The drive to increase completion rates is nearly universal on college campuses today. But the kinds of improvements necessary to significantly impact completion rates often require widespread institutional change. Comprehensive reforms to advising and student support that leverage technologies such as degree planning tools, early alert systems, and case management platforms have the potential to spur this type of change, but a number of factors can hinder their successful adoption. Using ecological systems theory to explore how change occurs from the macro-level—shaping the broad political and cultural environment in which colleges operate—all the way down to micro-level interactions between professors, advisors, and students, this session presented case studies of two community colleges and two broad-access universities undertaking technology-mediated advising reforms. The session also provided an opportunity for participants to discuss implications for understanding barriers to and facilitators of change at their own institutions.
