Program Overview

To speed postsecondary educators toward effective use of high-quality adaptive courseware, and ensure that public universities personalize learning for students in ways that promote completion while containing costs, APLU launched a 3-year grant program to accelerate adoption of high-quality adaptive courseware products at public universities. This program is being administered by the Personalized Learning Consortium and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Following a competitive RFP process, in July 2016 the PLC announced its plan to invest $515,000 each in eight member institutions that are transforming their education and business models to improve credentialing productivity and are executing institution-scale adaptive courseware implementations. The eight participating institutions include:

• Arizona State University
• Colorado State University
• Georgia State University
• Northern Arizona University
• Oregon State University
• Portland State University
• University of Louisville
• University of Mississippi

These eight institutions comprise a cohort that shares implementation best-practices across institutions through an online community, monthly calls and annual convenings. Institutions are also encouraged to share their experiences beyond the cohort to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of adaptive courseware implementations.

In order to ensure that grantees adopt high-quality products, participating institutions choose the adaptive technology providers and preferred courseware titles to be adopted from a list of suppliers meeting the highest quality standards as determined by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The most promising findings and best practices from the grant program will be scaled through APLU’s national network of over 200 public institutions and shared publicly to better meet the educational needs of students across the postsecondary landscape.