In the face of declining enrollment and reduced resources, one of the few ways postsecondary institutions can successfully fight back is by reducing student attrition levels and increasing the completion rate, especially among first-time college students.

There are many ways to help these students, with different approaches and programs that show results. But they are not cost-effective on a larger scale, nor do they show the capacity for larger-scale results in closing achievement gaps with a wide demographic range of students.

The Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC) can change this pattern with our simple and straightforward process for implementing a cost-effective, impactful intervention.

In fact, IEBC is so confident about our work, we offer our client colleges a money back guarantee: If a college implements our program as designed without showing an agreed-upon increase in student term-to-term persistence one year after implementation which offsets its investment in IEBC's facilitation and coaching, IEBC will reimburse 50 percent of our fee. What other organization offers you this kind of assurance? There are none!

 

Guided Pathways - it is taking over the nation's community colleges. Guided Pathways is in some form of implementation at every college with which IEBC has worked. While colleges seem to have a handle on the first three pillars, no college seems to have successfully addressed the fourth pillar: Ensuring Learning.  

 

IEBC engages colleges in a customized, semester-long activity that gets faculty involved in aligning their Student Learning Outcomes with career competencies tied to their regional employment outlook. IEBC's "Curriculum to Career Choices" facilitation process answers the most often asked student questions: "Why are we learning this?" and "How will this help me in the future?"  

 

Learn more about addressing these issues here. 

You aren't alone. In the book Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges , written by IEBC's Dr. Brad Phillips and Jordan Horowitz, we recognize educational institutions are often drowning in data. What you need to figure out is just how much of this data is useful, usable and actionable.

IEBC's work around the country has successfully transformed educators into confident data users. Educators are making justifiable decisions based on good data that everyone understands and that results in improved student outcomes. Horowitz has identified five key lessons about using data that can cut through the clutter and hone in on what's really important.

Find out what those five lessons are here. 

The online publishing platform Medium features two recent articles by IEBC's Dr. Brad Phillips. If you aren't familiar with Medium, it taps into the brains of the world's most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers to bring readers fresh thinking and unique perspectives.

Dr. Phillips's articles focus on differing aspects of the need to scale up successful educational interventions to move the needle on improving student success outcomes. You can find them here:

The Problems and Promise of Bringing Educational Interventions to Scale

Moving The Big Needle in Education - Going to Scale

 

 
Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges: A New Mod el for Educa t ors by Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz is now available from Harvard Education Press.

IEBC joined The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships for a joint public webinar on June 21, introducing the concept of the continuous program improvement cycle and its importance in creating a culture of inquiry and improvement for concurrent enrollment partnerships. IEBC Vice President Jordan Horowitz reviewed promising practices in continuous improvement cycles, and participants learned how to examine their own projects and to map gaps between what is intended and what is actually taking place.