Digital Holistic Student Supports Effort Aims to Enhance How Colleges Use Technology to Assistance Students
A new Gates Foundation-funded project is combining a group of access-oriented organizations and nonprofit partners to study and enhance the digital tools colleges and universities rely on to support trainees. For the Digital Holistic Student Supports effort, Accomplishing and Dream (ATD) and DataKind, a worldwide nonprofit focused on information science and AI, will “design and implement digital techniques that reinforce how organizations support students towards completion,” according to a news announcement, and then work with nonprofit social policy research study company MDRC to examine and record lessons learned from the effort. The goal: to “help institutions harness their existing information, align people and procedures, and release technology in ways that allow timely, personalized, and proactive assistance.”
Taking part organizations will get a $500,000 grant from Accomplishing the Dream to co-design and evaluate new techniques to trainee support over a two-year duration. Five organizations have already signed up with the effort: Fayetteville State University (NC), Prince George’s Community College (MD), Durham Technical Community College (NC), Clovis Community College (NM), and North Central State College (OH). A sixth college will be added later this year.
Areas of focus for the organizations, according to the job site, consist of:
- Establish a digital transformation roadmap aligned with institutional method and trainee success objectives (neighborhood colleges only).
- Strengthen information maturity through improved governance, literacy, and data use across the institution.
- Execute a combined information system that securely integrates core institutional data sources.
- Usage dashboards, predictive analytics, and other tools to support more proactive and holistic trainee assistance.
- Construct institutional capability to lead and sustain large-scale digital and organizational modification.
- Contribute lessons discovered and offer promising practices to notify wider reform across access-oriented higher education organizations and the ATD Network.
“Colleges are browsing a minute of extensive modification, with students bringing progressively intricate goals, duties, and expectations to their postsecondary journeys,” stated Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of Accomplishing the Dream, in a statement. “This initiative is about guaranteeing that innovation acts as an enabler– not a replacement– for strong relationships, sound practice, and institutional responsibility. By partnering with DataKind and MDRC, we are assisting colleges utilize information and digital tools more purposefully to deliver timely, personalized support that keeps trainees on track to finish credentials that matter for their lives and their neighborhoods.”
To learn more, check out the Achieving the Dream site.
About the Author
Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email safeguarded]