Design of an Iraqi University’s Institutional Effectiveness Model and Participant Experiences with Team Coaching

As global university budgets fall due to inflationary and political pressures and international competition for students becomes increasingly fierce, it is increasingly important that these institutions are financially efficient and academically effective. While accrediting agencies guide the requirements of higher education structures necessary to achieve institutional effectiveness, the internal processes for evaluating and improving internal programs and courses are often less well described in the literature. This situation faced a relatively new university in Iraq that sought to develop its institutional improvement processes. Goals for the grant-funded project included designing a whole system educational program to improve institutional effectiveness in both academic and administrative aspects. In part, the university needed to redesign its educational processes and teach its faculty and administrators how to reduce the number of courses and curricular programs with low demand, decrease the number of credit hours to match international expectations better, and improve the quality of remaining courses with a goal of continuous improvement. Engaging in such a process requires local faculty training, engagement with such work, and expertise from faculty and administrators with experience engaging in such activities. This article presents both an overview of the design case and training methodology developed in collaboration with a U.S. non-profit and faculty from member institutions. Further, the piece provides findings from surveys with participants regarding the redesign as they took part in the work of systemic learning enhancements completed through a learning process meant to make the university more efficient and effective at achieving its educational mission.