Transforming Training and Creating Community Connections with APPR

Overview

Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) had a successful, well-established in-person training program. They wanted to transform their in-person training into a digital experience so that they could better scale and ultimately advance their mission of more equitable pretrial policies. Studion worked with APPR to design and launch a custom learning experience and an online community platform.

Key Takeaways

• APPR cut training costs and expanded their reach with the digital transformation of an in-person program.

• Creation of an online community enabled knowledge sharing and improved technical support.

The Organization

Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research is led by The Center for Effective Public Policy, a nonprofit founded in 1981 to build a world where justice ensures strong, healthy communities for everyone. CEPP has collaborated with all 50 U.S. states and hundreds of local jurisdictions to support evidence-based and sustainable justice system change.

APPR’s mission is to support justice system professionals in achieving fair, just, and effective pretrial practices. APPR is reforming pretrial decision-making and working toward greater equity in the American justice system.

APPR offers comprehensive research, support, and training to legal professionals throughout the United States. Assessments, policies, and practices are grounded in rigorous research and ongoing measurement and refinement. Close collaboration with justice system actors and affected communities ensures their work is informed by subject-matter experts and individuals impacted by the pretrial process.

A key initiative launched by APPR is the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), a tool that helps judges make more informed pretrial decisions. Adoption of this tool is a primary objective for the nonprofit.

The Challenge

APPR had already developed a successful in-person training model that involved an on-site consultant working directly with each jurisdiction for six to eight months. This format offered a high level of direct attention. It also provided an on-site expert — often a chief judge or other respected legal voice — to build support for the PSA initiative and manage change, which allowed program participants to focus on implementation. Unfortunately, the model was limited by geography, and the time commitment and cost of using consultants made scaling unfeasible.

Documents were available to download from APPR’s website, but this passive “self-service” approach did not engage learners. Online interactions were limited to emails between program participants and APPR staff. Questions regarding both program content and technical support fell to the administrative staff, who had to route each email to the appropriate authority. This led to a backlog of unanswered queries and the impression of a disjointed process rather than a unified experience.

The Product Concept

An online program was the obvious choice to serve a larger audience, overcome geographic barriers, and streamline administrative and support functions. APPR wanted to go beyond reaching more justice system professionals and digitizing their operations. They sought to connect program participants through an online community so that they could support one another and optimize the learning experience. The virtual community of pretrial and policy advocates is the first and only of its kind. At the same time, APPR had to maintain the quality of their in-person training without significantly expanding their staff.

The Framework

To determine the strategy that would enable APPR to meet their goals, we examined APPR’s learning experience strategy through three lenses: Learning, Program Management, and Technology.

Using this approach, APPR and Studion defined a product roadmap and established clear, measurable objectives.

Goals ranged from short-term, such as learners being able to successfully find and use resources and teams successfully completing the program, to long-term objectives like increased adoption and successful implementation of the PSA assessment tool and identifying additional opportunities to improve the pretrial system.

The User Research

APPR supports a network of legal professionals across the United States serving various roles in the criminal justice system. Studion conducted thorough user research to pinpoint the needs of their community and design solutions that would support legal professionals’ desired outcomes.

Despite the range of roles, backgrounds, procedural requirements, and geographic regions, every member of the APPR community has one thing in common: They are practitioners seeking to solve problems and gain skills they can implement in their roles. These users have ample motivation but little interest in purely theoretical knowledge or passive learning.

The Solution

Working with Studion’s learning designers, user experience designers, product managers, and developers, APPR built and launched a custom digital learning experience and an online community platform. Both sides of the product focus on empowering justice system professionals to enhance their work and learn from experts as well as one another.

The online workspace focuses on actionable steps and clear deliverables.

During the process of implementing the PSA and beyond, program participants can access an expanding digital library of resources that inform and motivate them. Studion also worked with APPR to improve this bank of materials with high-quality videos featuring experts and tools designed to help justice system professionals assess and improve their practices.

An innovative, coaching-based pedagogy reduced program time commitment for participants and lowered training costs.

Instead of using on-site consultants, APPR coaches guide jurisdictions through digital materials and activities, with periodic in-person strategic site visits. Built in analytics helps APPR track the health of their community and make improvements.

The online community allows program participants to ask questions and share information with other practitioners across the country. They can also find answers to their technical support queries. Administrators can distribute notifications about relevant topics or program updates. Digital access has broken down the slow, siloed feel of email and empowered both program participants and staff to collaborate organically. APPR can also access analytics to monitor activity and assess the health of their community.

The Impact

APPR’s Learning Sites Project launched with five pilot jurisdictions in summer 2020. Successful performance metrics led to the expansion of the program to 10 sites. Since then, APPR has introduced new ways to engage and partner beyond those original 10 sites that has expanded to over 3,000 unique users in jurisdictions around the country.

Program participants are getting more value from the online learning experience. The on-demand nature of digital training enables them to fit sessions into their busy schedules, get personalized support, and spend less time coordinating and commuting to in-person meetings.

Digital access replaced the slow, siloed feel of email support with fast, effective, and collaborative communications channels.

For APPR, the ability to expand their geographic reach across the U.S. and offer more in-depth resources from a broader set of experts and community members means they can reach their impact goals faster and more effectively. Through platform analytics, APPR can monitor activity, assess the health of their community, and make more informed decisions about program improvements. The online workspace is also being used to support other initiatives, including coordinating internal projects and additional training opportunities for other practitioners in the field.

Results like this speak to the impact that APPR is having on practitioners seeking to advance equity in the American justice system. Now, APPR has the foundation to continue to grow their reach and scale their impact in a thoughtful way that always puts those they serve at the core of their work.