One potential benefit to digital learning technologies in higher education is that they can address specific needs in different academic disciplines, according to a series of case studies on adaptive …
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, what had been a limited part of higher education — using a range of online and remote teaching modalities — …
Integrating Open Educational Resources (OER) into college and university courses can provide tangible benefits to students, faculty, and institutions. But more importantly, OER can help support efforts to make equity …
One benefit of collaborating with colleges, universities, and research partners on adaptive learning pilot projects since 2019 is that a number of useful insights begin to accumulate. For example, peer …
As colleges and universities work to become more equitable for students who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, poverty-affected, or first-generation, many are working to understand the advantages of a strengths-based approach …
Findings from a recent survey of institutional policies regarding adjunct faculty conducted by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) suggest a need for …
Putting equity at the center of teaching and curricular and technology decisions in higher education is essential to closing opportunity gaps for minoritized, poverty-affected, and first-generation students. But those changes …
College and university leaders committed to equity for minoritized, poverty-affected, and first-generation students are transforming conversations in their institutions from deficits-based to assets-based perspectives. As they do so, many are …
WCET + Every Learner Everywhere Celebrate Juneteenth Juneteenth, or “Freedom Day” is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth not only celebrates …
When Every Learner Everywhere’s network partners convened in 2019 to develop technical assistance for an adaptive learning initiative at 13 colleges and universities, they knew they needed to provide support …
As adaptive learning and other technologies become more common, colleges and universities need to center equity in digital learning. Thoughtful implementation of those tools needs to identify and confront equity …
Reflection and metacognition can be critical aspects of a personalized and equitable educational experience. When students are asked to look inward and assess how they think and learn, they are …
The second annual Strategies for Success webinar series hosted by Every Learner Everywhere in January 2022 featured several presentations from college and university leaders on increasing online student engagement. Collectively …
When Aajahne Seeney was young, she couldn’t get enough of the classroom during the day, so after school she would gather her siblings together and play teacher, complete with a …
One of the best parts of education conferences is the resource sharing that faculty can take back to their classrooms and departments, and ADAPT 2021, a virtual equity-centered digital learning …
As Every Learner Everywhere reflects on Teacher Appreciation Week this year, we are particularly inspired by the leadership role educators take in advancing equity in the classroom for minoritized, poverty-affected, …
Zaire McMican didn’t know there was a name for what he’d seen and experienced growing up in Newark, New Jersey until reading The Autobiography of Malcom X in eighth grade. …
Faculty eager to center equity in their classrooms may struggle with the limited time and resources available for course design. With that in mind, Achieving the Dream (ATD) created an …
The quizzes, multiple-choice tests, and midterm and final exams that many higher education faculty rely on to assess student learning can be less than inclusive for some students by, for …
Contingent and part-time faculty — commonly known as adjuncts — play a critical role in providing equitable online education opportunities for minoritized and poverty-affected college students. Yet, while the number …
A highlight of ADAPT 2021, a virtual digital learning showcase, was a panel featuring several students sharing their digital learning experience with college courses that used adaptive learning software. Presented …
During January 2022, Every Learner Everywhere and its network partners conducted its second Strategies for Success workshop series, which is designed to be an evergreen resource for higher education faculty …
WCET + Every Learner Everywhere Celebrate Women’s History Month To celebrate Women’s History Month, we invited inspiring women and student fellows to share their reflections on breaking the bias in higher …
Striving toward equity by leveraging digital tools, such as adaptive courseware, was the focus of ADAPT, a student-centered digital learning showcase presented in December 2021 by Every Learner Everywhere, the …
Asked to sum up the takeaways from the most recent Time for Class survey, which regularly examines trends in the higher education digital learning market, Kristen Fox, Managing Director at …
Dr. Jeremiah J. Sims, a consultant and author specializing in equity in higher education, was recently working with a California college that had noticed that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students …
In 2018, Dr. William Carr, Professor of Biology at Medgar Evers College (MEC) of the City University of New York, confronted a challenge: Many of his General Biology I students …
To advance equity efforts, many institutions of higher education strive for better working relationships with local Indigenous communities by hiring or appointing a university tribal liaison officer. What is a …
As colleges and universities strive to remove barriers to equity for minoritized and poverty-affected students, it’s essential to understand the ways in which assessment can contribute to those barriers. That …
A new survey of faculty utilizing adaptive learning teaching practices has shown that, while many are implementing evidence-based practices in the context of digital learning, there remains significant opportunity for …
The concept of blended learning in higher education has become familiar in the last few years, usually referring to the blending of digital and traditional classroom resources and practices to …
Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Kristin Polizzotto and her colleagues at Kingsborough Community College (KBCC) in Brooklyn, New York, employed powerful online tools such as courseware …
Through its Time for Class 2021 report, the education advisory and strategy firm Tyton Partners, in partnership with Every Learner Everywhere, dives deeper into how digital learning has evolved and …
The term “stereotype threat” first began to get attention from educators in 1995 when psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson conducted a series of studies based on college students taking …
As a step toward creating equitable cultures at their institutions, many colleges and universities are developing land acknowledgements. In its simplest form, an Indigenous land acknowledgement is a formal statement …
When a college instructor works with their students — on campus or online — they may see a range of visible identities such as gender or race. However, each student …
Colleges and universities working to reduce barriers to equity for minoritized and poverty-affected students must consider not only the curriculum and classroom practices but also how the syllabus can create …
A year ago, Robert Perez, Manager of Network Development and Strategic Partnerships at Every Learner Everywhere, spoke about an equity and leadership training that he and his colleagues had just …
At the inauguration of the Every Learner Everywhere Fellowship in spring 2021, the project managers wanted to ensure that the Fellows and the project partners understood the “big picture” of …
Adaptive learning is a methodology for teaching and learning that strives to personalize lessons, readings, practice activities, and assessments for individual students based on their current skills and performance. Adaptive …
Every Learner Everywhere strives to use equity-centered language in its published material such as website copy, blog articles, press releases, and resource library. Equitable language choices avoid the subjectivity that …
Combinations of face-to-face and online learning modalities have been around for more than 20 years. But the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted college and university faculty to consider strategic approaches to …
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 …
“Together We Can All Get Through It”: How This Criminal Justice Major is Adapting to Remote Learning
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 learning courseware in 2019, Dr. Heather Michaels, Chair of the Physical Sciences Department, knew just the course to …
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 …