{"id":5458,"date":"2022-06-13T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ele.local\/?p=5458"},"modified":"2022-06-09T13:37:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T18:37:35","slug":"reflecting-on-3-years-of-technical-assistance-for-adaptive-learning-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/reflecting-on-3-years-of-technical-assistance-for-adaptive-learning-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting On 3 Years of Technical Assistance For Adaptive Learning Initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae\u2019s 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 for more than just implementation. With a vision of using digital learning to close equity gaps for minoritized and poverty-affected students, the partners collaboratively designed the technical assistance to help institutions assess readiness and capacity and then to design and integrate adaptive courseware in ways that would be scalable beyond the initial courses, as well as to measure results.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone brought a different strength to the partnership,\u201d says Dr. Ruanda Garth-McCullough, Director of Program Development at Achieving the Dream (ATD). She and her colleagues brought experience on how to guide a team at a college through transformation. Partners at The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) brought experience with evaluating and using the range of adaptive courseware on the market. And Digital Promise worked with institutional research departments to secure and evaluate data from redesigned courses.<\/p>\n

Thirteen colleges and universities \u2014 called Lighthouse Institutions<\/a> \u2014 redesigned courses by integrating adaptive courseware with support from Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae, including the technical assistance from ATD, APLU, and Digital Promise. At the end of the engagement, not only did the institutions learn how to integrate digital technology and instruction, but they built models to scale it out to other departments in their institutions.<\/p>\n

Technical assistance in action<\/h2>\n

Garth-McCullough says deep technical assistance is not just about helping faculty learn and apply a new technique or technology but is more like coaching over a sustained period. The network partners helped the Lighthouse institutions frame specific problems, troubleshoot challenges that emerged, and sustain progress on a plan.<\/p>\n

Technical assistance for a project as critical as implementing new adaptive learning technologies can also be immersive. On-campus site visits comprised delivering existing professional learning materials and tailoring content for specific academic departments that were redesigning large-enrollment gateway courses<\/a>. The partners also identified peer institutions that were further along in similar transformations and brought them to the Lighthouse institutions for consultation and inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe let the teams customize how this was going to work on their campus,\u201d says Garth-McCullough. \u201cThere\u2019s not a one-size-fits all way of what their team should look like or how they should approach their plan.\u201d<\/p>\n