Recently, while being interviewed by Steve Taylor at BusinessCAS, he asks me, “How can GME program leaders best support their deans and manage their way through this period of change?” I suggested, “Work with the dean to create scorecards or dashboards that report on individual GME programs and then another scorecard or dashboard for the B-School’s GME portfolio.” I based my response on years of seeing graduate program information being collected and reported in a piecemeal ad hoc fashion – number of applications, accepted students, enrolled students, student satisfaction, etc. While all of this information is important, when collected and reported this way, it provides a myopic or segmented view of a program’s or portfolio’s overall performance. This means that in most cases no one is looking at the program as a whole, which could place long-term program success in jeopardy. What’s needed is a holistic view of program performance. Using a scorecard or dashboard can provide that holistic view.

Designing a scorecard or dashboard for a GME program starts with a learner focus, an emphasis on the program and the learner journey. By journey I mean from the time an individual thinks about a graduate degree to the time they graduate from their selected program to when they prepare for their retirement. This holistic view of the learner journey recognizes that any part of the learner’s journey can determine the extent to which they succeed personally and professionally and that their graduate program can and will contribute to their success well beyond the enrollment period.   

The following graphic represents this holistic view, which I’m calling the Learner Life Cycle. This graphic reflects the high level stages where programs can intervene to affect the learner experience, the alumnus experience, and the employer experience. The experience a learner, alumnus, or employer has with any GME program is the sum of all their interactions with the program, from audience through alumnus, which means any touch point. Their experience is happening with or without your permission. Finding out what that experience is and changing a negative experience touch point into a positive experience touch point is the core of program management. 

From a data collection and reporting standpoint, the typical approach is to start with audience data, followed by lead data, and then applicant data. Usually the responsibility for these three stages of the life cycle falls to the recruiting and enrollment team members. Frequency of data collection and reporting is daily, weekly or monthly, and it happens by a manual or an automated routine. 

Next comes data collection and reporting about the learner. Often the focus is on student satisfaction, faculty and course evaluations, and assurance of learning with some type of analysis done in isolation by a program manager, faculty member, department chair, and someone that is assigned responsibility for assurance of learning. All done after the class or semester is over, perhaps the middle of the next semester with an action plan prepared for execution during the next academic year, intake, or next class by someone that may or may not have been involved in the assessed periods delivery. 

Alumnus is last in the life cycle and most times is rarely reported on as a part of program performance. And when reported on, there is a tendency to treat all alumni the same when the experience each alumnus had a unique experience. Yet it is the individual experience an alumnus has that determines the extent to which they are engaged after they graduate.

The following graphic shows one approach to data collection for building a scorecard or dashboard. It starts with the selection of a data stream to include in the scorecard or dashboard. In this example I selected # of website visitors, # of opt-ins to receive email communications, # of applicants, # of students enrolled, and number of graduates for an intake. Start by collecting and reporting data on a monthly basis. Continue adding and reporting monthly data until the intake graduates. Reporting by intake provides a good starting point for any program that is trying to build a scorecard or dashboard. 

Notice everything in the life cycle is singular. Individual experiences make up group experiences which make up program experiences which make up a portfolio of experiences. These individual GME program experiences start when an individual self selects or somehow finds their way into a program audience for attraction into a specific GME program and continues until they depart this life. GME programs have the potential to keep on giving to the learner-alumnus, which means the Learner Life Cycle extends well beyond program recruitment, enrollment, and delivery.

If you want to discuss this topic in greater detail, then schedule a FREE Zoom meeting with me by clicking this link https://calendly.com/mbanewsdigest.

Let me know what you think by emailing me at RGAlsup@MBANewsDigest.com.