Scaling AI Courseware for Calculus: A Preview of Every Learner’s Newest Initiative

A new initiative to combine AI-enabled courseware and evidence-based teaching practices in Calculus I is building on lessons Every Learner Everywhere has accumulated from its earliest work. While Every Learner has supported from its founding many courseware implementation pilots by individual faculty, the Lighthouse Courseware Implementation project will involve institutions committed to department-level implementations that coordinate course optimization, professional learning, and the effective use of course data.

Every Learner is calling participants in this scaling initiative “Lighthouse” institutions, reviving the language used at the network’s launch in 2019 when it helped colleges and universities develop strategies to implement adaptive learning courseware. In the years since that initial Lighthouse project, Every Learner has applied what it has learned to develop professional development courses, a rich selection of technical assistance services, a growing library of research and playbooks, multiple communities of practice, and Transform Learning, a resource on digitally enabled, evidence-based teaching practices.

The Lighthouse Courseware Implementation project pulls all those threads together — along with the innovative work of new partners — to help math departments implement AI-enabled courseware in gateway Calculus I as part of a coordinated instructional model. Its goal is to create scalable tools that other institutions can adapt to improve student success. The math departments participating in the project will be implementing AI-enabled courseware in as many as 10 sections at once.

Every Learner serves as the project manager, and the partners include:

• The John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Higher Education, which will provide technical assistance to math departments on optimizing their Calculus I courses
• Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics (TPSE Math), which will provide leadership in math education, ensuring that BEACON aligns with the standards, expectations, and practical realities of the discipline and resonates with departmental leaders and instructors
• WestEd, which will lead the measurement, learning, and evaluation component of the project
• Learnvia, the publisher of research-grounded AI-enabled math courseware (free to students) developed at Carnegie Mellon University

Compared with Every Learner’s earlier work on adaptive courseware, the project will study how a free AI-enabled tool can close achievement gaps in a high-enrollment gateway course. For students, the goal is a Calculus I experience that improves measurable learning outcomes, particularly for students who have historically been least well served by gateway math courses.

From isolated pilots to coordinated implementation

One lesson Every Learner has taken from past pilot projects is that digital learning technology does not reach its potential when it depends on “random acts of courseware.” One instructor may use it as a platform to optimize how students experience evidence-based practices, another may use it as direct textbook replacement without updating any lessons or practices, and another may treat it a source of optional homework activities. Every Learner and its partners have seen how a promising courseware can be spread thinly across the academic field with uneven results for students.

In Every Learner’s earlier Lighthouse work, institutions often began with individual interested faculty and then added other supports as implementation needs became clearer. The Lighthouse Courseware Implementation project reverses that sequence. Participating institutions start with a department-level commitment to coordinate several sections of Calculus I at once, and with a cross-functional team that can support the effort.

The 12 institutions are organized into two cohorts — one introducing Learnvia to Calculus I students in fall 2026 and one in spring 2027 — and each cohort will have its own community of practice to promote faculty peer learning.

Courseware is not the intervention by itself

Another lesson shaping the project is that courseware implementation works best when the technology is integrated into the course design rather than added alongside it. Learnvia embeds AI-enabled practice, feedback, and analytics, and the project partners will work to ensure departments have the capacity to use those features effectively.

That will require professional development in evidence-based teaching practices so faculty are not left to figure out on their own how to use the tool effectively. Departments will also decide in advance how they will use data from the courseware and how faculty will adjust when students encounter common barriers.

Cross-functional teams have to be in the room early

The project also builds on the lesson that scaling a courseware implementation involves input from institutional research, IT, academic advising, tutoring, the center for teaching and learning, and even the campus bookstore, which influences how students access required materials.

Many courseware pilots discover those dependencies after implementation is underway and students are using — or trying to use — the courseware. The project addresses that risk by asking institutions to identify a coordination team before implementation begins. The goal is to ensure the people responsible for course design, student support, technology access, data, and academic policy are working together to realize the potential of the digital learning tool.

The Courseware Implementation project is designed to produce reusable models

As the project progresses, Every Learner and its partners plan to turn the work of the Lighthouse institutions into case studies, webinars, and practical tools that show how departments coordinate across sections, learn from data, support faculty, and build in continuous improvement processes. The goal is for the work of these 12 Lighthouse institutions to be visible to the rest of the math education sector and to learn the next set of lessons that will carry forward the work of ensuring that digital learning is built on evidence-based teaching practices so that technology can benefit every learner.