Imagine two college courses that meet in person and that both implement adaptive learning courseware, assigning the content, practice activities, and quizzes for students to work through outside of class. …

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted colleges and universities to make extensive changes to curricula, teaching practices, and policies to meet student needs during the crisis. Many institutions responded by building new …

Many college and university educators working toward equity in higher education are considering alternative syllabi as one way to address institutional barriers encountered by minoritized and poverty-affected students. The course …

The COVID-19 pandemic that began impacting college instructors and students in March 2020 was an unanticipated stress test that revealed higher education’s hidden weak points. Among other things, it exposed …

Digital learning technologies in higher education — along with software used in other campus functions like recruiting, the registrar, and career services — generate a tremendous amount of personal data …

College and university educators wishing to understand how students bring the effects of systemic inequities of high school education into higher education would do well to look at my home …

Ideally, while working to incorporate equitable teaching practices, you and your colleagues have a strong sense of the existing barriers that need to be confronted. Advancing equity at the departmental …

Although most colleges and universities will return to face-to-face learning in fall 2021, instructors in many courses will continue to use digital learning technologies in a range of remote, hybrid, …

A slightly different version of this article appeared originally on WCET Frontiers, the blog for WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. During August 2021, WCET – WICHE Cooperative for …

The high-profile, racially charged killings in 2020 of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, Jr. created a new urgency to combat deeply ingrained, institutionalized racism, including in higher education. …

To account for the linguistic and cultural diversity on college and university campuses, a growing body of research argues for using multiple digital modalities to provide a more equitable, inclusive …

Nicole Weber, Assistant Vice President of Learning at the Online Learning Consortium, says she and colleagues, reflecting on the last three semesters, felt that “while many educators have been exploring …

As a Lecturer in the California State University Long Beach Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Elaine Villanueva Bernal teaches diverse classes of nonmajor students, including many from minoritized and …

In building or revising college and university courses with significant digital learning components, faculty have a large number of factors to consider — materials, schedules, communication plans, learning modality, building …

Though many colleges and universities have DEI initiatives in place, they risk having little impact if they make one of a number of common mistakes, says Chandani Patel, Director for …

One effect of the pandemic is that many faculty and administrators are re-emphasizing the importance of putting student care at the center of institutional policies and classroom practices, and that …

While many colleges and universities around the United States are committed to diversity and inclusion, they often forget to include religion in that vision. Many educators prioritize secular approaches and, …

Rachael Durham, the Assistant Director for First-Year Experience in the Center for Student Success at the University of Mississippi, doesn’t usually give her personal phone number to students. But when …

Educators know one of the best ways to assess learning is with old-fashioned project-based assignments — creative work, presentations, experiments, and written papers that give students opportunities to demonstrate, practice, …

College and university instructors thinking about designing or improving courses for online and distance formats would do well to consider the emerging findings of cognitive load theory (CLT). This is …

Even college and university instructors open to the possibilities of online learning may worry that the in-person lab components of science courses are irreproducible in digital environments. Norma Hollebeke, Manager …

In late 2020, partners in the Every Learner Everywhere network were asking themselves a question: How could their collaborative work be more proactive about centering college student voices, since that …

Trolling has become a part of online life, particularly for women and minoritized students. According to 2018 research from the Pew Research Center, nearly 60 percent of young people in …

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly embedded in the software colleges and universities use for admissions, advising, courseware, and assessment. These technologies hold tremendous promise to help higher education …

During the growth of online learning in higher education, vital components of good course design such as information literacy may get short shrift, particularly during the emergency transition to remote …

College and university faculty can reasonably anticipate a significant increase in the number of students experiencing depression and anxiety in the coming academic year. During the last three semesters, students …

Culturally responsive pedagogy is an important part of centering equity in higher education by treating the experiences and perspectives of every student as an asset rather than as a deficit.  …

Educational technology has the potential to support personalized instruction in the classroom, but it is not without its biases. The algorithms behind digital learning technology are programmed by human developers, …

As adaptive learning has become more common in U.S. colleges and universities in recent years, there have been many studies of learning outcomes, and there have been many surveys of …

Many workplaces have the “accidental techie” — the person not from the IT department but who everyone instinctively turns to first when they encounter one of those frustrating “why won’t …

What is the responsibility of higher education to prepare students for the working world and what would it take to prioritize employment in a college’s activities? Those questions are explored …

Initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on one hand and in education technology on the other hand are often developed separately, but two major events in 2020 inspired Every …

Trauma-informed teaching, also sometimes called trauma-informed pedagogy, creates awareness of how students’ past experience with trauma affects their current experience in the classroom. The ultimate goal of that awareness is …

As a film and theater student, Grace Davenport would normally be spending her Fall semester of senior year in close contact with other artists. She’d be directing actors, taking movement …

Georgia State University junior Malachi Moultrie decided to study law in his first year of college when he learned about the rate of wrongful convictions in the U.S. “That’s when …

When asked to describe higher education policy in a Biden administration, Terry Hartle, Senior Vice President at the American Council on Education, suggested, “We’ll be looking at a once-in-a-generation effort to …

Ca’Shawn Brown thrives in a classroom environment. The Georgia State University senior enjoys being able to ask her instructors questions in person and participate actively. She is also studying subjects …

Too often when an instructor approaches course design, the question of who they’re designing for comes last, says Tia Holiday, an Instructional Designer and Associate Director at Intentional Futures (Every …

This Q&A took place on November 12, 2020. The question that prompted this article was if and how college students experience the stress of loan debt while they are still …

Studying chemistry and materials science engineering as an undergraduate, Dr. Elaine Villanueva Bernal thought she would end up working for a company like Lockheed Martin after graduating from the University …

