Supporting Student Success at the Course Level

Lessons from Change Efforts During a Pandemic

The Every Learner Everywhere network was established to help institutions of higher education improve course success rates for racially minoritized and poverty-impacted students by improving teaching and learning with the support of digital learning tools. Starting in 2019, network members Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) worked with a set of two-year colleges and four-year universities, respectively, to support these “lighthouse” institutions as they implemented adaptive courseware into selected gateway courses. Digital Promise supported these activities by collecting and analyzing data on student characteristics and course outcomes for the courses implementing adaptive courseware and conducting instructor surveys (in fall 2019 and 2020) and student and instructor interviews (in spring 2020). Supporting Student Success at the Course Level describes the Every Learner Everywhere supports for lighthouse institutions, the experiences and accomplishments of course improvement teams at those institutions, and implications for future efforts to improve teaching and learning practices in higher education.

Supporting Student Success at the Course Level is the third report in a series produced by Digital Promise. The first report shared first-year experiences of participating Lighthouse institutions as they piloted new versions of gateway courses incorporating adaptive learning. A second report examined pandemic impacts and found that nearly all instructors surveyed believed adaptive courseware helped improve student learning amid the pandemic, while allowing them to better monitor progress and hold individual students accountable for consistent engagement in class.