Experience Shapes Services from Achieving the Dream Supporting High-Quality Digital Learning

For more than two decades, Achieving the Dream (ATD) has worked with colleges to promote success for diverse student populations and their communities, particularly by helping colleges improve how they use digital learning. Now Dr. K.C. Williams, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning at ATD, says this deep experience informs the set of professional development services the organization offers to higher education institutions in partnership with Every Learner Everywhere.

“We’ve taken the learnings from all these experiences — whether it’s work through grants, workshops, or our Teaching and Learning Seminar — and brought them together in these services that allow us to reach a lot of different kinds of institutions,” she says.

ATD leads several of the 11 professional development services Every Learner Everywhere offers with its network partners, including the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Hispanic Education Technology Services, and the Online Learning Consortium. The offerings help higher education professionals advance digital learning through student-centered, faculty-powered, and institution-driven improvement. They feature a mix of synchronous, asynchronous, digital or remote, face-to-face, group, and individual coaching formats.

The services ATD offers includes:

• Data-informed Instruction to Advance Student-Centered Digital Teaching and Learning — In this workshop series participants will explore how disaggregated “in the moment” course level data, course outcomes, and institutional trends can illuminate opportunities for addressing disparities in  student learning.
• Course Redesign to Advance Student Success — This six-session program engages participants in a comprehensive course redesign process. Faculty, department chairs, and staff establish a student-centered course blueprint that incorporates evidence-based teaching approaches  such as OER, and addresses integration of digital learning tools such as AI.
• Evidence-based Teaching and Student-centered Instruction — This faculty experience is geared toward all educators who seek resources and support for designing, facilitating, and assessing quality instruction within inclusive digital learning environments across modalities, including online, blended, hybrid, and digitally enhanced face-to-face experiences.

Focusing on peer learning, actionable lessons

Each ATD service, regardless of its focus, provides peer learning on inclusive instructional practices. “It’s always an opportunity for faculty to be able to learn together,” Williams says.

“That’s one of the things we know — faculty learn best when they’re learning from each other. And, as a cornerstone of everything, we are always going to give people tools to ensure success for all students.”

All the ATD services have a goal in common: that participants leave with a concrete deliverable to guide them as they implement the lessons they’ve learned.

“It’s not theoretical,” Williams says. “It’s action oriented. Sometimes it’s an action plan that has very specific steps for how to put to work whatever it is they spent the duration of the service developing. Sometimes, they’re leaving with a redesigned course.”

And in some cases, the knowledge participants gain from the ATD services can have an immediate impact — for them and for their institutions’ students. For example, faculty, staff, and administrators can use real-time data to inform instruction during the present term instead of waiting for post-term data.

Making high-quality training accessible

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the ATD services, says Williams, is that they give colleges and universities an accessible option for effective training steeped in current research and practices.

“Professional development is always tough to nail down,” she says. “This is getting high-quality professional development to faculty, even if they don’t have the infrastructure for it on campus. And it’s very relevant, with strategies, skill building, and tools that are going to serve them today and going forward. It’s not the same old, same old.”