Last week, DEI college teams, partners, and Achieving the Dream coaches gathered in Durham, N.C., for the Annual DEI Summer Workshop. As we mentioned last Thursday, one goal of the workshop was to address current implementation challenges by giving college innovators time to share their ideas and problem-solve.
We organized a group problem-solving activity we like to call "Sticky Issues." On Friday afternoon, we broke into small groups of five to seven people and gave each person a chance to share one implementation frustration, obstacle, or difficulty that they are “stuck” on. The rest of the group had ten minutes to brainstorm solutions to help the person overcome the stated challenge. Traditional rules of brainstorming apply: no idea is too off-the-wall and no one is allowed to say “that will never work!”
The Sticky Issues session isn’t about commiseration; it’s about colleges comparing ideas and spreading good practices. Here’s a sampling of the challenges raised during the session and some of the interesting ideas that were generated:
- Sticky Issue: How can we get students to sign up and show up for boot camps?
Possible Solution: The message you use to market a boot camp is important. Put a price tag on it by sharing a cost/benefit analysis and focusing on student success data. Market it to parents. Charge students and pay them back upon completion.
- Sticky Issue: How can I get faculty to believe the data about program results?
Possible Solution: Host an annual half day Data Summit for faculty. Take them off-site and make it fun. Ask faculty champions to present about how they use data. There is a fear of judgment, so these kinds of events can be used to demystify the data.
It was great to see the wisdom of the DEI crowd targeted at specific challenges and to see the enthusiasm of participants as they thought about implementing the new ideas on their own campuses. We might just try bringing sticky issues to Accelerating Achievement…stay tuned!
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