A Case Study of Houston Community College

Focused Experiments with Adaptive Courseware

Faculty at Houston Community College (HCC) led efforts to implement adaptive courseware in introductory mathematics and economics courses, as well as leveraged tutoring programs to provide a model for additional support for both students and faculty. HCC’s efforts included collaborative efforts to develop course shells and onboarding modules. By integrating faculty-led tutoring, the college provided additional opportunities to both support students and introduce faculty members to adaptive technology.  Importantly, faculty reported that courseware implementation led them to take deeper looks at pedagogy and their use of data and other digital learning tools to promote student success.

Achieving the Dream (ATD) is one of 12 higher education and digital learning organizations that make up the Every Learner Everywhere Network, whose mission is to help higher education institutions improve and ensure more equitable student outcomes through advances in digital learning, particularly among poverty-impacted, racially minoritized, and first-generation students. Every Learner partners are addressing high failure rates in foundational courses through the provision of scalable, high-quality support to colleges and universities seeking to implement adaptive courseware on their campuses. As part of its ongoing effort to help community colleges develop effective teaching and learning practices, ATD is working with seven community colleges in Florida, Ohio, and Texas on this initiative, providing coaching and direct support to the colleges, fostering collaboration within and among the participating institutions, and serving as a liaison to the Every Learner network.

This case study of HCC is part of a series of studies conducted by ATD examining how adaptive courseware is being implemented at those institutions, as well as how courseware is used in particular disciplines to better serve students. Case studies are based on a series of interviews with college leaders, faculty, instructional designers, developers, technology specialists and students who were enrolled in classes using the courseware.