Day 15: The Consulting Project
A series following my new class: The Economics of Higher Education
This course was mainly a reading and discussion class, but of course we did have a few assignments. Today I’m going to talk about my favorite: The Consulting Project.
My goals for this project
One of the criticisms of higher education today is that we’re not preparing students very well for the working world. Jay Akridge and David Hummels over at the Finding Equilibrium Substack have a great post reviewing the recent data on the gap between the skills employers say they want and the skills they think recent college graduates actually have. One study identified that the biggest gaps are in oral communication, adaptability and flexibility, critical thinking skills, and complex problem solving. Another identified leadership and professionalism skills such as recognizing and managing conflict, accepting critique, and navigating ambiguity as key areas for student growth.
These are the skills I want my students to practice in The Consulting Project. I want them to work together in a large initially unstructured team (the whole class, 14 students in this case) so they are sure to experience friction and sometimes conflict. I put a large ambiguous goal in front of them, and while I will contribute guidance, I do not provide instructions. This forces them to communicate, organize, plan, problem solve, and adapt. They must think critically both about how they will achieve the goal but more importantly about what the goal even is. I want them to define for themselves what they want to create, how they will create it, and what they want to learn along the way.
I’ve been doing this job for ten years now, and what I’ve figured out is that I’m not a professor. I am a coach. My job is not to teach. My job is to facilitate learning. Projects like this one highlight that fundamental philosophy.
What the project was
A few months before class started, I ran into our VP of Enrollment at a thing and we got to chatting. He has tons of data running through his office and lots of questions he knows he could answer with that data, but not enough staff time and bandwidth to analyze it all. I have very bright students with developing skills who need projects to practice, but sometimes I don’t have enough access to real questions and data to keep it fresh and engaging. Perhaps we could help each other out!
And thus our consulting project was born.
From here on, I’m going to be intentionally vague about what question we answered and what data we used to do it. Why? Because I want to do a project like this again next year, maybe for our friends in Enrollment or maybe with new friends in Advancement or the Student Success Office. I want my Powers-That-Be to be confident that anything we discuss is confidential, so they will be more likely to work with me and my students in the future. So: Vague Substack post. Sorry!
So, how did this project work? First, the VP and his Director of Admissions put together a dataset of real data from Colorado College. I anonymized it by binning a few variables so my students couldn’t identify themselves or their friends in the data, but otherwise handed it over to the students raw. The Director came to class on Day 7 to talk about his work in the Enrollment Division and to introduce our consulting project. He talked a bit about what his team wanted to learn from the dataset, but also left it open for the students to explore. The students asked questions of him then, and me over the next couple weeks. They had an independent group work day on Day 10: 2nd Friday. I was intentionally not there and unavailable to help; this is how I made the students really get that I was not going to lead the project. They had joint work days (when I was there) on Days 15 (3rd Friday), 16 (4th Monday), and 17 (4th Tuesday). I had a friend and former institutional researcher join us on Days 15 and 16 to consult also. On the afternoon of Day 17, the students presented their findings to the VP and Director.
Aside from that, my instructions for the project were intentionally ambiguous. The students had many questions.
How do we even start on this project? the students asked.
I’m not sure. There are lots of ways you could go, and it’s your project so you get to decide how to proceed. You remember what the Director said their questions are. How might you start to answer them? I replied.
But, like, do we all work on all of the pieces of the project or should we split into groups?
Well, there are 14 of you, and having all 14 people all work on every single element of the project sounds crowded and inefficient. That’s probably not ideal. So how do you think you might you organize yourselves?
We’ve decided to split into groups to work on different pieces of the project. How should we do that? Who should work on which piece? Should each group have a leader? Do we need an overall team leader? Who should those leaders be?
I’m not sure. Lots of different organizational structures could work. What would you like to try this time?
Should we use Technique A or Technique B to answer this question?
I’m not sure. We talked about both in econometrics earlier this year. Do you have your notes from then? What do you remember are the pros and cons of each technique?
How should we present our findings to the VP and Director? Slides? An executive summary? A long report?
I don’t know. What do you think this audience needs to understand your findings?
Do we need a lit review?
I don’t know. What do you think this audience needs to understand your findings?
How much do we need to describe our data and analysis techniques?
I don’t know. What do you think this audience needs to understand your findings?
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Can you give me an itemized task list? Worry!
