If you’re here to ask Dr. Karen Vignare to recommend “the right learning tool”, take a number. In this episode, she highlights the findings of her research into using adaptive courseware as part of a student-first approach to instruction. So what can educators do to support more students to succeed in gateway courses? Spoiler alert: it takes more than just buying the right tool.
Memorable Moments:
Karen:[00:05:15] Faculty need to know much sooner how students are doing in the classroom. … If we don't address those learners very early, probably before three weeks, their trajectory downward cannot be reversed.
Karen: [00:10:45] You're having students check in once, twice, three times a week, but you're not having them actively show you something that they're learning … But we need to know a lot more at the granular level about their learning behavior rather than assuming that their demographic information is going to predict how they do in the classroom.
SJ: [00:11:40] I'm a first generation university student that comes from an area that's historically very low tech. And I'm not sure what demographic data would have accurately predicted my trajectory. Much like many of the people that were like me with my cohort. So I'm very much with you on shifting away from demographic predictive data sets.
Karen: [00:17:57] One of the things that I do really want to say to the audience, because we're often asked this question, 'please just tell me what is the right tool to use'... The tool is absolutely important. It's a lever. It provides you with data. It provides you with a guide on where I might try different things in the rest of my classroom. But it is not your course. It requires you to integrate it into your entire course to make sure it's aligned.
Karen: [00:21:34] In a collaborative, project-managed way, we're now putting together multiple people with cross-disciplinary experience, instructional experience, learning, science, experience, technology experience and that all important faculty, subject matter, knowledge, experience. And by having that work collectively, we can actually achieve improved outcomes. One of the things I'm extremely proud about is in the large grant that we ran. One of the findings were in 300,000 enrollments, we were able to prevent 8700 students from having to repeat. Of course, now we may think of that and say, well, why not more? But for those students, this was real. They saved $16.5 million.
Episode 13 Transcript:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IzP1s0eLyBziO6sl6A2TfHKnHlViGY1IMxAlorss79M/edit?usp=sharing
More resources:
Improving Critical Courses Using Digital Learning & Evidence-based Pedagogy
https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/wp-content/uploads/Improving-Critical-Courses.pdf
A Guide for Implementing Adaptive Courseware
https://www.aplu.org/library/a-guide-for-implementing-adaptive-courseware-from-planning-through-scaling/File
Try Labster now: https://www.labster.com/try/
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter: https://www.labster.com/newsletter
Find Labster on Social:
https://twitter.com/labster
https://www.facebook.com/teamlabster
https://www.linkedin.com/company/labster/