MESSAGE FROM THE EDUCATION CHAIR

Dear ASQ Members:

My last two education based messages (see March or April) have been regarding industry and profession based trends and resultant changes foreseen by National ASQ that affect our ability to meet your changing educational needs. This month I am continuing to prepare you to help us to help you in embracing these education based changes by asking for your open mind.

Our upcoming July workshop on "Steven Covey, Change, & Time Management Principles" with Karen Riggs will likely cover principles of change. I believe she may include the following steps that I believe we need to take in order to improve our educational program.

1.  Identify what needs to change.

   • We must be only meeting about 20% of your training needs. I wildly estimate that only about 20% of our membership takes part in some form of training we offer.

   • ASQ offers 13 certifications but our local section currently only offers refresher courses for about five of them each year.

2. Defining what to change to.

   • Wouldn’t our ideal educational program have a constant potential to reach every one of our members in several different ways?

   • Wouldn’t our ideal program be in a position to reach all types of non-members throughout our San Diego community?

3. Purposeful evaluation of values, attitudes, goals, objectives, and resources.

   • I hope we get to this point … <smile>. Perhaps with your help, we can address these aspects in upcoming months.

4. Asking others for assistance.

   • Please continue to help us help you by sending us your feedback using the form. Read on for idea stimulators.

So what is our next step?  We are prepared to experiment with you using section offered on-line / self study refresher courses starting with next month’s CRE course.  If this works then I could envision this avenue as one possible way to offer training assistance for every certification course ASQ offers. It could also provide one of several different avenues necessary to meet what we envision as our ideal educational program.

The following is a formal proposal for "Web-Based Refresher Courses (E-Courses)" that Hank and Kim have presented to our section education board with a vote expected to take place during our next educational board meeting. What do you think of it? Where do you envision this direction leading us?

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General Information Regarding Proposed Web-Based Refresher Courses (E-Courses)

To improve educational services to our members and, at the same time, limit potential losses caused by low student enrolment we are proposing the following plan for Web-based E-Courses.

Whenever the enrollment number is fewer than ten, the section will inform those students who already enrolled that the in-class refresher course has been cancelled. The students will be offered two options:
1) They can wait for the next course in the hope that more people will enroll, or
2) They can sign up for a web-based E-course.

E-courses will be based on the principles of guided self-study. E-students will get once-a-week lessons (for a total of 18 weeks for CRE) with in-depth course material and test questions.

Course curriculum will include mandatory reading assignments followed by topic related test questions which must be completed by the students within one week. Feed-back on test results will be given by the instructor-on-duty by the end of the week. During the course week the student can e-mail questions to the instructor-on-duty or post questions on a password protected web page. The instructor will provide for explanatory answers to the questions in the same week.

There will be no class time except for one meeting at the beginning of the course and one at the end. Everything else will be done via e-mail correspondence.

E-course instruction will be as formal as class based instruction. As in class based courses, instructors will follow the course syllabus program. QCOI Primers will be used as primary course text supplemented with material produced by the instructors and, whenever needed, supplementary text books.

E-courses will require more and direct involvement of the students i.e. reading/studying the assigned material, solving test questions, formulating (typing) questions, etc.

Instructors’ involvement will be stretched out in small time increments over a course week rather than giving four hours (including travel) of his/her time per course week.

Advantages of E-courses

• E-courses will be less costly to participating students. No transportation costs.

• Overall it will take less time to participate. No driving, parking, or walking times, etc.

• E-courses offer more flexibility to students e.g. students can take a “class" during lunch hour at work. If a student is sick, he/she does not have to miss a class,

• E-courses force students to be more independent and proactive in pursuing their study goals.

• By posting/reading questions on the course web page, participating students often learn more from the other students than would be the case in normal classes.

• E-classes are usually more structured. Instructors who teach E-courses tend to follow the course book much more closely than they would do during in-class instruction.

• We may get student enrollments from other ASQ sections all over the world.

Disadvantages of E-courses

• There would be no real in-class lecture. Reading several pages of an instructor’s thoughts and explanations may not be as clear to the students as a combination of verbal and visual instruction.

• Very limited instructor-student and student-student interaction. Students do not get to know the other students or the instructor as well as in-person classes.

• The instructors can't give immediate feedback. Students have to e-mail or post a question on the web page and then go back the next day for the answer.

• E-courses may be perceived by the students as getting “less value for their money” compared to in-class courses.

• Occasionally log-in or computer problems may hinder students to get on line.

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Sincerely,

Stacy Apostol

Education Committee Chair

ASQ Section 0703 

This month we are highlighting two articles as follows: 

"The Process Performance Metric Pp" (html on our site)

By Dr. John Flaig

Highlights of a recent discussion about using Pp and Ppk for process performance assessment. 

"Cpk Living Paper Updates" (html on our site)

By various authors

Recent updates made to this living article after an email discussion with a curious net citizen and Dr. Flaig.  The updates reflect how CpK measurements can be used to control a process.