16 research outputs found
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Establishing the Backbone: An Underexplored Facet of Collective Impact Efforts
Coinciding with a growing interest in collective impact efforts, an increasing number of foundations, policymakers, and practitioners are recommending that multi-sector partnerships make use of a backbone. A backbone is an entity that functions independently as a centralized management team for partnership efforts. While the idea of using a backbone has gained currency, little attention has been paid to how to establish a backbone. Instead, much of the prevailing discussion has focused on what a backbone should do after it has been formed.
Research on the Ford Corridors of College Success initiative reveals that communities that want to engage in the collective impact approach need more help in the process of creating a backbone. This brief describes the challenges that early-stage collective impact communities face as they work to identify potential backbone organizations and establish a backbone structure
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A Complex Ecosystem: A Qualitative Investigation Into Dynamics Affecting the Implementation of College Advising Redesigns
Academic advising plays a critical role in student engagement and persistence at community colleges, and colleges are increasingly adopting advising technologies to increase their capacity to support students. However, much remains unknown about the process of planning for and implementing technology-mediated advising redesigns.
To explore these reforms’ complex dynamics, we adapted Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of human development, conceiving of the student advising experience as embedded in three interrelated contexts: the external environment (the political, economic, and cultural environment outside the institution), the institutional environment (where changes in practice are implemented), and the interpersonal environment (where advising interactions occur). Using interview data collected from a diverse group of stakeholders at two community colleges and two broad-access four-year institutions, we identified several dynamics that have implications for practitioners, funders, and policymakers looking to enact technology-mediated advising reforms:
External dynamics included involvement in national college completion organizations and initiatives, state policies related to college completion, and state and local economic conditions.
Institutional dynamics included resource constraints, the degree to which advising policies and procedures were centralized, and approaches to managing institutional change.
Finally, interpersonal dynamics included individual advising approaches, advising capacity, and reactions to technology
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Understanding the Role of Higher Education in Addressing Students’ Basic Needs
In recent years, attention to the number of students struggling to meet basic needs such as food and housing has grown, and services such as food pantries, emergency grants, and assistance accessing public benefits have become increasingly common on college campuses. However, much is still unknown about why colleges and universities are adopting basic needs services, how colleges and universities are incorporating basic needs services into organizational functioning, and what challenges may make it difficult for colleges and universities to provide basic needs services. The current coverage of basic needs in higher education largely focuses on documenting the prevalence of food and housing insecurity among students and advocating for basic needs services as a strategy to promote student success.
To date, little research has been done to explore what it means for higher education to provide basic needs services from an institutional perspective. To better understand what it means for colleges as institutions to provide basic needs services, the dissertation uses qualitative interviews with individuals from community colleges, public four-year colleges, private four-year colleges, and highly selective private four-year universities to examine the influence of external environmental pressures as well as internal organizational dynamics on the provision of basic needs services.
I find that while external pressures and internal dynamics are conveying the message that colleges should provide basic needs services, they offer little guidance over how to do so. Basic needs services tend to operate on the periphery of organizational functioning, with limited institutional support, and faculty and staff are struggling to define the extent of higher education’s responsibility. The study contributes not only to organizational theory research in higher education, but also to policy research regarding strategies for strengthening the social safety net.
It concludes by highlighting remaining unanswered questions about the role of higher education in addressing students’ basic needs and offering recommendations for new research into strategies for enhancing the role of cross-sector partnerships in supporting students’ basic needs and maximizing the potential of college-based basic needs services
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Postsecondary Partnerships in Collective Impact
Collective impact is a collaborative, place-based model based on the premise that meaningful collaboration requires the development of a comprehensive, multi-sector partnership that brings together organizations from key sectors within a community. Because collective impact work cannot be carried out effectively without the foundation of a strong multi-sector partnership, it is crucial to understand whether communities attempting to engage in collective impact are able to develop one, and what factors facilitate or hinder this type of partnership formation. This brief examines how postsecondary institutions have attempted to develop multi-sector partnerships within a collective impact context using data from a study of the Ford Corridors of College Success initiative, which focuses on community colleges as a locus of engagement. Findings indicate that while the sample community colleges are engaged in multiple efforts with other organizations to promote student success, these efforts are mostly occurring through binary partnerships rather than true multi-sector partnerships. Empowering postsecondary institutions to transform binary partnerships into meaningful multi-sector partnerships will require greater attention to their capacity for building and nurturing relationships
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Leadership for Transformative Change: Lessons From Technology-Mediated Reform in Broad-Access Colleges
Community colleges and broad-access four-year institutions have a crucial role to play in increasing educational equity in the United States. In order to fulfill this role, however, institutions must engage in organizational change to address their low completion rates.
