Monitoring Success: Creating Sustainable Systems for Measuring the Organizational Performance of a Community Project

Abstract

This improvement project creates metrics and methods for measuring organizational performance within a community project. The community project aims to make learning science and cognitive psychology more accessible to educators and students with the desired outcome to improve learning by alleviating discomfort with testing. The study begins by conducting a needs analysis using the goal approach, systems approach, and constituency approach outlined by Dess and Robinson (1984) to analyze the alignment of current practices to stated organizational goals. To ensure recommendations were sustainable and efficient, an evaluation of potential commitment to the recommendations is conducted using a conceptual framework outlined by Allen and Meyer (1996). The improvement project concluded with an evaluation of key findings around the organization's practices leading to recommendations for measuring performance and creating forums for communication of organizational progress.