought I knew about college teaching.
I, like most teachers, have taught more or less as I was taught, with a top down pacing through the course material in a lecture/homework/quizzes/final exam format. I always finished the course, but many of the students seemed to get lost along the way and apparently came to hate the subject and, if I believe the evaluations, me in the process. I can honestly say that over the years I never graded a set of final exams without becoming depressed over how little the students appeared to have learned.
Dr. Tribes' seeds fell on fertile ground in my case, for I was ready
for something new. I resolved, therefore, to implement TQM in my
summer class to the fullest degree I could. This paper describes
the results.
My class was a survey of electrical engineering for nonmajors. Major topics were dc circuit theory, ac circuit theory, electronics, and instrumentation. The class met 29 times for 1.5 hours, plus a final exam. The class was small, with four civil engineers, five chemical engineers, one architectural engineer, and one computer science major. I stated the class goals on the course describer as:
A. Apply the Total Quality Method (TQM) to the improvement of
the learning process of every student in the class. See continuous
improvement in the class effectiveness in quality education.
B. Students will become aware of the importance of electrical
engineering in modern society and industry.
C. Students will become articulate in the vocabulary and concepts
pertaining to electrical engineering.
D. Students will learn to apply basic concepts of electrical
engineering to simple everyday situations or industrial applications.
E. Students will improve writing, speaking, listening, and teamwork
skills.
The first and last of these goals were new to me. My proposition
to the students was to enhance the course by an emphasis on quality:
they would learn the vocabulary and techniques of both electrical engineering
and total quality management.
My first goal was to convince the students of the importance of taking the TQM approach. I begin by telling my own experience with TQM and with teaching, including the influence of Tribus' work on my thinking. I spoke briefly of the importance of quality methods in industry, and my claims were supported by three of the students who had worked as interns in companies with quality programs. I then told them what TQM would mean in the context of this class. My points were
A. Customer focus. "Quality is determined by the customer."
This would mean that the students, as "customers" would judge the quality
of their educational experience in the class.
B. Involvement of entire organization, top down on quality.
This would mean that we all would work together to develop a quality class.
C. Processes, not people, are usually the problem. This
would mean that we would design a learning process and not blame the students
for poor quality.
D. Continuous improvement of processes. This would mean
that we would go through the learning process multiple times and seek to
improve it.
E. Taking time and resources to evaluate and communicate.
This would mean that we would set aside time to evaluate how well the learning
process was accomplishing our objectives and to seek ways to improve.
F. Emphasis on data: "Management by numbers." This
was not implemented.
G. Use of tools such as brainstorming and multivoting, Memory
Jogger II. We mostly brainstormed.
To emphasize that the "product" of the learning process is the education of the student, I introduced the analogy between industry and education shown in the table, adapted from Tribus. Table 1 also places me an the role of manager and enabler, which was a role I was looking forward to, and also reveals that a multitude of "customers" await the graduation of the student.
Table 1. Analogy between Industrial and Educational Processes
| Industry | Education |
| Produce (output) | Education of the student |
| Processes produce the product | Study, work homework, give oral reports, take tests, etc. |
| Worker operate the processes | Student |
| Management design processes, communicate vision, coordinate, provide resources | Faculty |
| Raw materials (Inputs) | Lectures, book, assignments, labwork, etc. |
|
Customers have expectations, buy, and use the product |
students, parents, employers, Texas, society |
To further motivate the students, I made the first homework assignment
an investigation of the relevance of the electrical engineering content
to the student's career plans. We brainstormed possible sources of
information and came up with a variety of potential sources, ranging from
interviewing practicing engineers to browsing the Internet to examine the
curricula of other well-regarded engineering schools. The students
reported back in their first oral presentations, and we went on to design
the learning cycle.
I used Tribus' definition: quality in education = joy in learning. The second assignment was for the students to reflect on their many years of education and report one (by this definition) quality experience. I should have asked them to write out their thoughts, for it was hard to moderate the lively discussion this assignment generated. Here is my attempt to summarize:
1. Oral reports are good experience and stimulate in-depth study/research/preparation
2. Competition is a healthy incentive. Not competitive
for grades, but in quality of preparation.
