38 Approaches to Maximize Instructional Productivity
Guidance for choosing the right capacity management strategy for your institution
Explore strategies to maximize instructional productivity on your campus.
This tool will be free to access for the month of July to highlight EAB’s work on cost containment. Check out Strategic Advisory Services to learn more about how we work with higher ed leaders to solve their toughest challenges.
In today’s increasingly challenging economic climate, many institutions cannot stay sustainable without reducing their operating costs. However, across-the-board cost reduction risks compromising both student access and educational quality.
Instead, academic leaders should focus on maximizing instructional capacity, allowing them to “grow into” their existing cost structures by growing revenues while holding costs flat.
EAB’s research has identified 38 different approaches institutions have taken to better align instructional costs with student enrollments. The best approach for each institution will depend on its resources and culture.
Provosts, deans, department chairs, and registrars should use this resource to help choose strategies to manage their own instructional costs. For each strategy, we have rated the likelihood of faculty resistance to the strategy, the impact of the strategy on instructional costs, the upfront cost of the strategy, and the time and human effort required for the strategy.
The strategies are organized under the main institutional capacity or cost goal that they impact. Start with a goal that you are focused on in your institution or program, and select at least one strategy in that goal category. Some universities will be able to implement every strategy in one or more categories, particularly if they have a strong culture of data-informed decisions.
4 goals for instructional productivity efforts
Build optimal classroom schedules
Remove classroom scheduling bottlenecks, reduce underutilized capacity, and increase seat fill rates with the following potential approaches
Help students progress more rapidly to completion
Reduce nonessential credits, increase access to courses, encourage timely degree completion with the following potential approaches
Match section offerings to student demand
Identify sections to consolidate or eliminate, free up classroom space and teaching capacity, and reduce instructional costs with the following potential approaches
Adopt instructional models that supply quality at scale
Redesign courses around learning outcomes, increase usage of innovative pedagogical methods, and scale up instruction with the following potential approaches
More Resources
How Salisbury University builds a data-informed culture
New Feature Training: Instructional Workload Benchmarks
