The ITA Process
The ITA helps institutions reflect
The ITA is a process to help postsecondary institutions reflect on existing student success efforts and the organizational structures that support them. It helps an institution learn more about its areas of strength and improvement, which are a critical input to prioritizing and planning further action to enhance equitable student success.
The ITA is driven by a Sensemaking Conversation, which is a facilitated meeting that enables deep reflection with a diverse, cross-functional group of institutional leaders, faculty, and staff.
The Sensemaking Conversation is informed by an online perception survey – which provides insight into current perceptions of student success activities by different stakeholders on a campus. This survey generates custom individual and aggregate reports.
The perception survey is supported by rubrics. They drive broad reflection across 11 unique but integrated topic areas central to institutional transformation for equitable student success. The rubrics for these topics were created by leading experts in each subject area.
ITA support materials describe the entire process, step-by-step, with guides for facilitators and participants, sample meeting decks, analyses and reporting templates.
The ITA is about Sensemaking.
The cornerstone of the ITA is the Sensemaking Conversation, which is a facilitated group conversation that enables deep reflection with a diverse, cross-functional set of institutional stakeholders. It is informed by insights into the current perception of student success work on a campus. The Sensemaking Conversation typically takes place over three or four hours. The goal of the conversation is to help an institution learn more about its areas of strength and improvement. This learning is a critical input to prioritizing and planning further action to enhance equitable student success.
How this approach works
The Institutional Transformation Assessment consists of two key activities:
1. Gathering input from leaders and practitioners
The ITA has 100+ indicators (questions) over 11 topics, spanning pathways, solutions, and operating capacities. The ITA’s strength is in its breadth: it’s useful to ask how participants perceive areas of the institution that are outside of their day-to-day job.
2. Having a dynamic Sensemaking Conversation
The aggregate (anonymized) responses to the ITA can spark an insightful discussion that digs deep and connects the dots between departments and efforts to reach new insights that can spur action.The goal is to learn about each other’s perceptions and come to consensus on prioritized next steps.
- Gathering input from leaders and practitioners
- Having a dynamic Sensemaking Conversation
The ITA survey has 100+ indicators (questions) over 11 topics, spanning pathways, solutions, and operating capacities. The ITA’s strength is in its breadth: it’s useful to ask how participants perceive areas of the institution that are outside of their day-to-day jobs.
The aggregate, anonymous responses to the ITA survey can spark an insightful discussion that digs deep and connects the dots between departments and efforts to reach new insights that can spur action. The goal is to learn about each other’s perceptions, to identify areas of strength and improvement, and to use the findings as a critical input to prioritizing and planning further action to enhance equitable student success.
ITA components
The ITA process consists of several individual, working parts that each have their own unique function.
A main component of the ITA process is a procedure or timeline to follow. Those taking part in the ITA process need something that identifies where they are in the process and gives them a “north star” to work toward.
The rubrics are the basis of the tool. They are rooted in extensive postsecondary transformation research. Collectively working on the topics covered in the rubrics leads to a faster and more significant transformation result. These rubrics were created to help an institution self-reflect on where their transformation work sits against each of the different measures. The rubrics are what bring the online survey to life.
The online perception survey itself is a mechanism to collect individual responses. When participants are completing the survey they are essentially going through a digital version of the rubrics.
Completed survey data is then aggregated into a dashboard and can be used in a variety of different ways. Participants can use the dashboard to revisit their survey responses. Institutional leaders can manipulate dashboard filters, enabling them to parse out results by factors such as groups, roles or point in time. Intermediaries can use the dashboard results to support individual institutions in their transformation work, and can also look at the survey data in aggregate across multiple institutions to see similarities and differences.
All efforts lead to the Sensemaking Conversation as the cornerstone of the entire process.
Underpinning the whole process are the support materials that help the institutional Transformation Team leads, intermediary support personnel, and actual Transformation Team and Student Success Community participants. The materials include timely information about the purpose of the process, the tools, and each groups’ roles—all anchored to the overall purpose and methodology that drives the ITA.
The foundational framework of the ITA
An intentional, integrated approach to institutional transformation.
The ITA is built on evidence that shows that taking an integrated approach to continuous improvement— a cycle of reflection, action, and measurement—is a promising way to support institutional transformation for equitable student success.
The hypothesis behind the framework is that a student’s pathway to a credential is supported by solutions designed to mitigate student loss points, which are made possible by strengthening institutional operating capacities. This all exists within the unique ecosystem of the institution and their context on campus. The ITA’s structure reflects this integrated approach.
The ITA rubrics cover 11 categories—grouped into operating capacities, solution areas, and pathways—that are all critical for improving student outcomes. The ITA was developed with input from the below listed national organizations.
Categories covered
- Information Technology (IT): The institution’s ability to provide institutional leadership, faculty, and advisors with tools and information they need to contribute to student success, support students, faculty, and staff with IT solutions, and develop and monitor meaningful student success initiatives. Created in partnership with Educause.
- Institutional Policy: The institution’s ability to change institutional policies, processes, and procedures to support, sustain, and institutionalize efforts to improve student success and close equity gaps. Created in partnership with HCM Strategists.
- Institutional Research (IR): The institution’s ability to use inquiry, action research, data, and analytics to intentionally inform operational, tactical, and strategic accomplishment of its student success mission. This function—occurring both inside and outside of an institutional research office—provides timely, accurate, and actionable decision support to administrators, faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders. Created in partnership with Association for Institutional Research.
- Leadership & Culture: The institution’s ability to develop and lead the execution of a strategic agenda focused on student success. Created in partnership with Harvard Graduate School of Education.
- State Policy: The institution’s ability to leverage existing state policies or develop and/or advocate for new evidence-based state policies (which could include, depending on local context, legislative policies, board policies, rules and/or guidance documents) to support efforts to achieve equitable student success at scale. Created in partnership with HCM Strategists.
