How Evidano fit the workflow
The report was authored by staff from the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and Afton Partners, and presented to the ICCB Board in March 2025. The publication describes Evidano mainly in its methodology. What it does show is a clear, disclosed, human-reviewed workflow.
- 1Gather raw qualitative data
Six quarters of input drawn from across the consortium: quarterly grant reports, navigator monthly reports, and institutional surveys.
- 2Anonymize before analysis
The data was anonymized prior to being entered into the platform.
- 3Identify themes with Evidano
Evidano was used to surface themes across the dataset.
- 4Researchers validate and pull quotes
Staff read through all raw data to confirm themes and select supporting examples.
“IBHE and ICCB engaged Afton Partners to help support the data analysis and writing of this annual report. Afton Partners analyzed six quarters of both quantitative and qualitative data from each of the institutions.”
“Qualitative data was anonymized and entered into an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, AILYZE, to identify themes. Afton staff subsequently read through all raw data to validate themes and identify specific quotes and examples.”
The use of Evidano is named in a statutory report to the Illinois General Assembly, an example of transparent AI use.
AI surfaced themes. People validated them. The tool supports judgment, not replaces it.
In this study, data was anonymized before any analysis took place.