Learning Resources

Abstract: Planners and institutional leaders need to understand the relevance of digital capabilities and IT capacity as they relate to student success. This session will improve your understanding of digital capabilities needed to achieve student success and discuss how you can inform integrated planning efforts with IT benchmarking data. You will learn how to assess your institution’s digital capacity for student success technologies so you can affect costs and improve outcomes with new analytics tools and services.

Abstract: This article describes execution of the balanced scorecard (BSC) strategic framework in a School of Nursing (SoN). The SoN strategy map was the outcome of the development phase. The two-year implementation phase incorporated balanced scorecards that linked outcome measures to the priority strategies. Thirty-two percent of the defined outcome measures were met. Factors in adopting the BSC framework included development of a strategic plan that supports the college mission and vision, improved communication within the SoN, a united effort to institute strategies to sustain the SoN’s future, and establishment of performance indicators to measure success in achieving those strategies.

Abstract: Institutions are managing numerous student success initiatives simultaneously, but they lack the necessary data and infrastructure to evaluate outcomes. They also struggle to clearly link a particular initiative to a specific individual outcome. Using prediction-based propensity score matching (PPSM), a methodology compliant with the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse’s requirements, we facilitated the analysis of key initiatives to measure efficacy, ensuring that outcomes of students participating are compared to control students with similar propensity. The recent work explored in this article helps two institutions understand the impact of their innovation and more precisely scale student support.

Abstract: With North Dakota experiencing a significant shortage in all health care-related fields, the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences replaced its aging facility with a new school in order to (1) increase enrollment by 25 percent, (2) attract and retain top-tier faculty and staff, (3) encourage inter-professional collaboration, (4) colocate all eight medical, health sciences, and basic sciences in one building, and (5) retain more in-state graduates. The facility is now a shared collaborative learning environment, the result of the university “rethinking everything” about how it delivered health sciences education.

Abstract: A budget model shapes the way a campus operates in a fundamental way. Redesigning a campus budget model could actually happen relatively quickly from a technical standpoint. However, extensive engagement, collaboration, and conversation are key to a successful implementation. In this article, the authors chart the budget model redesign process at UC Riverside, which followed a uniquely grassroots approach. Changing the budget model at UC Riverside was about changing mind-sets, incentives, and behaviors—not just about the numbers. UC Riverside’s phased approach to its redesign process may be instructive to other higher education institutions considering undertaking such a major change initiative.

Abstract: This article introduces an emerging, innovative practice in higher education: Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS). A research-based iPASS implementation framework is examined through a case study of Guttman Community College (CUNY), which is one year into its iPASS work. This case study, which shares practices and initial findings that include high levels of student, faculty, and staff engagement, is relevant to practitioners and academic leaders considering the use of, or in the early stages of, an iPASS approach, as well as those interested in effectively integrating technology that leads to improved student success and transformative institutional change.

Abstract: The Tennessee Promise has become a cornerstone of Tennessee’s higher education initiatives and has propelled the state to the forefront as a national leader in supporting higher education opportunities for high school graduates. Through a state-established endowment, the funding for the first two years of community or technical college is available to all high school graduates. The program combines student timeliness in complying with requirements and completing service activities, community mentors and involvement, high school counseling and marketing, and college engagement. This article provides an explanation of the Promise program and an overview of its implementation at two distinct Tennessee community colleges.

Abstract: Student success analytics promise to dramatically improve our capacity to increase student success across the entire spectrum of the student life cycle and throughout the student experience. Institutions will move beyond institutional accountability statistics to improve performance at the level of student success processes, practices, and interventions. Ultimately, these new processes, practices, and interventions promise to enable institutions to reinvent and personalize approaches to success.
By leveraging analytics and data science, leading-edge institutions “optimize” student success for individuals and cohorts by making student success a mission-critical, overarching institutional strategy. “Student success science” is a critical ingredient in reimagining higher education. This article provides a road map for institutional leaders on how to raise their analytics IQ so that they can leverage these practices to better serve their students, improve performance, and demonstrate value.
The use of analytics is potentially a key ingredient in sense making and decision making in all aspects of institutional performance and is critical in improving student success. Enlightened higher education leaders are committing to analytics and data science that deliver active interventions that improve student success.