H i g h e r E d u c a t i o n

Faculty Workload AnalysisAn Implementation Approach Using Banner®

MaryLynn Kudey, CSM, PMP

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Institutions understand the need to perform faculty workload analysis; however many institutions do not know how to approach the data collection required. This document provides you with an approach to the implementation of faculty workload analysis at a college/university using the Banner® system.

Why is Faculty Workload Analysis needed?

Faculty Workload Analysis can answer some very basic questions:

What do faculty do?

Who do they do it for?

At what costs?

Faculty Workload studies can answer or raise concerns on faculty productivity including:

Are we using our faculty resources efficiently and effectively?

How can we improve faculty productivity?

Faculty Workload Analysis can also uncover other needs such as an improvement on the best practices for consistent and efficient collection of the data required for this on-going analysis.

What type of data needs to be captured?

Depending upon your institution’s needs, consider the following data to help in your analysis:

hours worked;

teaching load;

courses the faculty members taught;

student credit hours generated in each course;

research performed;

public service activity; or

non-instructional contractual workload assigned

What types of reports should be produced?

You may want to consider determining course load for each faculty member per term and categorize it by tenure vs. tenure track vs. non tenured faculty. This can help answer the following questions:

Who is teaching the students?

Are tenured faculty teaching the freshmen?

What is the percentage of non-instructional activity assigned to faculty?

Are they complying to their contractual workload obligations?

What documentation is needed?

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Do they have a faculty handbook?

Do they define tracking load vs. non-teaching load?

Do workload hours differ from student credit hours?

Is this system set up to collect the faculty workload data in this way?

If not, what is needed for reporting and validation of faculty contractual workloads?

Many in SMART DEVINE’s Higher Education Practice have seen faculty workload analysis at institutions trying to be implemented as a post implementation project of the Banner® system. With that in mind, many components used in faculty load are already in place but must be reviewed to make certain the data is implemented correctly into the report.

Looking at producing faculty workload reports as a “recipe”, here are suggested “ingredients” you will need to consider to successfully create and maintain faculty workload in Banner®:

1. Establish a Faculty Workload Team

Before you begin this endeavor, you must establish a faculty workload core team. Team members should consist of stakeholders that impact data collection, maintenance and reporting of workload.

2. Define the Faculty Workload Goal

One of the first charges of the team is to define the goal and objectives of implementing faculty workload.

Some examples goals can be define through a business case need that can include the following statements:

The Office of the Provost is in need of a better mechanism for managing and reporting faculty load. Other areas of the institution also have a similar need, for example, HR must report faculty workload as part of compliance for the Affordable Care Act. This implementation of faculty workload will require considerable work on the part of Academic Affairs, Enrollment Services and Human Resources. In order to implement faculty workload we may need to change our processes for managing and updating data in Banner® Student.

The Office of Institutional Research manually creates faculty load reports for the institutions. Currently this data is not tracked in the ERP system. There is a need to track instructional and non-instructional workload in the ERP system in order to produce accurate report analysis and to validate workload to faculty contract requirements.

The state requires the institution to develop and implement policies and procedures to monitor faculty teaching loads and to approve significant variations from expected minimums. Policies must include the criteria and approval process for reductions in institutional load attendant to increased administrative responsibilities, externally-funded research, including course buy-outs, and additional institutional and departmental service obligations.

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3. Definition of Faculty Workload

Each institution should have a definition of Faculty Workload. For the purpose of this paper, we will use the following definition:

Faculty Workload can be defined as the total of the instructional, scholarly, advising, and professional service activities that faculty provide to the institution. Workload can consist of instructional activity, course preparation, student advising, office hours, committee work, research, overtime, and non instructional activity (e.g. department chairperson, director of a program, sabbatical, dean, etc.) and other duties defined by the institution.

In addition, if you do not have the following defined at your institution, you will need to have these definitions to help you choose what analysis and configuration is required for instructional workload:

Teaching workload

Course overload

Course reduction or non-instructional activity

Define your categories and/or rank on faculty members.

Will you report by tenured, non- tenured faculty, teaching assistants, adjunct faculty, part time, or full time faculty?

Will you report by faculty rank such as Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, or Instructor?

Do you have this defined in the Banner® system?

Where is it defined?

Who maintains it?

