Monday, March 18, 2024
The RP Group

Bridging Research, Information, and Culture Initiative (BRIC)

Timeline
2009-2012


Overview

Over the last decade, foundations, governments, and advocacy organizations have launched numerous efforts to increase student success in community colleges. Key to many of these initiatives is the use of data to identify gaps in achievement, articulate areas for improvement, and highlight effective approaches. However, there is often a disconnect between data being made available and colleges’ abilities to integrate this information into their improvement efforts. The RP Group’s own formative research on the use of evidence by California Community Colleges highlighted this disconnect and surfaced different types of information that would be more useful to practitioners for improving student success.

The Bridging Research, Information, and Culture (BRIC) Initiative strengthened cultures of inquiry and evidence in the California Community College system via three, complementary means:

  • Resources for community college practitioners: development of online tools and implementation of numerous professional development opportunities

  • Technical assistance to colleges: provision of tailored support from seasoned researchers and faculty to 13 institutions focused on increasing each college’s capacity to analyze and act on information, based on locally-identified needs

  • Dedicated support for institutional researchers and planners: deployment of both online and in-person support focused on strengthening researchers’ abilities to facilitate the use of evidence

RP Group Lead

Rob Johnstone

RP Group Project Team Members

Kathy Booth, Priyadarshini Chaplot, MBA

Funders

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Resources

Find tools to build cultures of inquiry at community colleges including:

Guides and Tools

Topical resources that can be used to start a campus dialog on building cultures of evidence and inquiry. BRIC’s Inquiry Guides support community college practitioners in addressing ten common problem areas for translating data to action.

Presentations and Webinars

A suite of presentations on common issues related to supporting practitioner use of data.

Reports and Briefs

Report summarizing lessons learned from the BRIC Initiative.

News and Events

This project is complete. Visit "Related Projects" below to learn about our other initiatives in this project's area(s) of impact.