The Curricular Analytics Community

The Curricular Analytics Community

The Curricular Analytics Community (CAC) is designed to involve faculty and staff in a process that leverages improvement science and curricular analytics tools to identify opportunities for equitable curriculum redesign at their institutions. Drawing on the characteristics of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC), the CAC has a well-defined aim—curricular redesign that will increase equitable persistence and graduation rates—and is guided by a theory of improvement, allowing members to work in an accelerated way to Plan, Do, Study, and Act (PDSA).

Community Expectations:

CAC participants can expect access to curricular analytics and improvement science tools that have been intentionally developed to guide a process of identifying opportunities for equitable curricular redesign. During the initial period of engagement, CAC participants will complete modules every two weeks. The work in these modules and resulting visualizations are then downloaded as a final report and plan that can be implemented at your institution.

Types of Institutions:

2 and 4-year institutions, both public and private will benefit from participation.

Institutions of any size

Institutions that are interested in impacting student success by evaluating and redesigning their curriculum.

Evidence-Based:

The process approach leverages mixed-methods data that include quantitative measures of curricular complexity that are represented in visual diagrams as well as qualitative sources collected from participants.  These data are then combined to create visual representations of the problems of practice that inform the institutional development of change ideas.  These improvements are operationalized using a Plan, Do, Study, Act cycle that encourages the development and monitoring of both leading and lagging outcome measures.

Who should participate?

Institutional teams of at least five people:

Academics Affairs

Admissions

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Staff

Institutional Research Staff

Faculty Leaders

Retention Specialist

Re-Accreditation Teams

Student Affairs

Student Success

Students

Your Institution has the option to create a team or utilize an existing team or committee. The individuals will vary by institution, a successful team is one most likely to design and create an equity-focused retention process at your institution.

Application:

Registration for the Curricular Analytics Community is by application. Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis, we recommend early application so as to not be disappointed.

Applications now open

The application requires you to set up an account on the Gardner Institute's my.jngi.org platform, choose Curricular Analytics Committee and complete a brief application.

Fees:

Fees are based on undergraduate enrollment as determined by College Navigator. Fees are assessed per institution, not per individual.

Undergraduate Enrollment:

Up to 5,000 undergraduates $8,225

5,001-10,000 undergraduates $9,900

10,001-15,000 undergraduates $11,800

15,001+ undergraduates $14,200

The Community schedule:

A pre-academy module will be available before the start of week one.

The synchronous meetings will occur bi-weekly for a 2.5-3 month period, with monthly check-in meetings to follow for the remainder of the year.

The content will be delivered synchronously and asynchronously.

The academy  is divided into the following four core content modules and an introductory overview:

Modules:

Module 0: Getting Started

Module 1: Welcome & Onboarding

Module 2: Understanding the Problem

Module 3: Developing an Aim and Driving Change

Module 4 - Part I: Theory of Change and PDSA

Module 4 - Part II: Present Final Report and Artifacts

Review of the asynchronous content for each of the modules will take participants an average of three hours per week and a total of 20 to 30 hours for the academy.

All required readings, videos, and resources will be provided to participants in the community. Additionally, supplemental readings and resources will be identified and posted in each module for participants who wish to further explore the concepts discussed in the context of this academy.

*Note: This process does not require a data lift from Institutional Research. Instead, participants are able to use the Gardner data platform to quickly build visualizations using publicly available data.

Outcomes:

Through the initial period of engagement, CAC participants will complete deliverables that will be aggregated to form a final report and plan that they can then implement at their institution. Early studies using these tools have shown that increases in curricular efficiency correlate to increases in persistence and on-time graduation.

About the CAC:

The Curricular Analytics Community is:

• the distillation of 20 years of work in evidence-informed, task-force-driven strategic planning and implementation.

• based on lessons learned with over 500 institutions.

• allows institutions to get to the “secret sauce” of a Gardner Institute process faster and at a greatly reduced cost.

• based on the work of the Gardner Institute’s staff, fellows, and advisors.