College of Education

Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL)
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Step 1

Introduction Engagement & Commitment Equity & Outcomes Assessment Process & Practice Assessment Improvement & Evaluation Review & Reflection

Identify Solutions

The Identify Solutions phase includes creating a list of potential solutions to improve the identified process. These solutions include options that address one or more of the reasons why the process is not currently accomplishing the desired level of performance identified in the Process and Practice Assessment phase.

Next, the team narrows its list of potential solutions by looking at their feasibility and potential impact. Team members should estimate how much it will cost to implement the solutions, and they need to know whether there is evidence that the proposed changes will be effective. This is particularly important if the changes are difficult or expensive to implement, or hard to “undo” if they are not effective. The team also needs to accumulate evidence of the costs and benefits of implementing each solution, including confidence (or uncertainty) of the solutions.

The team gathers information about potential changes to the process, and it summarizes how the changes meet several criteria in the Suggested Solutions Worksheet. This analysis supports team consensus on suggested changes.

Recommended team activities:

  • Brainstorm solutions, including the perspectives of stakeholders who bring diverse outlooks. This process begins by generating ideas for solutions, with each individual recording his or her ideas. The team then captures these ideas, seeking clarification when needed but not evaluating them.
  • Create an initial list of solutions by categorizing them to reflect the collective ideas of the team. The product is a list of potential solutions grouped into related categories such as professional development and communications. The team uses the Suggested Solutions Worksheet to record these solutions.
  • Review the potential solutions and identify redundancies in them that are partial components of other solutions to be sure each one is important on its own.
  • Evaluate the potential solutions using the Solution Evaluation Worksheet. The team may wish to assign specific improvement ideas to one or more team members rather than evaluate all ideas as a full team.
  • Engage in a facilitated discussion to reach consensus on solutions to be implemented.