Essential Conditions
- Commitment to using data
Materials
Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges: A New Model for Educators (posted 4/5/2018)
This book offers a research-based model and actionable approach to using data strategically at community colleges. The authors draw from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to show how leaders and administrators can build good habits for engaging with data constructively. (Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz)
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Commitment to using data
Building a Culture of Inquiry: Using a Cycle of Exploring Research and Data to Improve Student Success (posted 4/5/2018)
This inquiry guide helps practitioners and leaders make better use of research and evidence to inform improvement efforts. (The RP Group)
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Commitment to using data
PRACTITIONER, PRESIDENT, AND PARTNER PERSPECTIVES
Guy Generals, President, Community College of Philadelphia, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
I want to know how well you’re doing things relative to the quantitative factors. And we’ve had that conversation. That’s a hard conversation because you’ll have meetings, you know, higher ed we have lots of meetings, and people like to talk about all the wonderful things they’re doing. But the challenge to them, as I put them to the challenge, is to demonstrate to me, you know, what the outcomes of your efforts are. And that’s part of the cultural change that I think we are trying to inculcate throughout the college.
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Commitment to using data
Marty Cavalluzzi, President, Pierce College Puyallup, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
But when you actually look at the data and disaggregate it, there are certain populations of students in I’m guessing every course that don’t do as well as others. And it changes on the course. For example, in English 101, males were doing 16 percent lower odds of getting successfully through the course than females. But then there’s also race and ethnicity differences among courses. And so once you disaggregate that and you really look and you think — as a faculty member, you’re thinking, “Oh, this is so sad. I give 100 percent. I give so much, I go home exhausted, yet I now see there are populations of students that are not doing as well as others.” And so you have to address that. And what we realized is we had to be prepared for what we’re calling data guilt. It’s when you actually look at the data and there’s this disappointment about, “Oh, I thought I was doing so well.” And so you have to address that. And so they are, they rose to the occasion. I am absolutely so proud of our faculty for doing that, for taking that on. And so they look at the data, and they talk all the time now.
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Commitment to using data
Uri Treisman, Director, Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin (posted 4/5/2018)
One of the changes that we’re all seeing in our institutions is that we’re moving from a culture of anecdote to a culture of data. We know that the plural of anecdote is not data, also. So the data on multiple math pathways is fascinating. First, for all of you higher ed professionals, you know that evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient for the spread of ideas in higher education. But if there were ever an idea that had evidence, it’s multiple math pathways. In a dozen different methods using different strategies, but a common frame, we’re seeing tripling success rates.
The evidence is there. Now, the challenge is to understand that evidence is part of the picture. We also have to understand the culture and strengths of our own institutions. These models are beneficial viruses. As leaders, it’s our job to inject those beneficial viruses in our system and to customize them to reflect our purposes, our students, but not to do it from scratch without building on the work of others. We can no longer do our creative work in a fog of collective amnesia. And that’s the importance of the AACC pathways framework because it gives us a basic home base and structure in which we can customize and adopt innovations and build on each other’s work.
Found on page:
Commitment to using data