This is the first of a two-part review of the recently completed MI-RAISE Design Lab.
Many key ingredients are in place to help more working-age Michiganders earn valuable postsecondary credentials.
Here are just some of the conditions that are creating the need — and opportunity — for transformative improvements:
- Employers need an educated and skilled workforce.
- Demographic challenges make it clear that Michigan can’t fill that need with new high school graduates alone.
- The state has made adult postsecondary attainment a priority with significant funding investments.
- And colleges and universities across the state have responded by working to serve this important audience.
With the timing right for meaningful change, higher education leaders sought a setting to put these ingredients together — an environment where institutions could dedicate time to learn best practices and develop systemic responses to the needs of adult learners.
In response, The Michigan Center for Adult College Success created the Michigan-Regional Adult Initiative for Skills and Education (MI-RAISE) Design Lab, a deep learning experience with abundant data and expertise to help postsecondary institutions better serve adult students.
We partnered with Education Strategy Group with generous support from the Kresge Foundation, Sova Solutions and CollegeAPP to kick off the MI-RAISE Design Lab in November 2023. A key objective — but not the only one — was to help institutions develop quality applications for funding from the $5 million Innovation Investment Awards program administered by The Center.
The MI-RAISE Design Lab wrapped up in June, but the experience continues to yield insights that will guide our ongoing efforts to support postsecondary institutions in their important work with adult learners. As we prepare to announce the Innovation Investment Awards and the launch of our next collaborative design lab, it’s an appropriate time to look back at what we did, what we learned, and what’s next.
An open opportunity
To maximize participation, the MI-RAISE Design Lab accommodated any Michigan public institution that applied to participate.
We hosted monthly convenings — four virtual and three in-person around the state — covering a variety of topics including:
- Why adult learner success is critical
- Identifying potential adult learners and connecting with them
- Understanding the unique challenges adult learners face in completing a postsecondary credential
- Strategies and tactics to promote success
- Seamless pathways to accelerate completion
- Holistic supports
- Best practices for serving student-parents
- Best practices in credit for prior learnings and competency-based education
- Change management, with strategies to engage and include faculty
- Utilizing labor market data to identify talent demands and credentials
The convenings also built in time for the institution teams to interact with each other on key topics to share learnings and understanding of the best practices. We provided teams with dedicated time to work on identifying their areas of focus and system-change proposal designs.
The foundation: self-assessment
At the outset of the MI-RAISE Design Lab, each institution was provided an opportunity to complete the Adult Readiness Self-Assessment from Education Strategy Group. The individual team members from each participating institution completed the self-assessment. Then the Education Strategy Group facilitated discussion with each team to review learnings and share insights.
This process laid the foundation for institutions to better understand what they were doing for adult learners and where they could focus efforts for system changes to improve their supports for adult learners.
The torch was then passed to the Sova Solutions team, which provided coaches to guide each institution through a process to identify the system changes they were interested in pursuing and develop a proposal for implementation.
Developing a plan
The coaches led a process for institutions to complete draft proposals inclusive of theory of change and action, improvement targets, implementation considerations, resource and capacity needs, will-building and communications activities and goals.
Coaches provided facilitated sessions with each institution team on the following items:
- Prioritization
- Action planning
- Implementation considerations
- Metrics and measurement
- Partnership solidification
- Champion engagement
The coaches provided a checklist of key questions that, if answered well, would lead to a strong grant application for their proposal. Additionally, they provided feedback on draft grant proposals in preparation for pre-review by The Center and final submissions.
Resources from all the sessions are archived on our website.
The results: Proposals for innovation
The MI-RAISE Design Lab resulted in 12 of the 14 originally participating institutions submitting grant applications for the Innovation Investment Awards. The proposals covered a wide range of topics including:
- Credit for prior learning
- Holistic advising and supports for adult learners
- Systematic approaches to basic needs supports
- Competency-based programs
- Flexible scheduling and accelerated programs
- Career-aligned, guided pathways
- Joint admissions and transfer pathways between community colleges and universities
Going forward, The Center is excited to work with the institutions that will be receiving Innovation Investment Awards. At the same time, The Center and our MI-RAISE Design Lab partners are also committed to supporting the institutions that will not receive an Innovation Investment Award to improve their system change proposal and apply for other funding options to implement their proposal.
And because we remain committed to continuous improvement to meet the needs of postsecondary institutions, The Center contracted for a third-party review of MI-RAISE Design Lab implementation.