Hmm, I can tell you’re feeling uncertain. That is stressful. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what tasks to do because I’m not the leader of this project. How can you figure out how to best help the team? Did you all identify a single team leader or is it more free form? Is there a leader for each group? Who does seem to be coordinating? Who can you ask for guidance on how you can be helpful?
The group in charge of Element Y is not doing what I need them to do. Anger!
That is frustrating. Have you talked to them? Do they know exactly what you need from them? Do they know when you need it by? Do you know what you need and when you need it by? Do they know which member of your team to talk to when they have questions? Have you designated a person from your group to be in charge of cross-group coordination?
Person X is being SUPER ANNOYING. They keep talking over me in meetings/making changes I don’t agree with/not showing up when they said they would/not doing what they said they would/talking to Person B instead of me. Anger!
That is frustrating. What might you do to try to solve this problem? Yes, I could talk to them, but in the professional world you’re not always going to have or even want a boss who can step in. I think this is a good opportunity to try out some ideas for how to solve this problem on your own. What strategies have you tried already? What have you observed other people do in other situations? How has that worked out? What other strategies and tactics could you try? Remember that the point of college is not to do things perfectly; the point is to learn. What are you learning about how you solve problems in teams?
How it went
Overall, we did a great job! The VP said the results were interesting and useful and said pass them along to other decision-makers when relevant. He seems open to working with me and my class again next year. Success! Good job team!
Of course, every time I do a project like this some things go well and other things go poorly. Out of respect for the privacy of this group of students, I’m not going to say which things went well and poorly for this particular group and project. I will say that in my experience, students learn more from the things that went poorly than the things that went well. I highlight this because if you are a professor and you’re worried about whether you can do something like this “well,” I suggest you flip the script. You don’t want things to go well. Or at least not perfectly. You want to give students the opportunity to try, fail, and learn, in a safe and contained space, with you as their coach. The quality of the final product is beside the point.
How it was graded
This project was graded 100% by colleague evaluations. I do it this way for three reasons.
First off, practically speaking most of the work happens outside of my view, so I honestly don’t know what grades individual students deserve.
Second, in order for the students to take ownership over the project, it is essential that they not see me as the boss. Therefore, I can’t be the one assigning grades. Making the project grade entirely composed of colleague evaluations makes it clear to the students that their colleagues are the people they are responsible to, not me.
Third, the feedback the students provide for one another can be life changing. At least that’s what some have told me in person and others have written on the internet. Sometimes they’ve been too hard on themselves and they’re amazed by how their colleagues see them differently. Other times they didn’t realize how they came across to others and they receive difficult but ultimately productive criticism. Sometimes they process on their own, and sometimes they talk to me. The personal coaching conversations I’ve had with students about how they work in teams have been some of the best of my career.
How does the magic happen? Via Google Form, of course. The initial instructions are here…
Each student is asked to rate every other student in several areas on a 4 point scale…
and then they are asked to provide specific positive and negative comments to each of their colleagues.
I do add up the scores to compose their numerical grade for the project. But mostly I ask for numerical scores to get the student thinking about what each colleague did in each of the different areas of the project, to jog their memory in preparation to write useful comments.
I collate all of the comments, anonymize them as best I can, and print out a double-sided evaluation for each student. The front side is positive comments, starting with the student’s self-evaluation in italics followed by their colleagues’ comments. The back side is room-for-improvement feedback, again starting with the student’s own self-evaluation and followed by their peers’ comments. I pass out these sheets on the last day of class, we take a moment to read, and then we discuss how the project went overall as a group.
The Consulting Project was not the only assignment the students did for the class. Up next: The College Budget Project.
Suppose the worst case scenario endowment tax happened for Colorado College: a 21% tax on all endowment earnings. That would be approximately $14.7 million, 7.2% of total revenues. What would you do? How would you fill that hole? Who would you admit? What would you cut? Who would you fire?
That was the next project for the students, and the topic of my next post.
Bravo! What a service you provide to your students and your collegial audience! Folks who care about continual improvement in their teaching crave this kind of content. Thank you for taking the time to create it.
Jessica, to my mind, this is precisely the kind of learning experience that helps students apply course material while building the skills the work world is looking for. Simulating the uncertainty and open-ended nature of solving 'real' problems and navigating the realities of team dynamics is good stuff!