Introducing the Win-Win, our unique offer to redesign your developmental math approach, producing a specific plan of action that is equity-focused, scalable, and supports the goals of both faculty and administrators. 

If you’re with a community college or private university that has tried to improve its developmental math approach but hasn’t seen any significant progress, the Win-Win process is for you. You might still be in the discussion phase of a redesign, or you’re implementing some promising initiatives but don’t have an effective approach at scale. You want an approach that takes things you’ve done, improves them, and then adds in the interventions that have proven to work. But to do that, you need faculty to be on board and involved. That’s where we come in.

How it works

1. Kickoff

The process starts with a kickoff meeting with our team and your group of stakeholders to map out the Win-Win process, set goals, and establish expectations. 

2. Quantitative baseline

Our institutional research and effectiveness experts work with your IR/IE staff to establish a data baseline. Then, our team can make an assessment of quantitative metrics using a list of data points we need to make informed recommendations.

3. Interviews

Next, we have conversations with your faculty and administrators to obtain the qualitative data (i.e., culture, history, previous efforts, student characteristics, etc.) needed to address any concerns and find solutions both groups can support. This is where we dig in with your faculty and administrators to get everyone on the same page. This step cannot be skipped if we want to have buy-in to a solution at scale, not small pilots that result in little change.

4. Draft plan

We draft a plan based on all findings and present it to your group to dissect. We encourage you and your stakeholders to poke holes and find items we may have overlooked. This step in the process is essential to getting real buy-in and finding a feasible solution.

5. Final plan

At this point, we have the information needed to address any lingering problems and to provide a finalized plan that works at scale and that your faculty and administrators support. The plan contains the steps and timeline necessary to accomplish it. 

6. Next steps

We close with a meeting of our team and your stakeholders to discuss the final plan and how to implement it. This is not a plan that will sit on the shelf but rather the first step to significant change.

What you get

In short, you get a detailed plan for a developmental math redesign that is equity focused and effective for student retention and completion. The plan is for an approach at scale that lasts and includes faculty and administrator buy-in. That’s why we can it a win-win. It both works and is something everyone affected by can get behind.

Institutions will receive a data analysis with summaries and reports from expert data analyst Adam Lange and IR/IE expert Dianna Renz. These summaries will accompany a specific redesign plan and timeline. Our CEO, Kathleen Almy, will work with the group of faculty and administrative stakeholders throughout the process. A Slack channel will be available for asynchronous discussions and sharing. The team at Almy Education will facilitate the process to ensure progress is made in a timely manner. To do so, we pay special attention to data retrieval and analysis as well as faculty buy-in, some aspects that often slow down redesigns considerably.

Who is it for?

This process is for administrators and faculty members of community colleges and private universities that realize a problem exists and recognize that progress can’t be achieved with their current efforts. These institutions seek real impact, not the illusion of change. 

We only work with colleges and universities with a single math department, not multiple math departments (as is the case in multi-institution systems). This distinction provides your institution and our company the greatest chance of success.

Additionally, we don’t work with institutions that only want a top-down approach that excludes faculty input and engagement in a significant way. We also don’t work with only faculty to the exclusion of other affected parties at the college. Both administration and faculty must be involved in the process to create a win-win plan. 

What does it cost?

The investment required starts at $25,000 and is influenced by the size of your college. With larger colleges comes additional complexity to all components of our Win-Win process. 

With implementation of the redesign plan, the college can recoup the cost and gain at minimum tenfold the cost in tuition and fees from retained students who progress. While there is a monetary gain for the institution, there’s also a positive impact on the lives of many students. This results from your key stakeholders being on the same page and moving in the same direction with momentum.

How long does it take?

It takes 2-4 months to complete the process. This depends on how quickly we can get the quantitative data and the interviews underway.

Next steps

If you’re interested or you’re intrigued but unsure, go to this page to answer three short questions and sign up for a free 30-minute call with us. We will honestly assess your situation and determine if this approach is right for your institution. If it is, we will provide a more specific cost estimate based on the information you provide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: We’re already working on corequisites and other changes and have been a for a while. Would the Win-Win help us?

A: Yes, unequivocally. We find that nearly every school is doing something with developmental math but very few have an organized plan for scale, success, and equity that their faculty and administrators are on board with. They may have a few of these pieces but rarely all of them. We don’t stop working with you until a real “win win” solution is found. Then we outline it in detail and provide the steps needed to implement it at scale within 2 years.

Q: We go to conferences and read a lot on redesign. Why would we need outside help?

A: Like most things nowadays, you can learn on the internet on your own or you can get help. Redesign is the only thing we do and we have decades of experience in it. So when you hit a snag, which will definitely happen (it does to everyone), you can be slowed down by trying to find the answer or may end up trying something with no idea if it can succeed or not. In short, you are the guinea pig throughout your redesign experiment. That nearly always adds time and usually does not work without a lot of refinement. We’ve done the pilots and trials before and can save you that time and headache. We can get you the best solutions for your particular situation and we can give them to you quickly.

Q: We already collect data. Why do we need to work with your IR people on data?

A: We have a specific list of data points we need to make informed recommendations. Many of those are not available when we start. Getting data is the number one place we see this planning process slow down if not stop completely. So we have IR and IE experts who can quickly help your staff retrieve the data needed and summarize it in a way that’s useful for making decisions, which is different than meeting compliance requirements. We analyze the data and use those findings along with the interviews to get to the real problems and how to best solve them.