The Ada Center partners with colleges and universities, state entities, and national organizations to help higher education use technology to improve student outcomes. For the time being, all The Ada Center engagements are tailored for virtual delivery.
How We Support Institutions
The Ada Center supports a range of community colleges and access-focused universities committed to improving student outcomes through the use of technology. The Ada Center’s support often begins with something we call a “Student Success Technology Opportunity Assessment.” Over a short period, The Ada Center examines your institution’s current use of software and associated processes, making specific recommendations about how your institution can better leverage software tools to strengthen student outcomes. We’ll also help you chart a path for executing on these recommendations. Deliverables from the assessment include:
Comprehensive analysis of your major software tools and associated business processes drawn from research conversations with faculty and staff, along with background research.
Formal presentation and 15-20 page report on your institution’s technology-related strengths and opportunity areas, including prioritization of software functionality that would be most impactful at your institution.
Facilitated technology action planning with leadership team to help your institution advance the recommendations of the opportunity assessment.
Opportunity for in-depth questions about how peers have approached specific software implementations, experiences with vendors, and integration questions.
The cost to engage with The Ada Center to conduct an assessment over a 1.5 - 3 month period is $15,000 - $19,500, with exact pricing derived from an institution’s specific support needs. For institutions that are looking for additional support following a Technology Opportunity Assessment, The Ada Center works with your institution to develop a custom scope of work. The Ada Center may also partner with other national change leaders to ensure you have the expertise you need to advance your student success efforts. The first step is to get in touch to share what you’re working on and what your needs are.
How We Support States
State entities play an important role in facilitating technology-supported innovation. In more centralized state systems, state-level technology and data decisions must translate to strong campus adoption. In decentralized state systems, the state is poised to be a critical facilitator and aggregator of campus technology successes and lessons learned, if not always a purchaser. The Ada Center partners with a variety of state entities to support strong and effective technology adoption practices. Examples of state-level support include:
Interactive Workshops
The Ada Center partners with the State Success Centers to host interactive workshops on Navigating Student Success Technology. Teams of student services, academic affairs, institutional research, and technology leaders convene to learn about today’s technology landscape, including lessons learned from institutions that have implemented emerging software tools. Throughout the workshop, teams are guided through the development of a technology and student information flow map for their institution and have an opportunity to connect with peers about common experiences. At the end of the workshop, (1) institution teams have a prioritized set of next steps and (2) state leaders have a clearer sense of common technology-related challenges and opportunities across institutions.
Evaluation Projects
The Ohio Department of Higher Education and the State Success Center launched a novel project, Scheduling for Completion, in which public institutions were funded to adopt a data-driven course scheduling approach supported by a technology platform. The Ada Center was the qualitative evaluation partner for this three-year project, interviewing institution staff and faculty about the key ingredients for successful software implementation. The goal of the evaluation was to help guide future software procurement and adoption practices.
State Needs Assessments
The Ada Center partnered with WestEd and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office to conduct an assessment of technology needs and practices across Adult Education programs in California. The assessment included state-level organizational recommendations along with practical institution-specific guidance with respect to digital learning technologies, advising and onboarding tools, and case management systems.
How We Support Organizations
Professional associations and funding partners have played a tremendous role in advancing today’s higher education student success and equity movements. The Ada Center’s theory of change involves supporting large-scale transformation efforts being pioneered by organizations and networks such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pathways Collaborative, Strong Start to Finish, the College Futures Foundation, and the Frontier Set. Examples of organizational support partnerships include:
Funder Strategy Support
The Ada Center partners with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the development of and learning documentation around a demonstration project aimed at understanding how to overcome the data and technology obstacles that impede holistic student support.
Similarly, The College Futures Foundation partnered with The Ada Center to explore unmet needs with respect to Guided Pathways implementations in California. The Ada Center provided an analysis of institution challenges with respect to Guided Pathways technologies, focusing on how community colleges have implemented degree planning, case management, student onboarding, and predictive analytics technologies.
Cohort Consulting
The Ada Center partnered with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) intermediary and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support Morehouse College, Delaware State University, Jackson State University, Claflin University, Fayetteville State University, and Johnson C. Smith University with strengthening their student success technology initiatives. The Ada Center partners both individually with university leaders and collectively through facilitating peer learning on topics such as advising technology adoption.
Embedded Topic Expertise
The Ada Center partners with a variety of organizations including Complete College America, The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, AASCU, APLU, AACC, Achieving the Dream, SOVA, and NCII to support institutions with technology-mediated success and equity efforts. As a subject matter expert within a broader transformation movement, The Ada Center is called upon to design and facilitate workshops, webinars, and conference presentations, and to develop open-access materials for the field.