Toward data-driven ATE program improvement: Leveraging statewide longitudinal data to create faculty-inspired tools for decision making

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Increased availability of student data, coupled with tools to analyze and present such data, offer the opportunity to inform decision-making at community and technical colleges. However, three sets of factors make this goal difficult to achieve. First is the lack of resources, knowledge, and awareness of relevant data sets. Second are shortfalls in quantitative research capacity. Third is a dearth of examples of the ways data can be used to document and tell stories about student success. To address these constraints, this study draws upon an on-going collaboration among community college faculty and administrators, university education researchers, and industry. In Phase 1, the research team will collect and analyze technician education pathways in Washington State that have received funding from the NSF's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. In Phase 2, the study will examine cross-sector statewide longitudinal data to identify and investigate key momentum points and employment outcomes that indicate critical milestones along technician education pathways. The study will establish and investigate the collaborative processes that lead to the development, implementation, and use of tools, guides, and interactive data dashboards that visualize descriptive and predictive analytics. The study will illuminate the extent to which the availability of data analytic tools and findings influences the effective use of statewide longitudinal data and, in turn, shape the organizational cultures of three community colleges toward heightened awareness and use of data analytic processes and results for the improvement of STEM-oriented technician education pathways. Phase 3 will synthesize findings from Phase 2, in a manner that produces replicable processes and a set of promising practices for developing and investigating cross sector longitudinal data systems (LDS) for improving and documenting milestones and outcomes of technician education pathways at other institutions within Washington state and across the nation. The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) critical milestones and students outcomes along technician education pathways; (2) critical cross sector statewide longitudinal data that can be incorporated into interactive data dashboards to enhance decisions on improving technical education pathways; and (3) the extent to which the availability of interactive data analytic tools and findings affect organizational culture around improving technical education pathways. The qualitative case study research project offers the research team the ability to systematically collect, examine, code, triangulate, test, and develop a deep understanding of organizational learning involved in culture change directed toward heightened awareness and use of data analytics to improve education pathways. Systematic data collection, analysis, and interpretation will be guided by deductive and inductive approaches. The project's conceptual foundation (Guided Pathways, Equity Scorecard, and Pathways to Results) will provide the deductive framework for the project. The team will inductively uncover, investigate, and coalesce emerging themes as team members participate in and observe the complex relationships among faculty experience, learning, the project's conceptual framework, and the changing organizational culture. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.