Transfer-Ready Systems
An Assessment and Action-Planning Toolkit
Transfer students often face significant challenges when attempting to transfer their credits from one institution to another. The University of Texas (UT) System and MDRC developed and field-tested this toolkit to encourage a higher-education system that is more transfer-ready by facilitating the transfer process and including transfer students as a core part of the system’s mission.
The activities within this toolkit were used to build and engage cross-functional teams at three universities (including faculty members, advisers, department chairs, enrollment staff members, and academic administrators) to identify gaps and opportunities for their institutions to become more transfer-ready.
The administrators leading efforts at their respective universities were members of the core research team and met regularly with the UT System Office. As a result of this initiative, each university designed and launched an evidence-driven solution to improve the transfer-readiness of their own institution’s policies, procedures, and practices. In addition, the UT System Office identified transfer improvement strategies it could take, or advocate for, at the state level to be responsive to the needs of individual institutions and their students. This toolkit is for administrators, faculty members, and other staff members who want to:
- Develop plans to facilitate transfers between institutions with buy-in from key stakeholders
- Improve the efficiency of transfer-credit evaluation and enrollment procedures
- Build, strengthen, or expand partnerships with the institutions that students transfer to or from
- Improve an institution’s transfer-readiness culture
Given the complexity of academic and administrative coordination among all of the institutions and departments in a transfer ecosystem, problems and solutions cannot be tackled in isolation; supporting transfer students is a shared responsibility across systems and institutions. The guidance and materials included in this toolkit aim to engage a variety of stakeholders in a systematic assessment of their transfer ecosystems, in order to create together a strategy of program improvements to advance transfer student success. The toolkit is organized into four steps and is intended to help leaders and practitioners prepare their systems and institutions to support transfer students.
- Review Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework: Name WHY assessment and action are needed.
- Build a Transfer-Ready Team: Identify WHO is needed to address which issue.
- Collect Evidence and Input: Understand HOW current conditions contribute to transfer students’ experiences and outcomes.
- From “Aha” to Action! Identify WHAT can be done to improve conditions for students and other stakeholders involved in the transfer process.
Step 1 Review the Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework
Take a holistic view of the transfer system and the improvements that may be needed, and identify the stakeholders who will be important for those improvement efforts.
- Download and review the Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework
- When reviewing the framework consider:
- the sphere of influence with willing and available stakeholders
- the category or categories of transfer-ready practices where there is room for improvement
- which stakeholders are instrumental to assessing and acting in that category
Tool A. Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework
The Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework aims to show the complexity of the transfer ecosystem and the interdependencies among stakeholders in the college transfer process. Review Section 2 to take a holistic view of the transfer system and identify points of leverage that can be used to influence transfer student outcomes and experiences, and to identify where change is possible and where collaboration with other stakeholders might be important.
Step 2 Build Your Transfer-Ready Team
Build a core team for your assessment and action-planning efforts.
- Identify a few colleagues to coordinate assessment and action-planning activities. The core team should represent a diversity of functional roles and operate in different spheres of influence.
- The first task for this core team is to complete an assessment of their institution or higher education system using the Self-Assessment Tools in the Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework. Identify one or more categories for which there is room for improvement, and where there are willing and available stakeholders with interest and authority to make improvements.
Tool B. Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework, Self-Assessment Tools (Section 3)
The Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework includes self-assessment tools that invite users to review their adoption of transfer-ready practices. Each self-assessment tool outlines a set of practices that are recognized as critical to transfer student success and institutional effectiveness. Within each practice there are a series of questions for users of the framework to address as they work through the categories that are most relevant to their institutional roles, functions, contexts, and areas of responsibility.
To implement sustainable, system-level changes to the transfer process, the action learning research project at the University of Texas (UT) established two types of teams: the System Change Team and the Campus-Ready Team.
System Change Team
The System Office invited institutions to join the initiative, and two administrators from each participating university were selected to represent their institutions. The System Change Team met monthly to shape the direction of inquiry, plan for broader stakeholder engagement, and share insights emerging across campuses.
Coordinator: Associate vice chancellor for academic affairs
Team members: Administrators from the three participating universities, including a university registrar, assistant vice provost of academic planning, policy director of transfer pathways and articulation, vice provost for advising and academic success, associate provost for academic success, dean, and department chair.
Campus-Ready Team
Coordinators gathered progressively larger groups of their colleagues at three points in this project. First, to come up with a set of topics to explore and identify who or what should be incorporated in assessment activities (Steps 1 and 2 in this toolkit). Next, to reflect on themes that emerged in assessment activities (Step 3 in this toolkit). Finally, to create, refine, or plan implementation of a solution (Step 4 in this toolkit).
Coordinators: Each Campus-Ready Team was led by administrators on the System Change Team.
Team members: For the initial meeting, leaders at each campus gathered small teams of three to eight administrators at their university such as associate deans, directors of enrollment, directors of institutional research or analytics, and directors of advising. The second meeting involved the initial campus team and others who contributed to an assessment activity (including advisers, staff members, and faculty members). For the final meeting, coordinators invited anyone who would be important to the success of the solution they were developing (including university leaders and transfer partners).
Step 3 Collect Evidence and Input
Collect evidence on the conditions that shape transfer students’ success and trends in transfer students’ outcomes.
- Choose one or more of the tools below to bolster existing self-assessment and strategic planning efforts.
- If teams do not have the time or resources to conduct the activities below, invite a broader group of stakeholders to complete the Self-Assessment Tools in the Transfer-Ready Systems Assessment Framework.
Tools are provided for three types of assessment activities:
- Data analysis: These tools allow you to assess trends in transfer students' outcomes using publicly available data or administrative data (data collected in the normal course of administration). Using these tools might involve engaging the office of institutional research as well as the registrar’s office, depending on data availability.
