PDP and Strategic Data Use

In November 2021, SHEEO supported a two-day workshop conducted by ASA Research and Seamless Strategies Group for the South Dakota Board of Technical Education institutions. The goals of the workshop – Know and Use Your Data with the PDP: Where are You? Where Do You Want to Be? How Can You Get There? –were, in part, to increase strategic data use capacity and elevate the usefulness of the Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP)’s key performance indicators (KPIs). To help facilitate greater state- and institution-level use of the PDP, ASA provided participants with the three tools described below.  

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PDP and Strategic Data Use

Regardless of where your team is in using data and developing your strategic programming, policy, and data plans, you need to…

  • Understand how current and new programs, policies, and strategies can “move the needle” on student success indicators such as PDP Key Performance Indicators. 
  • Set targets to help focus work and ensure efficient operations.
  • Develop a communications plan to ensure that all stakeholders have the right data when they need it and to tell your story.

…PDP data can support your campus’s strategic decision-making, target-setting, equity insights, and communication efforts to improve student success policies, practices, and outcomes.

Strategy and Metrics Map

Where Do You Want to Be? How Can You Get There?

ASA’s Strategy and Metrics Map is a visual framework that supports evidence-based decision-making and illustrates how strategies and programs move student behaviors and outcomes. This ASA tool:

  • Helps to create maps that visualize the linkages between your institution’s programs, policies, and strategies and the PDP KPIs.
  • Illustrates your college’s ability to “move the needle” based on your activities.
  • Facilitates target setting.
  • Is a precursor to developing a monitoring and assessment plan.
  • Helps to set up a communications plan and to tell your story.

The Strategy and Metrics Map provides a step-by-step process for improving student outcomes through PDP data and KPIs.

SMART Target Setting Guide

Status quo policies = Status quo outcomes

Using the SMART model – a widely used framework resulting in well-defined targets – the ASA SMART Target Setting Guide helps take the guesswork out of target setting and supports campus teams to establish appropriate targets that are…

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timebound

…and supportive of your student success work.

The SMART Target Setting Guide provides methodologies, examples, and tips to consider for setting targets, and a template you can use to organize your targets.

Data Communications Planning Guide

Without Facts, You Cannot Act.

ASA’s Data Communications Planning Guide provides tips and a framework for developing a data communications plan for your campus. A campus with a strong data communications plan benefits by…

  • Promoting campus-wide data use.
  • Developing a shared understanding of data definitions and student outcomes.
  • Busting myths and reducing bias from decision-making.
  • Instilling common and collaborative goals.
  • Making informed strategic decisions.

The Data Communications Planning Guide includes tips for developing your data plan and a template for organizing and documenting progress.

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More about ASA Research: ASA conducts workshops and coaching services to help institutions and networks use their student data strategically to drive change as they embark on large-scale student success reforms. Through interactive workshops, webinars, and guided conversations, ASA helps colleges and systems increase their capacity to make strategic use of data by arming them with customized models, guides, and tools such as those provided above. Please contact Sue Clery at ASA Research (sclery@asa-research.com) or visit www.asa-research.com for more information about these tools and ASA workshops and webinars.

Acknowledgment: The ASA workshop resources are provided by SHEEO in part through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The recommendations and conclusions contained within are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.