Adaptive Learning Courseware as a Tool to Build Foundational Content Mastery: Evidence from Principles of Microeconomics

Adaptive courseware has the potential to increase content mastery through assessment and personalized remediation. In this study, content mastery is determined by assessment items developed in alignment to learning outcomes using Bloom’s Taxonomy. This study tracks freshmen and sophomore students enrolled in the foundations course, Principles of Microeconomics at Colorado State University. The researcher finds that students who complete adaptive assignments show higher mastery on formative assessments

Testing the Effects of Adaptive Learning Courseware on Student Performance: An Experimental Approach

An increasing number of college and university courses are being offered in an online format. Even for courses offered face-to-face, instructors are increasingly turning toward use of online platforms to help with student learning, especially for courses with high enrollment. This study tests the efficacy of adaptive learning platforms in a sample of undergraduate students in a large urban university, using an experimental design that compares the learning outcomes of students in classrooms that used an adaptive learning tool to those who did not. The results indicate that better performing students, particularly female students, benefit the most from using adaptive learning tools

Adaptable Selectivity: A Case Study in Evaluating and Selecting Adaptive Learning Courseware at Georgia State University

In the summer of 2016, the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities (APLU) awarded Georgia State University with a $515,000 grant to adopt, implement, and scale adaptive learning courseware in undergraduate general education courses. Georgia State’s approach to the three-year grant is both data-driven and collaborative, focusing on the exploration and piloting of adaptive courseware prior to scaling out the technology across five high-impact courses. This article highlights the work conducted at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) during Year 1 of the grant. CETL’s Adaptive Learning Program Manager and Director of Learning Technology review the systematic and collaborative approach taken to evaluate and select adaptive courseware at Georgia State University

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning, Volume 5, Issue 1: Special Issue on Leveraging Adaptive Courseware

This special edition of Current Issues in Emerging eLearning comprises new empirical research focused on strategies for implementing and scaling personalized and adaptive courseware solutions. A special call for studies related to adaptive courseware implementation was announced broadly. The Personalized Learning Consortium (PLC) at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) was solicited for research originating from institutions who participated in a postsecondary success initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As evidenced in the research in this edition, high-enrollment foundation or gateway courses are of particular interest for pioneering initiatives regarding adaptive courses, given these courses have been identified as obstacles to degree completion. The research studies in this special edition share findings from five institutional implementations of adaptive courseware solutions and one additional study delves into motivations that drive faculty members to adopt adaptive learning technologies. The findings are particularly valuable for institutions currently implementing a digital courseware platform who may be stymied by barriers to adoption addressed in this research. Similarly, this special edition offers significant findings to institutions planning an implementation and seeking strategic advantage through access to peer-reviewed research

The Impact of Adaptive Learning in Principles of Microeconomics

Abstract The spread of Covid-19, which forced almost all learning to move to online in March, 2020, abruptly increased the number of undergraduates taking at least one online course by approximately 177% between the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2020 (Koksal, 2020; Carey, 2020; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Even without the Covid-19 disruption, online education has become increasing prevalent due to the decreasing allocation of resources to higher education and the pressure on college administrators to make a college education effective, affordable, and accessible for more students. Originally online instruction differed from in-class instruction only be the method of delivery of the material, viewing a lecture online versus being present in a live classroom lecture. Although there have been many studies on the effectiveness of traditional online instruction over the last several decades, there have been fewer studies on the efficacy of the relatively new adaptive learning courseware. This initial study found that adaptive learning had a consistently positive and statistically significant impact on all principle of microeconomics students in the study, regardless of aptitude, ethnicity, and gender. However, students with high aptitudes appeared to benefit more from adaptive learning than their peers

Foreword: Leveraging Adaptive Courseware and Adaptive Learning

This special edition ofCurrent Issues in Emerging eLearningcomprises new empirical research focused on strategies for implementing and scaling personalized and adaptive courseware solutions. A special call for studies related to adaptive courseware implementation was announced broadly. The Personalized Learning Consortium (PLC) at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) was solicited for research originating from institutions who participated in a postsecondary success initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As evidenced in the research in this edition, high-enrollment foundation or gateway courses are of particular interest for pioneering initiatives regarding adaptive courses, given these courses have been identified as obstacles to degree completion. The research studies in this special edition share findings from five institutional implementations of adaptive courseware solutions and one additional study delves into motivations that drive faculty members to adopt adaptive learning technologies. The findings are particularly valuable for institutions currently implementing a digital courseware platform who may be stymied by barriers to adoption addressed in this research. Similarly, this special edition offers significant findings to institutions planning an implementation and seeking strategic advantage through access to peer-reviewed research

Student Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Adaptive Courseware for Learning

Despite the increasing research on the effectiveness of adaptive learning courseware by vendors and academic institutions, there are few published, peer-reviewed studies on adaptive courseware that address the student experience and student perception of this teaching and learning tool. Over the course of two academic years, 2017/2018 and 2018/2019, researchers at the University of Mississippi conducted 16 course-based student focus groups and gathered data from 4 end-of-semester surveys to understand how students are experiencing adaptive courseware and whether or not they find it adds value to their education. Our study found that, although students generally find courseware to be helpful in their learning, they do not agree the courseware is adaptive, and they find the benefits of the courseware to be undermined by poor implementation and frequent overpricing

TOPR Turns 10! Celebrating 10 Years Of Curating UCF’S Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository

In this paper, the editors of the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) will share global insights derived from the last ten years of pedagogical entries. What technologies and techniques of online teaching and learning were “hot” a decade ago, and what is currently trending? What are the most visited entries? TOPR’s value in relation to the COVID-19 crisis will be explored, as many educators were forced to teach in remote and online learning environments for the first time. Finally, readers will learn about the process of submitting their own strategies to TOPR, along with an update on the peer-review process for submissions in Spring 2021

CIRT News - March 2019

This issue contains the following articles: Faculty Spotlight: Adopting High-Quality, Peer-Reviewed, and Openly Licensed Textbooks Digital Learning and Innovation: UNF Online Upcoming Events CIRT Open House Digital Thinking: Live Streaming Best Practices Online: Tips for Implementing Open Educational Resources Canvas News New in CIR

A Course Redesign Project: Adaptive Courseware in Biology

In the summer of 2019, a cooperative team of Biology faculty and a principal investigator worked to develop a solid set of aligned student learning outcomes across the sections of first semester (BIOL 1305) and second semester (BIOL 1306) of introductory Biology.  Additionally, the group worked on course objectives alignment within the scope and sequence of the courses, as well as aligned syllabi. A full course redesign was initiated over the summer, where the goal was to align student learning outcomes (SLOs), assessments, and develop a shared set of syllabi for six sections across two courses of introductory biology.  At UTEP, the overall goal was to integrate adaptive courseware technology tools, open education resources (OER) and active learning strategies within a course redesign in our Learning Management System (LMS), Blackboard, for a number of sections in Biology 1305 and Biology 1306 beginning in the spring of 2020. This is challenging, as much of adaptive courseware technology is not as strong in content as the Biology faculty would like for these classes, although it can help to substantially reduce the costs for students.  The information that follows defines the case study for integrating adaptive courseware within the course redesign process for a series of high enrollment introductory Biology course