Guest Post: Scaling Up Successful Practices, Drawing on Experience

This post is courtesy of Jim Knickerbocker, managing director of the Academy for College Excellence. ACE is an integrated, project-based program for developmental education students that accelerates student progress by focusing on both the students’ cognitive and affective experience. ACE began as a program at Cabrillo College and now exists at eight colleges across the country. In February, we shared some of what we learned at Jim’s great presentation on scaling at the 2011 Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute. Here, Jim talks about some of the deeper change—in organizations and individuals—that may be required to successfully expand an effective program. You’ll also note that we’ve chosen to illustrate today’s post with something a little more sugary than a JPG. That’s right, we’re shamelessly obsessed with the Washington Post’s annual Peeps Diorama Contest.

These peeps go to college in California and have created a strong peer support network because they participate in the Academy for College Excellence.

There is no shortage of inventiveness being put to work improving developmental education in America, but too many good ideas never grow beyond their first few classrooms at a college, let alone extend out to other colleges across the nation or persist over time.  Why is it so challenging to scale-up successful programs? 

And what do we mean by “scaling?”  The most common notion is reaching a wider number of people (more students enrolled in more cohorts at more institutions), but that is only part of the equation. For sustainability, greater depth is just as important, such as the magnitude of student transformation, degree of institutional change (structure, process, roles, policies, values), or attainment of a critical mass in a region or district.

Scaling necessarily entails a lot of change, which may send the message that what is new is more important than what has been.  Shifting priorities within institutions can induce rivalries as parties grasp for control over resource re-allocation. Beyond the changes in power and money, scaling usually requires changes in skills, habits, and ideas. There are a lot of factors that enable this kind of change, but the single most important ingredient to successful scaling is sponsorship—not just at the top, but with key participants (e.g., faculty senate, union, and community partners) who can provide leadership, resources, and support for teamwork. Another success factor is the use of evaluation data to promote buy-in.

The Academy of College Excellence (ACE) designed its model to promote scaling by moving high-intensity student support into the curriculum and creating peer-to-peer networks to reduce costs. ACE also developed a replicable methodology of workshops and tools to help colleges adopt and expand their ACE program. With these and other techniques, once the program is fully established at a college, the cost per cohort is not significantly greater than regular college courses.

Jim Knickerbocker, Ph.D., is managing director of the Academy for College Excellence.  To learn more about ACE’s scaling approach, you can check out the slides and handouts from Jim’s 2011 ATD Strategy Institute presentation in the Resources section under “Scaling Up.” You can learn more about ACE at www.my-ace.org.