Translating Theory Into Practice: Mediating Academic Advising Reform at Scale Through Improvement Science

Improving student outcomes at community colleges is a difficult, multifaceted problem. While no single approach can be a panacea for such a challenging problem of practice, Guided Pathways (GP) research suggests a scalable reform model that may ultimately help to improve the underlying systems and structures colleges have designed to support their students, and in turn, may help colleges to achieve the goal of improved student outcomes more consistently. Because of the breadth of the GP model’s recommendations for reform, however, implementation is complex. To be effective, each of the reforms must be localized, adopted, and brought to scale within a variety of college contexts. The current body of GP research suggests no mechanism by which these complexities might be navigated at the campus level. Improvement science, a systematic approach to process improvement widely utilized in manufacturing and healthcare settings, and increasingly important in an educational context, provides a potential framework to address the complicated operational questions raised during GP implementation. Using an improvement science approach, this study details the work at one medium sized community college to rapidly test and scale the changes necessary to effectively implement educational planning—a key academic advising reform, and one of the foundational recommendations within the Pathways model—for all students. Using improvement science methods to explore and understand the root causes for variation within the college’s existing advising system, a theory of change was developed, and three iterative PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) cycles were completed, resulting in the redesign of the academic advising process during new student onboarding, and in a significant increase in planning activity as compared to the baseline. Based on the success of this project, the study identifies several additional, related processes that could result in further improvement, and concludes that adopting improvement science methods more widely may be a beneficial addition to the college’s overall efforts to achieve the meaningful, sustained improvement of outcomes for its students.