3. Working on teams is good experience and makes the work more
enjoyable.
4. Getting out of the classroom is good:
a. critiquing the work of someone else (drama, music, architecture,
safety)
b. field trips
5. Better to have time to discuss rather than to rush through
things.
6. Having creative input on assignments gives incentive.
(More than one student reported unusual activities, such as acting out
a historical event.)
I gained their permission to design a learning process that incorporated
as many of these principles as possible, with the understanding that we
would discuss and could modify my proposal.
Next class I divided the class into teams of 4, 4, and 3 students, based on compatibility of schedules. The course material divided naturally into four sections, and there were 24 class periods remaining, so I proposed a six-day learning process, as follows:
Class #1: Team meetings. Decide on project and organize
a plan
Class #2: Plenary session: Present proposal (5 minutes),
prof answers questions on material and projects
Class #3: Prof's choice: give demonstrations, answer questions
on material and projects
Class #4: Field trip
Class #5: Make presentations (15 minute) and discuss results
Class #6: Evaluate process and discuss changes.
Since no one had mentioned lectures, I put in no lectures. The
demonstration(s) were my idea to make the material less abstract, and the
field trips were to be on campus during class times. After a short
discussion, the class agreed to this process.
I prepared a list of topics based on dc circuits for the teams to investigate. During the first class meeting the students took the list, went off to their group meetings to choose a topic and make a plan. This took little time, and they all left early. The second meeting was even shorter: they made brief reports on their topics, little more than giving a title, and had very little to say about their plans for the investigation. They had no questions for me on either the course material or on their topics. During the third class I gave a demonstration on incandescent lightbulbs as resistors, which they seemed to appreciate, and again they had no questions for me. During the fourth class we toured the campus power plant, and on the fifth class day of the cycle they reported their investigations.
The reports were a real disappointment. Serious technical material was totally missing, subjects were covered in a general and superficial manner, and speakers generally did not know what they were talking about. Reports bore little or no connection with the course material. I made notes on how the speakers’ might improve their delivery, which I conveyed to each privately.
The sixth class meeting was evaluation and, to my delight, I learned that the students were, like me, quite unsatisfied with their work. I had prepared a simple form for them to list problems with the learning process, with recommendations, and allowed them about 20 minutes to fill out the form before opening the floor for discussion.
Our discussion produced the following list of problems in the first learning cycle:
1. Weak in EE content.
2. Lack of questions. Wasted class time..
3. Project presentations not focused on related course material.
4. Get behind in course/book study.
5. Lack of time in cycle..
6. Lack of knowledge when choosing and planning projects.
7. Insufficient technical content in projects/presentations.
8. Same people on teams every time.
9. Need future evaluations?.
10. Too abstract. Insufficient hands-on work.
11. Field trip at critical time and no help in project.
12. Projects too elaborate and advanced..
Based on this, we together redesigned the learning process. The
team and project format was retained. An overview lecture was installed,
and a lecture focused on the research topics was requested. The field
trip was retained, but moved earlier in the cycle, and so forth.
Class participation in this redesign process was enthusiastic and well
focused.
The second cycle went better but quality was still poor. Part of the problem was that I had a substitute giving the lectures because I was out of town for almost a week, but even after I returned students worked largely on their own. The reports were again very general and lacked course content.
I will spare the reader all the details. The final two cycles
were greatly improved because two important elements were added:
I defined simpler projects that focused on design rather than broad applications,
and I worked with the students in class to make sure they understood the
design issues and where relevant material appeared in the book. Many
students became excited about the projects and began coming to me to gain
confidence in their results and in their explanations for the oral reports.
The final round of reports was greatly improved in course content, confidence,
enthusiasm, and noticeable lack of bluffing.
Tribus believes that grading is counter to quality in the classroom:
that the motivation and reward of the student should be primarily internal;
that external stimuli such as grades only detract from the quality experience.
This may be true, but the students expect and the university requires a
grade, so I designed a grading system that was weakly coupled to the quality
activity. This grading system was:
1. To receive a C in the course a student had to work the routine
problems that followed each section in the text. Compliance guaranteed
that they had read the text and thought about the contents enough to work
simple problems. Since the answers were given in the text, I had
to examine their notebooks to make sure they were not merely copying answers.
