Pre-Conference Workshops

 Pre-Conference Workshops are three- to six-hour sessions where practitioner experts facilitate a deep dive into effective practices to support your work and advance the field. Presentations focus attention on critical elements for advancing student success.

Pre-Conference Workshops Registration Fee: $175 per workshop for in-Network Colleges, and $225 for out-of-Network attendees.

Space is limited. Please register today to reserve your seat.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19
 

     Morning Pre-Conference Workshops

9:00 am – Noon

Connecting Students to Employers and Careers
Preparing students to be successful in an ever-changing job market requires community colleges to take new approaches to serving students, particularly adult students. Colleges need sustained employer commitment to programs through expanding work-based learning opportunities, providing guest instructors, or donating the latest technologies or equipment to ensure that classrooms keep pace with changing industry standards. Colleges should be looking to align career options and career pathways with guided pathways to ensure students understand career progressions and can gain credentials while also pursuing a degree.   

In this pre-conference session, colleges will explore career pathways alignment and how to better meet both student and employer needs. You will also learn how to enhance your college’s partnerships with employers to be more strategic and provide additional opportunities for students.
Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.

 

Designing Faculty Professional Development for Student Success
Centers for Teaching and Learning (and other faculty development programs) should be at the core of a college’s student success mission. This interactive workshop will be facilitated by experienced faculty and administrators who serve in faculty development roles. Learn more about best practices in designing faculty development programs to engage your faculty in meaningful activities that improve classroom practice, develop reflective practitioners, build community, and positively impact student success. This workshop is ideal for those who are new to the faculty development field as well as those who are experienced and are interested in refining their college’s existing faculty development offerings.
Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.

No Wrong Door: Designing a Holistic Student Supports Approach

A holistic student supports approach promotes and sustains long-term proactive, integrated, and personalized academic and non-academic support experience for every student. This hands-on, full-day working session is designed to prepare your institution to transform your advising and student support services to promote an holistic student experience. Participants will receive a hard copy of ATD’s Holistic Student Supports Redesign Toolkit and will engage in meaningful discovery and strategy planning working sessions. This workshop is geared toward institutions that did not participate in ATD’s October 2018 Institute and are eager for exposure to the foundational knowledge about holistic student supports as well as the tools, templates, and resources that they can leverage to advance their colleges redesign efforts.
* Shauna Davis, Holistic Student Supports Coach, Achieving the Dream
* Laurie Fladd, Holistic Student Supports Coach, Achieving the Dream

 

Strategic Communication for Impact
Participants will learn about the building blocks for transformative change with special emphasis on how to communicate for urgency, understanding, and buy-in. This interactive workshop will: 1) help colleges communicate their vision for change, 2) understand different change styles and the implications for communication mediums, and 3) how to build and sustain college-wide ownership for change.
  Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.  

Noon – 4:00 pm (lunch is included)
The Postsecondary Data Partnership: Answering the Call for Better Data

Join Achieving the Dream and several of the other Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP) partner organizations for lunch and a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the PDP and how you can leverage this data at an institution, system or state level to answer key questions about student success and educational equity. The PDP, managed by the National Student Clearinghouse, is a nationwide effort to help colleges and universities gain a fuller picture of student progress, momentum and outcomes; simplify, streamline and enhance data reporting; and identify where to focus resources to improve student success. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn: why the PDP data collaborative was formed, the benefits of participating; reporting requirements; how to get started; answers to frequently asked questions; the sample Tableau dashboards participants receive; lessons from Achieving the Dream and Frontier Set colleges that were early adopters; and the additional support available to institutions from Achieving the Dream through the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The PDP answers the call for better data by counting all outcomes, including early momentum metrics such as credit accumulation and gateway course completion, for students who enter the institution any term—not just fall term. College and university participation is free through 2020. Includes lunch. 

Fee: $50 in-Network; $75 for out-of-Network.
 

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Focusing on the Adult Learner
The old adage of lifelong learning will become increasingly critical for any in today’s workforce as jobs disappear and new jobs are created. Community colleges stand at the center of helping current adult workers gain new skills for the jobs that local employers have available. But with the growing field of providers for all types of education and training, colleges will need to be more savvy (and relevant) to attracting the adult learner and moving them more quickly through skills and knowledge acquisition and back to the workforce. This session will focus on strategies for attracting adult learners as well as key strategies to help adults maximize the skills and knowledge they already have to move more quickly through programs to completion.

Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.
 

Leading Your College in the ATD Work
Colleges joining the ATD Network will be engaged in whole college transformational work. The work of ATD requires a serious look into all of the current student success efforts on a campus in an effort to understand the experience of students. The work also calls for coordination and collection of input from faculty, staff and students. This session is designed for Presidents new to ATD to provide them with insights, strategies and tips for leading their college in the ATD work.
This session is for campus presidents only. Fee: Complimentary
 

Building Partnerships For Supporting Students: Mapping Resources In Your Community

With the recognition that increasing numbers of students face competing work, family, and school demands that directly affect their ability to focus on their studies, colleges are developing external partnerships to meet students where they are and shape a student-centered education experience. This workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to learn from the experiences and expertise of peers in best practices for developing and maintaining strong external partnerships that contribute to delivering a holistic student supports experience. Participants will engage in activities to examine their own external partnership needs and develop the start of a plan for setting up new or refining existing partnerships.
* Shauna Davis, Holistic Student Supports Coach, Achieving the Dream
* Cara Crowley, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Amarillo College
* Marvin DeJear, Director, Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families

Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.
 

The OER Experience: Interactive OER Workshop 
You may have heard about open educational resources (OER), but have you ever wondered, “What it is like to be a student in a course that has transitioned from proprietary course materials to open educational resources?” Have you considered the on-the-ground challenges of a faculty member who decides to make a transition to OER? What about college administrators—how do they effectively juggle their support of institution-wide OER projects and their many other duties?

During this half-day workshop designed for college faculty and staff new to OER, you will experience OER from different institutional perspectives: as a college student enrolled in an OER course, a faculty member transitioning to OER in a course, and a college administrator overseeing an OER project. Together we’ll identify some of the advantages and challenges of OER use, learn about effective, research-based approaches to OER implementation, and discuss how participants can use what they learn back at their home institutions.

This is intended to be an immersive experience that employs simulation, role-play, and game-based activities. Come prepared to participate in hands-on, team-based activities, brainstorming sessions, and group discussions.

Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.

The Unwritten Rules of College: Transparency and Its Impact on Learning
Transparent teaching/learning practices make learning processes explicit while offering opportunities to foster students' metacognition, confidence, and their sense of belonging in college in an effort to promote student success equitably. A 2016 AAC&U study identifies transparent assignment design as a replicable teaching intervention that significantly enhances students' success, with greater gains for historically underserved students [Winkelmes et al, Peer Review, Spring 2016]. This workshop begins by reviewing the findings, examining some sample assignments, and considering implementation strategies in different contexts where transparent instruction can boost students’ success. The second half of the workshop will walk participants through the process of designing/revising assignments (in small working groups) to make them more transparent, relevant and accessible for students. Participants will leave with a draft assignment or activity for one of their courses, and a concise set of strategies for designing transparent assignments that promote students’ learning equitably.
Fee: $175 in-Network; $225 for out-of-Network.