Overcoming the Poverty Challenge to Enable College and Career Readiness for All: The Crucial Role of Student Supports

This white paper focuses on an important and under-conceptualized thread in the weave of efforts needed to ensure that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and/or career training: enhanced student supports. It argues that in order to overcome the educational impacts of poverty -- the poverty challenge, schools that serve high concentrations of low income students need to be able to provide direct, evidence-based supports that help students attend school regularly, act in a productive manner, believe they will succeed, overcome external obstacles, complete their coursework, and put forth the effort required to graduate college- and career-ready. Next, it highlights the unique role that nonprofits, community volunteers, and full-time national service members can play in the implementation of these direct student supports. It concludes by exploring how federal and state policy and funding can be designed to promote the implementation and spread of evidence-based, direct student supports. The paper draws on the emerging evidence base to examine these topics, and calls upon the insights gleaned through the author's fifteen years of participant-observation in the effort to create schools strong enough to overcome the ramifications of poverty and prepare all students for adult success

Making Out-of-School Time Matter: Evidence for an Action Agenda

Presents findings from a review of literature that identifies and addresses the level of demand for OST services, the effectiveness of the offerings, quality in OST programs, how to encourage participation, and how to build further community capacity

New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls

Offers data and analysis on the impact of education on adolescent girls' lives and highlights promising approaches. Calls for evaluating girl-friendly education programs, compiling data on non-formal schools, and improving curricula, access, and supports

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue two: Enhancing student diversity, progression & achievement

Welcome to the second edition of the University of Salford’s ‘Innovative Learning in Action’ (ILIA). The journal is published biannually and is intended to provide recognition for and to celebrate the good practice of staff who – across campus – strive to innovate in pursuit of the quality learning experience. The dissemination of good practice will provide positive encouragement to those considering new approaches to student learning and support and act as a springboard for collaboration, shared experience, mutual support and reflection within and across the faculties. The theme of this edition is ‘Enhancing Student Diversity, Progression and Achievement’, reflecting the University’s widely recognised strategic commitment to widen participation, and its expertise in curriculum innovation to meet the needs of our students. Contributors deal with a range of challenges to practitioners at key stages in the student life-cycle and offer highly reflective insights of relevance across the University. The journal therefore provides a valuable opportunity to share and learn from the experiences of colleagues

A Program Evaluation of A Technology Based Formative Assessment for Algebra Readiness

Algebra 1 is often called the “gateway” course to higher education and opportunity. In the state of Virginia, the Algebra Readiness Diagnostic Test (ARDT) is the recommended mathematics formative assessment selected to monitor progress of students at each grade level. This program evaluation sought to take a closer look at tasks that teachers practice in the formative assessment process which exceed the mandatory ARDT periods for assessment. Teachers felt strongly about the adverse impact of assessment overload, but they also stressed the need to have continual alternative assessments, such as memory recall practices, to make certain that elementary students retained the mathematical concepts that were taught throughout the year. Further, teachers expressed the need to reinvent ways to keep elementary students engaged in the learning process, and most spoke about the need to vary instruction practices and intervention choices with peer tutoring, computer based instruction, and ongoing feedback. ARDT was not used often outside of mandatory assessment sessions; teachers opted to use more user-friendly mathematics software containing animations and varying content delivery methods. Teachers were consistent in their expressed belief that elementary students work best in assessment environments that are not delivered in mere black and white font, but are lively and changing in font color and delivery methods. Teachers also stated that using more than one formative assessment was a necessity because one would not meet the many needs of diverse student populations while continuing to keep the interest of elementary students

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning: Untangling the Evidence

Technology-enhanced personalised learning is not yet common in Germany, which is why we have tasked scientists with summarising the current status of international research on the matter. This study demonstrates the great potential of technology in implementing effective personalised learning. Nevertheless, it has not been assessed yet whether the practical implementation actually works: Even in countries such as the U.S., which lead the way in using techology in classroom settings, hardly any evaluation studies have been done to prove the effectiveness of technology-enhanced personalised learning. In the light of the above, the authors make recommendations for actions to be taken in Germany to make best use of the potential of technology in providing individual support and guidance to students