A Method for Evaluating a Computing Program's Continuous Improvement Plan

In today's competitive academic environment, academic computing programs must continuously improve, and for accredited programs, establishing and documenting a continuous improvement (CI) plan is a main requirement for accreditation. While many academic computing programs strive to implement a comprehensive CI plan that addresses all angles of the process, which we call 360-CI, they rarely do. One of the reasons for this deficiency is the ambiguity of what comprehensive CI (or 360-CI) is. From the literature, we identify 8 components of CI that should be addressed in every academic computing program's CI plan. These components include Administration, Curriculum, Course, Faculty, Research, Academic Advising, Facilities, and Support Staff. Each CI component is not addressed equally in the literature. The most emphasis is on Curriculum, Course, and Faculty, while the others receive much less attention. In this paper, we introduce an “ideal” 360-CI model utilizing all 8 CI components, and we use the 360-CI model to develop a method for scoring the comprehensiveness of an academic computing program's CI plan. To evaluate this method, we conducted a series of 21 semi-structured interviews and followup questionnaires with administrators and faculty in a large electrical engineering and computer science program. The results are consistent with the literature showing the most emphasis on Curriculum, Course, and Faculty CI and the least emphasis on Advising, Facilities, and Support Staff CI. Based on the results from this research, we propose potential approaches to help academic computing programs establish and maintain a CI plan that maximizes their CI score.