Higher education instructors and administrators working in online learning are invited to participate in a new series of interactive webinars from Every Learner Everywhere and its partners. Strategies for Success …

When Dr. Kristal Moore Clemons started volunteering with the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools in college, she didn’t imagine she would be leading the organization someday. Clemons’ college experience …

Dr. Blaine Smith says the intersection of equity-minded education with the digital tools she specializes in became especially clear to her during her first Assistant Professor position at the University …

When Tatiana Bryant, the research librarian for digital humanities, history, and African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, first met with the leadership of Every Learner Everywhere, she …

Dr. Chandani Patel first started working on inclusive teaching while a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. She says that, as equity-minded education was becoming more …

Dr. Cherise McBride started thinking about equity-minded education early in her career working at continuation high schools, which are supposed to be an alternative diploma resource for students who are …

When Dr. Tazin Daniels was working on her dissertation at Michigan State University, she focused on college students who use Adderall as a performance enhancer. Her internationally funded research shed …

The student learning data generated by digital technologies creates opportunities to evaluate courses if faculty and an institution’s Office of Institutional Research (IR) are able to cooperate effectively. But Julie …

As microcosms of the broader society, the structure of college and university courses can exacerbate racism and societal inequities, or it can work to dismantle them. Equity-centered design can help …

When Lorain County Community College Professor of Mathematics Kathryn Dobeck first learned about the adaptive courseware included with the Wiley textbook Statistics: Unlocking the Power of Data, she was intrigued. …

Renewed calls for racial justice have led many stakeholders within U.S. higher education to consider the ways in which their campuses do, or do not, advance racial justice and equity. …

Broward College is no stranger to adaptive learning courseware. After all, they’ve been using it since at least 2013, when it was implemented to provide supplemental support for students in …

When Indian River State College (IRSC) announced a project to pilot adaptive courseware in 2019, Dr. Heather Michaels, Chair of the Physical Sciences Department, knew just the course to try …

Idea in brief: This article aims to help college and university faculty understand the complex regulatory issues that new distance learning programs must account for. It summarizes for faculty a …

Equitable online course design for college and university classes often requires flipping the usual perspective, says Dr. Ruanda Garth-McCullough, Associate Director of Teaching and Learning for Achieving the Dream. “Most …

When the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Cleveland State University was considering the potential for digital learning technologies to improve pass rates in its introductory Mathematics courses, they didn’t …

It is no secret that our nation’s educational system has been severely affected by COVID-19. Overnight, millions of students, from primary school to college, switched from in-person classes to remote …

Many adaptive learning pilot projects involve faculty, deans, instructional designers, and instructional technology staff to implement new digital courseware and to effectively use the data to improve student outcomes. But …

Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and poverty-affected college students are often presented with curricula designed for majority white students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. Far from being neutral or “colorblind,” this can …

In early summer 2020, the team at Every Learner Everywhere participated in a leadership and team development program from The National Equity Project, along with peers from K-12 and higher-ed …

The School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was making a concerted effort to implement adaptive learning, and they wanted to see …

Ranked as one of the nation’s top 20 most innovative universities by US News & World Report, the University of Central Florida (UCF) consistently earns high marks for its online …

To successfully launch and sustain a new digital learning initiative to address equity gaps, colleges and universities need to make time and space for faculty to prepare new teaching practices. …

The data generated by digital learning tools has the potential to support personalized learning and help close equity gaps in higher education. However, many colleges and universities are not yet …

When the administration at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) decided to pilot an adaptive learning initiative targeting equity gaps, one main goal was to build a model …

At many institutions, the gateway courses where an adaptive learning project can have the biggest impact on closing equity gaps are often disproportionately taught by adjunct faculty. Therefore, says Ruanda …

Jerius Smith is a computer science major mostly taking math and science classes. He was already commuting to classes at Georgia Institute of Technology when COVID-19 sent everyone home in …

We often say Every Learner Everywhere is a collaborative network of 12 partner organizations working together to improve student outcomes for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and poverty-affected students. But in practice, …

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit at the end of her freshman year, Zakia Tookes found herself juggling coursework, community service, figuring out new online learning technologies, and a sudden move …

In some ways, finishing the school year at home was easier for Georgia Southern University freshman Jayce Mays than it would have been if he’d still been on campus. Before …

When Cuyahoga Community College received a grant from Every Learner Everywhere to implement adaptive learning courseware across the college, Professor of Business Administration Michele Hampton had already been using adaptive …

At Every Learner Everywhere, we often talk about gateway courses in higher education being a key place that influences student outcomes. What do we mean by a gateway course, and …

The COVID-19 pandemic brought home (at least) two forceful lessons: that colleges and universities need more operational resilience and that Black, Latinx, Indigeneous, and poverty-affected students are disproportionately impacted when …

Many college and university faculty found themselves suddenly taking their courses online in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 emergency. Out of necessity, many did that with the resources they …

The data generated by adaptive learning software and other digital learning technologies will only be a useful tool in equity efforts in higher education if it can be analyzed to …

Every college or university launching or extending an adaptive learning initiative has unique needs. But an engaged cross-functional team committed to using digital learning technologies to close equity gaps is …

During 2020 and 2021, equity gaps were exacerbated while institutions shifted to distance learning as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The sudden transition to new learning models left behind …

In the path toward using adaptive learning technologies in the classroom to close equity gaps, college and university educators may have collected advice from peers, targeted particular courses, researched the …

When a college or university considers using adaptive learning technology in its classrooms, a basic question it must confront is if it is ready. Are the culture, capacity, and resources …

During 2019, Every Learner Everywhere worked with 10 U.S. colleges and universities to pilot adaptive learning software in over 40 entry-level courses where it has the potential to improve learning …