Identify how you define workload on courses that are not conducted in regularly scheduled class meetings, such as:

Are independent study, readings, special topics, field experience or research courses, including dissertation/thesis research, student teaching, clinical, and individual lesson courses (e.g. in music and fine arts) included in the definition?

Are any of these types of instruction included or excluded from the teaching load calculation?

How do you store data on faculty related to Team Taught Courses?

How do you define Cross Listed Courses and teaching allocation?

How do teaching assistants affect the faculty workload in the section of a course?

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4. Data Discovery

You need to review the data currently being collected in Banner® to determine the scope of work required based upon the goals and objectives defined by your institution. Identifying data requirements will assist in defining your project plan.

Data items to review include:

A. Review definitions of the options for instructional workload calculations

a. Review the definition of the options for non-instructional workload calculations and what data is required for each calculation.

b. Instructional workload calculations available in Banner® are:

i. Calculated workload

ii. Instructor credits

iii. Weekly contact hours

iv. Total contact hours for the session for the term

v. Generated credit hours

c. Non-instructional Workload

i. Review what data items have been implemented when the schedule module was configured since the schedule module is the integrated source for much of faculty workload instructional data.

B. Review Faculty Person Data Maintained in Banner® Student Module

a. Reporting requirements may need to include filters by faculty college/department/ rank/tenure status.

b. Review the data that currently exists to determine if data may need to be collected to enhance reporting needs. In addition if you own the Human Resources product for Banner®, inquire if they store any of this data on their forms; you may be able to use the data elements in this system for your reporting needs.

C. Review Data Discovery with Primary Stakeholders

a. Schedule a meeting to review your data discovery with the primary stakeholders on the implementation. This will help determine the data required to be maintained and the faculty workload calculations to be used. At this meeting, you need to define resources to be included in this project and a timeframe to be considered for implementation. Due to new data being collected you may need to discuss resource allocation for the on-going maintenance of the system.

D. Review Reporting Requirements

a. Review with the team the various reporting requirements. This phase of the project is required to identify the most critical and usable reports to be developed. An interview

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analysis will need to be performed with the key stakeholders/Subject Matter Expert (SME) identified by the faculty workload team. Results of the report analysis phase will provide the definitive overall project plan for report development to include components such as report complexity and time required for development.

E. Prepare a Project Plan

a. A project plan needs to be defined. Components of the plan need to follow your institution’s project methodology. Milestone of the project plan should include:

i. Business Process Analysis

ii. Configuration Requirements

iii. Process Requirements

iv. Testing Requirements

v. End Use Training Documentation

1. End User Training

vi. Reporting Requirements

vii. Cutover to production approach

viii. Deployment of Faculty Load

Communication is the Key

Communication Management is a critical success factor for any implementation of a process. If your institution has never formally collected faculty load information, communications need to be proactively managed, not reactively addressed, in order to ensure that the right messages are being communicated and to ‘quiet the noise’ that typically surrounds a project of this size.

A Communication Plan is critical for the faculty load project to be successful and to ensure that key messages are consistently delivered through the different channels. Decisions need to be documented, and therefore understood, by key stakeholders. Communication with regularly scheduled updates help manage expectations throughout the life of the project.

The Communication Plan will help you answer the following questions:

Who will deliver the message?

When will the message be delivered?

How often should the message be delivered?

What communication channels are available?

What channel will be utilized to communicate a specific message?

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To ensure a successful outcome, know how to approach a faculty workload implementation in progressive steps.

Why do you want faculty load data or why you need this data?

How do you want to perform the analysis?

How do you deliver the analysis?

SMART DEVINE’s team has over 33 years of experience with the implementation and maintenance of faculty workload data at small, large, multi-campus, private and public institutions. We can assist you in any phase of the project to bring it to a successful conclusion.

About the Author MaryLynn Kudey is a Director at Smart Devine and has over 33 years of experience in higher education, with a specific emphasis on student administration systems processes and project management. She conducts training sessions on various aspects of BANNER® product, FERPA, Regulatory Reporting such as IPEDS and Clearinghouse Reporting, and integrated components of the Human Resources, Alumni, Financial Aid and Finance products.

For more information, please contact MaryLynn Kudey at 267-670-7371 or mkudey@smartdevine.com.

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MaryLynn Kudey