Drawing on qualitative case studies of six colleges, this study explores the influence of different types of leadership approaches on the implementation of a technology-mediated advising reform, and assesses which types of leadership are associated with transformative organizational change. Expanding on s theory of adaptive change and Karp and Fletcher’s Readiness for Technology Adoption framework, the authors find that transformative change requires multitiered leadership with a unified commitment to a shared vision for the reform and its goals
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Supporting Military Veteran Students: Early Lessons From Kohlberg Prize Recipients
The Post-9/11 GI Bill of 2008 has increased postsecondary education participation rates of military service members and veterans. Such participation is critical for military-connected individuals as they transition to civilian life. Postsecondary education enables military-connected individuals to upgrade their existing skills, gain new skills, or earn a credential that helps translate their skills into nonmilitary occupations. However, federal statistics indicate that while the Post-9/11 GI Bill has increased higher education participation rates overall, a higher percentage of veterans have entered for-profit colleges than have entered public institutions. In 2007–2008, 14 percent of veterans enrolled in college were at for-profit institutions, and 42 percent were at community colleges; by 2011–2012, these proportions had shifted to 24 percent and 37 percent, respectively
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Practitioner Perspectives on the Use of Predictive Analytics in Targeted Advising for College Students
This study examines the perspectives of college personnel engaged in the consideration, launch, and use of predictive analytics tools for targeted advising. Based on interview data from college staff members at nine public two- and four-year institutions at different stages of implementation of predictive analytics software, the authors provide a broad look at the positive and negative reactions to this potentially influential educational innovation.
Overall, advisors and other end users of predictive analytics tools were more critical of them than either administrators or college personnel who helped develop their use as part of a campus-wide advising reform. In addition, compared with personnel at colleges in the early stages of planning and implementing predictive analytics tools, personnel at colleges that had been actively using the tools for some time reported more concerns. While the use of predictive analytics holds substantial promise in helping to target student services, the results of the study suggest that a greater examination of concerns about validity, interpretation, and ethics is warranted
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How Ohio Community Colleges Are Using Guided Pathways to Personalize Student Support
Based on responses that Ohio community colleges provided on CCRC’s Guided Pathways Scale of Adoption Assessment (SOAA) as well as on semi-structured follow-up interviews, this report examines how these colleges—which have been engaged in guided pathways reform for several years—are innovating within the model to provide personalized support during onboarding (extended in many cases through the first year, until students have chosen a field of interest, developed a plan, and taken and passed program gateway courses) to help students gain early academic momentum. As a refinement to prior CCRC guided pathways research that has focused largely on structural reforms, the authors provide insight into the provision of personalized support, which is critical for understanding how colleges can improve student success and advance equitable outcomes for underserved students.
The report finds that:
- Guided pathways reforms can promote student supports that are both universal (scaled to reach all students) and personalized (customized based on the needs and interests of groups of students as well as individual students).
- Personalizing universal supports has the potential to increase equity in student outcomes by better recognizing and meeting the needs of underserved students.
- Supports can be personalized even with limited resources.
- Personalized supports are important both for high school students (including dual enrollment and non-dual enrollment students) and for college students
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How Guided Pathways Reforms Can Improve Support for Adult Students: Lessons From Three Tennessee Community Colleges
Guided pathways reforms are emerging as a promising strategy for improving student outcomes and closing equity gaps at community colleges, but little is known about how the guided pathways approach can help address challenges facing adult students. This report discusses strategies that three Tennessee community colleges that have implemented guided pathways reforms— Motlow State Community College, Nashville State Community College, and Pellissippi State Community College—are using to support adult students in three core areas: helping students choose and enter a program of study, keeping students on their path, and promoting student learning. The authors also discuss plans the institutions have for the further strengthening of support for adult students. The report draws upon interviews conducted with faculty, student support staff, and administrative staff at the three colleges as well as on focus groups conducted with adult students at each college.
Motlow State, Nashville State, and Pellissippi State are providing innovative models for addressing the needs of adult students by including targeted supports within guided pathways reforms. Differing needs within the adult student population and overlapping needs shared by many adult and traditional-age students call for a multi-pronged strategy to support adult students, consisting of:
Universal policies and services critical in promoting success for all students, which are embedded in guided pathways reforms (e.g., mandatory college onboarding activities, career and program exploration, advising).
Targeted supports recognizing the challenges and opportunities of adult learners (e.g., flexible scheduling, designated point of contact for adult students, family-friendly spaces and events).
Personalized supports tailored to the needs of adults as individuals (e.g., mentoring and coaching, intake surveys to identify students’ needs and interests)
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Improving Student Services for Military Veterans
Education is a key component in the transition back to civilian life and employment for many new veterans. Enrollment in college allows veterans to upgrade existing skills or gain new skills in order to transition to a new career. Successful completion of college programs provides veterans with valuable credentials that may validate uncredentialed skills they gained in the military. However, many service members find it difficult to align these skills and knowledge gained via military service to the civilian labor market. To improve the educational experiences and outcomes of student veterans enrolled in community colleges, the Kisco Foundation in 2015 awarded five community colleges across the country the Kohlberg Prize, a six-month planning grant to enhance services for veterans by connecting them to broader college reform initiatives. The authors of this review examined the community colleges’ proposal narratives to understand the colleges’ perceptions of veteran students’ strengths and challenges, their current delivery of supports and suggestions for improving support services, and the relationship between their veteran services and broader reform efforts. The authors gained insights into what community college personnel believe are the key ways to improve support for their veteran students. The review explores strategies taken by the five awardee community colleges to better serve veteran students so that they feel more comfortable at college and are better able to persist and earn a credential. Policy recommendations are also provided. A summary version of the review is also available