Our Work

The Personalized Learning Consortium engages member institutions, commercial technology providers, and industry and professional associations in cooperative projects to further the development and adoption of personalized learning for student success.Our current work focuses on the scaled use of adaptive courseware through two grant-funded initiatives: Accelerating the Adoption of Adaptive Courseware (AAAC), which started in 2016 and will run to 2020, and Adaptive Courseware for Early Success (ACES), which started in 2018 and will run to 2021. In addition to these two initiatives, PLC helps create resources related to personalized learning topics that are made available through our website and the websites of partner organizations.

Why Adaptive Courseware?

A great challenge confronting university educators, especially instructors teaching large 100- and 200-level general education courses, lies in understanding what individual students already know and what they need to learn, then modifying instruction to meet those diverse needs effectively and efficiently.  Adaptive courseware collects student data through assessment, analyzes that data and uses it to offer personalized learning paths to each student or reports and recommendations to instructors to help personalize the learning experience. Through adaptive courseware, instructors are able to collect, access and utilize the data they need to deliver quality learning experiences to individual students at scale.

To be effective, adaptive courseware must include dynamic and creative embedded assessments to scaffold and prove learner mastery of content in course- and program-specific contexts. Equally crucial is the role that instructors and pedagogical experts play in the design of instructional and assessment strategies for adaptive learning environments. The availability of adaptive courseware products that are usable, affordable and effective to instructors equipped to adopt new products and course strategies has the potential to improve outcomes for hundreds of thousands of postsecondary students. Because of the opportunity that adaptive courseware presents to transform high-enrollment course experiences through personalized learning, the PLC  has selected adaptive courseware as a focus area for its programmatic and grant-based activities.

The links below lead to more information on our two adaptive courseware initiatives and other resources we have developed. For additional information on our past work in integrated advising and student support, see the Personalized Learning Resources link.

Current Projects: 

• Accelerating Adoption of Adaptive Courseware
  In 2016, APLU launched a grant program to accelerate adoption of high-quality adaptive courseware products at public universities.  8 institutions participate in this program that seeks to scale adaptive courseware to 15% of general education enrollments by 2020.
   
• Adaptive Courseware for Early Success
  In 2018, the PLC was awarded funds to expand the work of the "Accelerating Adoption of Adaptive Courseware" grant. The new grant, "Adaptive Courseware for Early Success," centers on improving student success outcomes to eliminate equity gaps through the use of adaptive courseware in foundational courses.  PLC serves participating institutions through technical assistance, sharing the lessons learned from the AAAC grant with a broader group of institutions.
   
• Personalized Learning Resources
  PLC also leads the development of resources and experiences aimed to help higher education administrators, faculty, instructional designers and others learn about and improve their use of technology in support of student success.