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WMU > Strategic Plan

Communication Plan for the Planning Process - June 16, 2000

The Communications Team was formed to establish the processes for distributing the Strategic Plan to the campus and to gather feedback on the Strategic Plan from the campus community.

• Approach
• Feedback During Planning Process
• Distributing the Plan
• Ongoing Feedback
• Ongoing Communication Plan
• Team Members

Approach

A Communications Team was established with representation from all colleges and offices.  The Communications Team developed processes for gathering feedback during the planning process, distributing the plan to the campus when complete, and gathering feedback on an ongoing basis.  In addition, they were responsible for determining the ongoing communication approach for the project.

Feedback During the Planning Process

Feedback was gathered on the Strategic Plan while the plan was still being developed.  This happened through two separate activities. 

First, a large forum was held for the campus community.  Invitees included one faculty member, one graduate student, and one undergraduate student from each department (as selected by the chairperson of the department), one or two staff members from each of the administrative offices (as selected by the office director), members of the Faculty Senate Committee for University Computing Policies, awardees of the Teaching and Learning with Technology grants, College representatives, members of the Instructional Technology Task Force (from 1997), student computer lab employees, as well as members of the Architecture and Standards Team and Data Administration, Security, and Data Warehousing Team.  Members of the Strategic Planning Team and Communication Team acted as facilitators.

Background on the strategic planning process was presented.  Everyone in attendance had the opportunity to discuss the guiding principles and brainstorm additional principles, objectives, and strategies to be included in the plan.  Approximately 140 faculty, staff, and students representing all areas on campus were in attendance.

Secondly, a web survey was developed in order to obtain feedback from those who were not able to attend the forum.  The survey consisted of questions pertaining to each of the guiding principles.  Responses were given in essay form.  Approximately 60 responses to the survey were received.

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Distributing the Plan

Various methods were discussed to distribute the draft Strategic Plan to the campus community.  These methods include:

• Posting the plan on the web
• Voice and e-mail broadcast to notify of the web location of the plan
• Copies on reserve at the library (Waldo and Sangren locations)
• Hard copies to specific groups
• AAUP, Western Student Association, Faculty Senate, Vice Presidents, Deans, Directors, Chairs, APA, PSSO, Regional Centers
• One hard copy per department for reference
• Regional Centers will communicate plan to Continuing Education areas

Ongoing Feedback

Feedback on the plan should be able to be provided at any point in time.  Therefore, the team discussed ways that feedback could be provided after the draft is complete.

• Develop a new web survey that provides quantitative feedback on strategies and objectives (ranking strategies in terms of importance, etc). Survey input needs to shift from brainstorming to evaluative.
• Receive feedback and assessment from target groups for different parts of the plan.

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Ongoing Communication Plan

The team also discussed the ongoing plan for communications regarding the Strategic Plan.  The following items were agreed upon.

• Keep the Communications Team in place.  Members will act as contact point people for future communication.  The team will primarily interact via email, although meetings may be necessary on occasion.  In addition, as new drafts of the plan are produced or implementation plans are added, it may be necessary to hold joint meetings of the Strategic Planning Team and the Communications Team to discuss and update the communication strategies in place.
• Use Faculty Senate representatives (one from each department), as well as the new Technology and Operations Council, as point people to disseminate information about the plan. The representatives will need to ensure that Continuing Education receives this information as well.
• The team also suggested that implementation details be provided to the campus community via the Strategic Planning web page as plan proceeds.  In addition, the results of the annual review process should be posted.