Ask any college graduate how many of their 40 professors were great teachers. The answer is almost always the same: three or four. That's the "10 percent problem" that higher education administrators consistently ignore.
After 16 years applying Toyota production system principles and practices to his own classroom - learned firsthand from Shingijutsu consultants when he worked at Pratt & Whitney - the author is the first professor to systematically translate TPS principles and practices into higher-education pedagogy.
Lean Teaching catalogs 45 common "unforced teaching errors," introduces the novel concept of students as "imaginary customers," and shows how visual controls, weekly graded assignments, just-in-time feedback, and mistake-proofing can replace stale lectures and high-stakes exams.
The payoff? Top-ten-percent teaching-effectiveness ratings, semester after semester. Practical, evidence-based, and refreshingly blunt, this guide gives faculty a proven path to flip the "10 percent problem" on its head -- 36 great teachers out of 40