Once you have been provided access to the platform, how will you rollout the tools to others? Creating an adoption plan before the platform is handed over can be quite helpful when coming up with a schedule for access, training, and scaling usage.

Some things to think about when creating an adoption plan:

What can the data be used for?

Hopefully you have an idea already for how you’ll use the data, but we have many additional use cases from partners on how they are using it. We also find different units on campus use it differently and our partners are always thinking of new and interesting uses for the data and platform. Let us know if you’d like to talk more about how to create uses that will best help you and others at your institution.

What additional units might want access?

We have found our platforms to be helpful for the following units across campus:

*Here are some examples of how the different units across campus can use the platform.

When telling others about the platform, these are great articles to share so they can get an idea of what the platform does.

How quickly are other units ready to access the platforms?

There are no license restrictions with our platform, so you can invite as many staff as you’d like to Graduate Insights and the SSO functionality allows unlimited students to access Digital Career Counselor. Usually, the two limiting factors for use are training and access. You can read more about how to give access here.

Graduate Insights - Our platforms hold billions of datapoints which is something not everyone has experience navigating. We suggest that all Graduate Insight users participate in a training to help them understand the nuances of graduate outcomes data at this level. Steppingblocks is happy to conduct / record one for your campus. IR, IT, or others at your institution might also have training available on using data. In addition to data focused training, we recommend a Steppingblocks specific training for anyone that will access the platform. This could be done by a Steppingblocks partner success team member, be a pre-recorded demo, or be from someone on campus that knows the platform well.

Your adoption plan can help you plan for access distribution. When will people get access? Will you roll it out all at once or unit by unit? What’s the best time of year or semester for the unit to be trained and have access? Getting input from the unit on when they’d like to access the platform can be helpful.

When it’s time to give access, someone with an admin account can go in and grant access to those without it. This will result in the invitee getting an invitation email and then being able to login with email and password.

Digital Career Counselor - The student platform is designed for students, but we have found most partners also encourage faculty, advisors, and others to login. Since access is through SSO anyone with a unique email address at your institution can use it. Staff should follow a similar pattern to Graduate Insights in that training and understanding is important. For students, it’s also all about understanding and access. They need to understand what they can use the platform for and then be able to find it and access it when they want to.

Our partners have found success using the following methods for helping students understand what they can use the platform for:

SSO allows students to login quickly and easily, but locating the link can be another hurdle for students. We’ve found the most successful universities include the Digital Career Counselor link in various places on their website including resources for Career Services, Student Success, and Academic Advising. Other successful methods include:

What available resources does your university have to roll out the platform?

Here are some questions and suggestions around thinking through available resources:

Summary Section:

Example Adoption Plan Tracking Doc