APLU’s Personalized Learning Consortium Publishes Research on Implementing Adaptive Learning at Scale

APLU’s Personalized Learning Consortium (PLC) and its partners recently published five journal articles on implementing active learning and adaptive learning. The articles draw on lessons from five member universities (Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Portland State University, University of Central Florida, and University of Mississippi). The findings are published in a special issue for the Current Issues of eMerging eLearning.

The participating universities are reporting higher pass rates and more equitable outcomes for over 25 courses that have implemented a combination of active learning and adaptive courseware. The recently published articles discuss how and why higher education institutions have incorporated adaptive courseware and learning into high-enrollment general education courses. The papers also provide detailed examples of levels of success achieved. The Current Issues in eMerging eLearning can be accessed here.

Takeaways from the research:

• Leveraging learning analytics from adaptive courseware can help faculty and institutions personalize instruction for very different types of student populations;
• Course design matters and integration of adaptive courseware should be paired with other changes in the course, often referred to as active learning;
• For students at one university, adaptive courseware allowed them more flexibility for submitting work and practicing course concepts helping them change how they learned. As a result, they thought it was positive to use the adaptive courseware. Students from low-income and underrepresented groups found the benefits were even greater than cumulative group of students.