Reinventing Title IX Education
University of Washington’s Breakthrough Training Approach
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The University of Washington successfully tackled the challenge of delivering sensitive Title IX training across its expansive community by adopting an innovative digital approach. Faced with educating both students and employees on sex and gender-based violence prevention, the university developed a cohesive training program that is strengthening its entire campus community.
In a conversation with Kiana Swearingen, Director of Education and Prevention and Deputy Title IX Coordinator, we learned that UW struggled to reach and consistently deliver this critical training to their large population of approximately 50,000 students and 50,000 employees.
Before implementing the Advantage platform, UW had no mandatory Title IX training. They relied on organic approaches such as in-person orientation presentations, printed materials, and integration into other spaces. Swearingen explained, “We were never going to be able to reach everyone through in-person or publication. We were not able to get the crucial information to everyone and ensure that everyone had the opportunity to receive that." Traditional methods simply couldn't scale effectively.
This realization drove Swearingen to seek a comprehensive solution that could effectively deliver essential training to both employee and student populations at scale.
In Search of the Right Fit
The University of Washington needed a specialized training platform with specific capabilities:
- Custom content creation
- Multiple learning tracks for different audience segments
- Flexible completion options allowing users to pause and resume
- Built-in evaluation tools to measure effectiveness
- Authentic UW branding that resonated with their community
"We felt that those [off-the-shelf] products didn't meet the unique needs of our community, and that's why we needed to build something," explained Swearingen.
After learning about the success of Advantage Design Group's orientation platform within UW's student affairs department, Swearingen’s team began exploring whether this solution could address their Title IX training requirements.
While partnering with Advantage Design Group® to develop a training solution, the University of Washington found one of the platform’s most valuable features to be its ability to deliver customized content to four distinct audience groups: Clinical Health Care Teams, Faculty and Academic Personnel, Staff, and Student Employees. Providing role-specific information in relevant contexts was critical to UW’s training goals. This customization made the training more efficient, relevant, and engaging, ensuring each group received the resources they needed in a way that felt personal and meaningful. This may be one of the key reasons UW achieved such unprecedented and impactful results.
Unprecedented Results
The University of Washington has achieved remarkable outcomes with their training platform, delivering record-breaking completion rates including 99.9% student participation, significantly higher employee engagement, and over 70,000 total completions in just four years.
The platform delivers industry-leading knowledge retention, as demonstrated by a six-month follow-up survey revealing unprecedented information retention rates that surpass all previous online courses in the university's history.
Beyond compliance metrics, the platform created meaningful community impact. Swearingen shared,
"Every couple months, we get a message from someone saying, 'I now know how much the university cares about me because I had this course when I first started there.’”
The training not only provided essential knowledge but also fostered a genuine sense of care and community. Additionally, the platform remains a reliable educational resource, with faculty and students regularly returning to reference specific information and to revisit individual sections as needed.
A Transformative Partnership
Swearingen recommends that institutions seeking effective training solutions explore Advantage Design Group’s platform. Swearingen emphasized,
"I would absolutely recommend that people consider it as a strong option for employee training, especially for new employee orientations, which is an area where often employees get really bad training."
The University of Washington's implementation of the Advantage Design Group platform represents a breakthrough for how prevention and response training is delivered, enabling them to provide consistent, high-quality content across their massive and diverse community. This partnership demonstrates how institutions of any size can effectively adapt Advantage Orientation's unique capabilities to maximize engagement through customized content, strategic implementation, and interactive features for both employees and students.
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