The feedback loops

To perform an iteration of a continuous-improvement process, we must determine:

• What it is that we are (or should be) trying to accomplish. i.e., our goals.
• What we are actually doing.
• How much we are missing our goals (i.e., the discrepancy).
• How to modify what we are doing to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) the discrepancy.^1.2

In our case, this process must incorporate and conform to the bylaws of the academic senate and the rules of departmental governance of the University of California.

It is our intention to obtain feedback in a number of ways:

• Surveys, focus groups, and (formal and informal) conferences with constituents, students, TAs, etc.
• Requiring TAs to write end-of-quarter reports on how their section did as a whole and how selected individual students performed. (Our appendices contain prototype reports by Titus Winters and Anwar Adi.)
• Maintaining and datamining a database, The Archive, that holds (among other things) each student's score on each problem/question that the student has attempted -- see Chapter 2 on page .
• Making sure that appropriate questions and problems are sprinkled throughout the curriculum to get precise information about the expected degree to which each student has achieved certain competencies.