2. To raise their grade to a B or an A, they had to complete
one (for a B) or two (for an A) of the following requirements:
* Work one end-of-chapter problem per section.
* Write an 8-10 page formal paper on a topic relevant to the course.
* Participate in the final exam, explained below.
All students went for the A, by working the problems and contributing
to the class presentation in the final exam. No one chose to write
a paper. All students turned in the extra problems, but quite a few
students had put off working these until the end of the class judging by
the quality of the work. Indeed some of the work bore signs of having
been copied in haste from other students, and I decided to give no credit
to the two most flagrant cases.
In the end, the class was given 9 A’s and 2 B’s. These are unusually
high grades for me, and I think that about half the A’s are undeserved.
The distribution should have been, say, 5 A’s, 4 B’s and 2 C’s. Clearly
grading is an aspect of using TQM in the classroom that needs work.
The final exam consisted of a class presentation of the quality aspects of the course to a faculty colleague who is knowledgeable about quality methods. The class spent one class period, and met once out of class, to prepare their presentation. I attended the class meeting and sought to act as a facilitator, but generally they worked as a team with little or no input from me.
During the preparation session, the class selected a discussion leader, defined the major sections of the presentation, and selected four presenters for the exam. Participation was excellent, and various students volunteered to work on graphics, obtain a computer/projector, and other such supporting roles.
At the exam, the student were well prepared. They did an accurate job describing the quality procedures we had used in the various stages of developing the learning process. Their message so focused on what a great learning experience this was that I thought to myself, “Oh No! They think they’ve got to sell this idea; I just wanted them to describe it.” But their story stood up under cross-examination, for after their presentation ended my colleague questioned the entire class on various aspects on the class, and they strongly advocated the TQM methods we had used.
Afterward we adjourned to a nearby pizza shop and I jokingly accused
several of them of laying it on a bit thick for my friend, but again they
insisted that they were sincere. We had an anonymous class/teacher
evaluation and these also support their sincerity: all students rated
the class and instructor either excellent or above average. Essay
responses on the evaluation were also laudatory, both of the TQM
process and of the learning process we developed in the class.
Of course I have my own opinion on how well the class went:
1. There is no question that the students enjoyed their involvement
in designing the class structure. They also realized that the TQM
approach will be used in the work culture during their careers.
2. I’m still concerned that they learned so little about electrical
engineering. The first half of the semester was largely wasted from
the viewpoint of course content, and even during the more effective period
at the end of the semester students seemed to focus mainly on the course
material to further their designs and presentations. On the other
hand, they seemed to gain the confidence that they can learn this material.
One student on his evaluation stated, “I had a revelation or realization
that electrical engineering concepts are not out of my grasp.” (his emphasis)
3. I enjoyed my role of facilitator and leader. The old
adversarial role (“I’m gonna make you learn this stuff”) was totally gone
and I was working with the students toward common goals. I enjoyed
seeing the students grow in their teamwork and presentation skills.
4. I am unsatisfied with the grading scheme, as stated earlier.
The experience described above took place in the summer of 1996. I used the same approach in a small class during the summer of 1997: I described the basic idea, let the class design a learning process, which was similar to that described above, and I allowed the class to participate significantly in the evaluation of the reports. I was puzzled by their high evaluations of each other, and later found that the students had conspired to give each other high evaluations. In the end I was extremely dissatisfied with the class, especially the grades that I had to give according to our agreement, and was not inclined to use this method in the future.
But I met one of the students from the first class in a social situation,
where she had no incentive to speak other than the plain truth, and was
again assured that her educational experience was indeed outstanding.
On that basis I again used this method in the spring of 1998 in a fairly
large class, and here the results were excellent. I saw the students
grow in knowledge of the subject, grow in their presentation and teamwork
skills, and grow in their confidence as young engineers. Again the
grades were a bit highthe majority As, some Bs, and a couple of Csso
this aspect of the method still needs improvement. But in summary
I think this method has great potential in courses where detailed mastery
of content and techniques is not required, such as survey courses for nonmajors.