- Strategic Finance: The institution’s ability to strategically and effectively allocate and manage resources in support of the institution’s vision, mission, goals, and priority initiatives. Created in partnership with National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).
Additional input provided by equityworksNW on embedding equity, and by National Opinion Research Center (NORC) on assessment design.
- Advising: The institution’s focus on assessing and improving advising and support services by leveraging people, processes, and technology, creating holistic student supports that are Sustained, Strategic, Integrated, Proactive, and Personalized – and connect advising and planning. Created in partnership with Advising Success Network.
- Developmental Education Reform: The institution’s progress in reforming their developmental education programs to maximize the likelihood of all students completing their college-level gateway math and English courses in the first year of enrollment. Created in partnership with Education Commission of the States.
- Digital Learning: The institution’s progress in developing, implementing, and supporting an institution-wide strategy for delivering high-quality digital teaching and learning in face to-face, hybrid, and online learning modalities to reduce inequitable learning outcomes for Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, poverty affected and other minoritized populations. Created in partnership with Every Learner Everywhere.
- Emergency Aid: The institution’s ability to build and sustain an emergency aid program that provides timely grants, loans, and/or basic needs support to students facing an unexpected financial crisis. Created in partnership with National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA).
Additional input provided by equityworksNW on embedding equity, and by National Opinion Research Center (NORC) on assessment design.
- Pathways: The institution’s ability to systematically define student pathways (a student’s journey through the institution, from access and enrollment to completion of their credential), help students choose a pathway, map pathways to students’ end goals, keep students on a pathway, and ensure that students are learning. 2-Year College version created in partnership with Community College Research Center (CCRC). 4-Year College version created in partnership with United Negro College Fund (UNCF).
Additional input provided by equityworksNW on embedding equity, and by National Opinion Research Center (NORC) on assessment design.
The process
Institutions are on a journey of continuous improvement—a cycle of reflection, action, and measurement. The ITA is designed to help postsecondary institutions reflect on existing student success efforts and the organizational structures that support them. It helps an institution learn more about its areas of strength and improvement, which are a critical input to prioritizing and planning further action to enhance equitable student success.
The ITA process broadly consists of:
- Prepare: Execute planning activities with the end goal in mind.
- Collect data: Deploy the ITA survey, collect and analyze results, and prepare to facilitate the Sensemaking Conversation.
- Sensemaking: Conduct the Sensemaking Conversation and capture plans and outcomes.
- Debrief: Identify continued efforts after the Sensemaking Conversation.
Who should be involved?
For each institution, there should be a designated point of contact: the institutional Transformation Team lead. This lead is responsible for shepherding their institution’s Transformation Team and Student Success Community through the process of using these tools, with the help of an intermediary.
Who facilitates the ITA process:
- Intermediaries
- Transformation Team Leads
Who takes the survey:
Transformation Team
- Campus leaders with direct management responsibility and/or expertise in at least one of the ITA topics (typically 8-15 people) Example roles:
- Chancellor/President
- Provosts/Vice Presidents/Vice Chancellors
- Deans/Directors/Department Chairs
- This team takes the full 100+ question Transformation Team survey
- Use of this survey is required by this group to participate in the Sensemaking Conversation
Student Success Community
- Unlimited number of campus practitioners who work in roles related to ITA topics (typically 25-50 people)
- Example roles:
- Department leads and staff
- Administrators, faculty, and staff
- Optional: students who chair and/or serve on committees such as Budget and Planning, Institutional Effectiveness, Student Success, Academic Senate, etc.
- This team takes a brief 30+ question Student Success Community survey. These are a subset of questions from the larger survey.
- Use of this survey is optional and this group does not participate in the Sensemaking Conversation
Who participates in the Sensemaking Conversation:
- Transformation Team
ITA survey links
After an institution is registered, there are a few important links that participants and facilitators will receive. Note that there are specific links for each institution’s Transformation Team and Student Success Community participants. Users should register with their preferred email address and will receive auto-generated emails with links to return to the survey as well as to their personal results once they complete the survey.
Returning to the Institutional Transformation Assessment:
When taking the ITA survey, it’s okay if participants don’t complete the entire assessment in one sitting— there is an option to return and pick up where left off.
To do so, the Return to ITA survey link is needed, which was included in the original invitation email. Alternatively, after a participant registers with the ITA, the system also auto-generates an email to participants that includes the Return to ITA link (if not found in the inbox, it could be in the spam folder— email subject is “ITA Return Link,” sent from itaAdmin@qemailserver.com).
It’s important to use the Return to ITA link and not the registration link in the invitation email. Using the registration link to return to a partially completed survey will cause a “duplicate panel member” error because the survey will assume the participant is registering again.
If a participant receives this error, there are two options:
- The team lead can be alerted to the error and clear the duplicate profile. (Be aware that this may take 24-48 hours.)
- The registration link can be clicked on, but a different email address will need to be used and the survey needs to be taken from the beginning again. Please note that any progress made with the original login will be lost.
| Link | Who it’s for | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
|
Survey link- Transformation Team |
Transformation Team |
Participant ITA survey links, to be shared via email by a facilitator |
|
Survey link- Student Success Community |
Student Success Community |
Participant ITA survey links, to be shared via email by a facilitator |
|
“Return to the ITA survey” link |
Participants |
Used by participants to return and complete ITA survey |
|
Dashboard logons |
Facilitators |
Used to access dashboards and monitor response rates and then review ITA outputs in preparation for Sensemaking |
|
Post-Sensemaking survey link and credentials |
Facilitators |
To be accessed at the tail end of Sensemaking to answer a few key questions that will be saved for future reference. |