- Process analysis: These tools allow you to map out transfer enrollment procedures, which can provide important clarity to staff members and faculty members about roles and processes outside their units, eliminate redundancies, and ultimately decrease the time and effort required to complete a student’s credit evaluation. Staff members from enrollment departments (such as admissions or the registrar), academic colleges (such as the dean, department chair, or program coordinator), or advising departments will be involved in this analysis.
- Group discussions: These tools will help you gather and document the perspectives and experiences of faculty members, staff members, and transfer students. Focus group discussions are a useful method to interpret findings from data and analyses and put them in proper context, check assumptions about users and their challenges, or collect feedback on a specific policy, process, or product.
Tool C. Transfer Student Success Data Assessment Guide
The Transfer Student Success Data Assessment Guide is designed to assess current trends in outcomes among transfer students at the point of transfer, after transfer, and at graduation. This guide walks users through what data to collect to construct outcomes such as transfer credits received and applied toward a degree, semester-by-semester retention, and patterns of academic performance once a student has transferred. The guide also covers how to prepare the data for analysis, and provides suggestions of what analyses to run. A sample Transfer Data Codebook and dummy dataset is provided as an editable example.
Tool D. Process-Mapping Tools
The process-mapping tools included in this toolkit aim to minimize the preparation and work needed for higher education institutions to review their own transfer enrollment procedures. The Sample Transfer Enrollment Process Map provides a detailed map of steps commonly observed in transfer enrollment processes as a starting point for institutions to reflect on and clarify their own procedures. A discussion guide is included with suggestions of whom to talk to and which questions to ask in order to engage a broad group of stakeholders to review the accuracy of the map and identify areas for improvement.
Note: The map includes three lanes to visualize steps transfer students take independently, communications and services provided by the school to support them, and the back-end processes managed by staff and faculty members.
Tool E. Focus Group Protocols
This tool includes guidance for conducting focus groups with transfer students and faculty members that covers sampling and recruitment, language to make sure focus group members understand and consent to the process, and discussion prompts. Speaking to stakeholders directly helps to ensure that leaders are focused on the issues that matter most to transfer students, invites new perspectives in support of creative problem-solving, and can elicit vivid stories and examples to inspire action and change.
Using institutional administrative data, the University of Texas campus teams were able to identify variations in transfer student outcomes by major. Campus teams then collected qualitative data, engaging leaders and faculty members in those departments, to (1) understand the differences between the degree programs that might explain any variations and (2) contribute to the design of potential solutions.
Step 4 From “Aha” to Action!
Create, refine, or plan a solution to build momentum and buy-in among key stakeholders.
- Convene a broad group of stakeholders who will be important to the success of adopting the transfer-ready practices identified through the self-assessment activities in Step 2 and Step 3 of this toolkit.
- Facilitate a meeting to reflect on insights from the self-assessment, identify leverage points, and collaboratively create strategies to improve transfer students’ outcomes and experiences.
- Brainstorm, design, or collect feedback on solutions.
Tool F. Editable Sample Transfer Enrollment Process Map
The Sample Transfer Enrollment Process Map provides a detailed map of steps commonly observed in transfer enrollment processes. This process map is a visual tool that can be used in group settings to illustrate the transfer student experience and highlight practical areas of improvement. The editable Visio template is provided for administrators who wish to revise the map to reflect their institution’s circumstances.
Process maps are a powerful tool to engage a broader group of stakeholders and improve cross-functional coordination. At the University of Texas at Arlington, the process map was primarily developed by administrators from the enrollment services and advising departments, as they were implementing the process. Through this process analysis, they identified that transfer-credit evaluations were taking an average of 16 weeks to complete. When the process map was shared with faculty members and academic leaders, the group identified that the time lag was largely due to subject-matter experts being unavailable at peak times for transfer-credit evaluations (summer) and the group then considered how to overcome this operational hurdle.
Every design will be unique to the team and context, as demonstrated below by the solutions developed by each University of Texas (UT) Campus-Ready Team through the process of self-assessment, reflection, and action-planning presented in this toolkit.
University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
As a university that accepts transfer students from dozens of sending institutions, UTA focused on information technology and professional development to strengthen and streamline internal transfer enrollment processes. The campus team convened colleagues from enrollment services and advising, as well as faculty members listed as reviewers for transfer-credit evaluations, for a working meeting to strengthen cross-functional alignment and coordination in transfer-credit evaluations. The group reviewed findings from the process-mapping activities and refined a shared set of expectations and standard operating procedures for working together to improve the efficiency of transfer-credit evaluations.
University of Texas at Tyler (UTT)
UTT focused on curriculum and academic pathways along with its three core transfer partners to strengthen the culture of collaboration and trust between the institution and its partner community colleges. UTT hosted Transfer Summits with each partner institution where provosts, deans, chairs, and program coordinators gathered to share and reflect on data on the success of the respective community college students at UTT. These conversations also enabled each group to revisit its transfer guides for each academic pathway and discuss when to take courses and the most salient content needed to succeed in subsequent courses.
University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
The UTEP design session focused on establishing an Engineering Academy between the engineering departments at UTEP and its partner El Paso Community College (EPCC). The EPCC | UTEP Engineering Academy is not a standard 2+2 articulation agreement or transfer pathway, but a holistic program accomplished through the partnership of these two institutions. Graduates of the program will earn their associate’s degree at EPCC and bachelor’s degree at UTEP in civil, industrial, materials, electrical or mechanical engineering. Through the collaborative efforts of administrators, faculty members, and staff members at EPCC and UTEP, Engineering Academy students will enroll concurrently at both institutions and have access to comprehensive support focused on their academic and professional development throughout the program.