FAQs

DXtera Institute, Inc. (“The DXtera InstituteSM”) is a nonprofit educational organization focused on promoting student success and increasing college completion. DXtera Institute is incorporated in Delaware and is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization as described by the Internal Revenue Service.

Our consortium approach offers a cost-effective solution for small to large institutions or systems to implement the desired digital integrations that can optimize the use of their data. Our membership model leverages economies of scale to develop digital interfaces and adapters for targeted software solutions and student record systems and share these open-source solutions through the library of connectors and adapters. By contributing to DXtera Institute, institutions help one another achieve their educational missions by promoting college completion and student success.

The importance of obtaining a college degree in today’s world cannot be overstated. College graduates with a bachelor’s degree typically earn 66% more than those with only a high school diploma. They are far less likely to face unemployment, and earn approximately $1 million more on average than a worker without a postsecondary education over the course of a lifetime. Yet Department of Education statistics show that less than 60% of students in four year colleges finish what they start, less than 50% of low-income students complete college within six years, and around 25% of students drop out during their first two years of study. See Carol D’Amico, College Completion Improvements Not Good Enough for Students.

Strada Education Network^SM, formerly USA Funds®, is a nonprofit organization focused on enhancing student success in college and careers. One of the ways in which Strada Education pursues this strategic direction is by investing in innovative solutions that improve the outcomes of higher education. Strada Education sees the approach and technology solutions that DXtera Institute offers as a significant opportunity to remove digital integration barriers that hamper efforts to improve academic success and college completion rates of students, and is partnering with our consortium ensuring we have the capacity to develop new adapters with the appropriate education and training as we scale our efforts. Strada Education and the DXtera Institute believe strongly that collaborative efforts are the best way to forge solutions that will scale across the marketplace. We both bring significant talent and resources to this partnership that will assist with our desired impact.

This consortium will foster a community of problem solvers who seek to develop shared solutions for common technology barriers. Although our focused effort began in higher education to remove barriers for student success and increase institutional performance, we believe our membership and focus will expand to other industry sectors and desired applications in the future. Anywhere that data needs to be securely requested from a system of record in real-time to access information in support of next generation applications, DXtera Institute’s domain model/service contract approach offers solutions to many sectors for improving circumstances for any user of data-driven software solutions. Membership is open to any partners who are focused on developing solutions to enable digital exchange to occur in the higher education space and to transform the manner in which digital information is used. DXtera Institute’s members include institutions of higher education such as colleges and universities, school systems, nonprofit organizations, foundations, public agencies and other providers of education services.

Information is available on our website — www.DXtera.org.

The DXtera Institute℠ seeks to develop digital integration technology solutions to achieve educational, charitable, and scientific purposes; specifically, to increase access to information within the education community by providing real-time data required by staff, students, and policymakers to make informed decisions and provide overall improved and customized educational services to students. DXtera Institute intends to transform the manner in which digital information and educational technology can be integrated and delivered in institutions of higher education. DXtera Institute members will contribute to and share a growing and robust library of integration solutions, adapters and connectors to support quick and secure transmission of data between systems. These solutions can be difficult to build or maintain, and there’s not currently a community dedicated to this specific challenge. As a result, colleges and universities have been unable to utilize their vast stores of data to predict which students are at risk for dropping out, target the intervention necessary to prevent them from doing so, and create the means to help these students succeed, and many students at colleges and universities continue to fall through the cracks. DXtera Institute’s programs will include:

• building a library of connectors and adapters (called the “Repository”) to support the easy exchange of data within institutions and serve as a clearinghouse for information to support educational institutions in the use of the software, and it will provide training and capacity building for institutions looking to implement their own solutions;
• instructing and training college and university administrators and government department of education officials how to use and analyze educational data for the purpose of increasing student success and post-secondary degree completion;
• informing the public by publishing higher education research and disseminating best practices;
• performing scientific research on the use of information technology to improve higher education and make that research available to educational organizations, governmental bodies, and the general public without charge, and
• utilizing information technology to enhance the administration of public college and university education programs and to improve governmental education policy.

For our membership we will provide:

• access to a growing and robust shared library of integration framework solutions and technology adapters
• technical assistance from integration experts with extensive experience, solutions and infrastructure development expertise in education
• institutional data integration
• deep-dive evaluation of a college or university’s current systems and processes
• technical roadmap development
• outside partner certification and vendor relations
• application integration with legacy systems
• annual DXtera Institute Academy, for teaching and training technology leaders at our member institutions
• train-the-trainer workshops,
• online community,
• roster of specialized trainers,
• best practice recommendations
• participation in leading, developing and testing integrated solutions with the market-leading software firms to enable more efficient utilization of desired products.

Our leadership and innovative technology team bring over 70 years of integration solutions expertise in higher education. Over the past few years, we have developed or tested the integration framework and adapters for connecting student record systems with projects or components in the following categories:

• Predictive analytics
• Academic records
• Academic program and time periods
• Course registration
• Assessment solutions
• Federated course and program cataloging
• Learning outcomes and competencies