In addition to decreasing excess credit accumulation and time to a degree for students, these projects will help institutions calculate the return on their investment in such technologies.
Helping Students Stay on Track
While the proportion of U.S. high school graduates attending college has risen in recent years, the completion rates for institutions with high populations of learners from low-income backgrounds have not kept pace. Part of the challenge lies in the availability of and access to resources to help students stay on track, such as advising staff, services or planning tools. Emerging technology solutions have the potential to fill some of these gaps, but institutions can benefit from support in accessing and deploying them effectively.
As part of our efforts to remove structural barriers to success, we recently awarded Partnership for Education Advancement a $1.4 million grant to address this issue. The grant supports piloting a cloud-based, constantly updated academic planning tool at two Historically Black College and University campuses. This initiative aims to help these institutions operationalize the tool to ensure it is used to maximum benefit. The tool will help students more easily see the courses and requirements they need to graduate. It will also provide valuable course planning information for campus administrators.
Ascendium is committed to supporting the development and evaluation of promising approaches and interventions to increase completion rates and decrease time to a degree. This project not only fulfills that commitment, but also helps institutions learn how to leverage such technologies to inform their transformation.