Teaching & Learning Blog

More than 3.5 million nurses around the country are currently providing a variety of essential healthcare services. In doing so, they are spending more hours with patients than any other profession in the industry, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), which is why it’s essential for nurses to have a solid foundation of knowledge in the field and to develop a strong sense of confidence that can sustain them throughout their careers.

Nursing is the linchpin of the American healthcare system, but experts predict that the system could break. The Baby Boomer generation is aging and requiring more care; nursing programs are experiencing faculty shortages that restrict the number of students they can admit each year; and nurses are being pulled in so many different directions that they are burning out and leaving the profession at historic rates, according to a report from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN).

How can nurse educators provide a foundational learning experience that helps nurses thrive?

In addition to incorporating concept-based learning into the curriculum to prepare nursing students for challenging clinical environments, another important way to facilitate critical growth in the nursing profession is to support the role that student-teacher relationships play in promoting positive learning outcomes and strong retention rates.

Nurse educators play a vital role

Regardless of the level of difficulty or the subject matter being covered, the truly effective teachers are the ones who can connect with their students in meaningful ways. The student-teacher relationship is especially influential in nursing education programs, where the information is complex and mistakes can cost lives.

Nurse educator Tammy Vant Hul, Riverside City College, PhD, MSN, RN, ACNP, CNE, says that building a sense of trust between instructor and student is crucial. “I think helping students work through the idea that the only thing that they can\, put their money on is that their patients are going to change from the time they walk in there in the morning. The environment that they work in will change almost weekly.”

The student-teacher connection in nursing education is described as “a place of possibility” by Mary Gillespie, a professor of critical care nursing at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. “The qualities inherent in the essence of connection — knowing, trust, respect, and mutuality — create a transformative space in which students are affirmed, gain insight into their potential, and grow toward fulfilling personal and professional capacities,” she writes in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Other research has concluded that nurse educators who provide a supportive teaching context can dramatically alter a nursing student’s approach to learning, inspiring them to engage more deeply with the material and become active, enthusiastic learners. A positive learning environment has also been shown to bolster resilience in nursing students, a key factor in achieving academic success and professional longevity in the field.

Vant Hul and her colleagues, for example, don’t conduct “high stakes testing” because doing so can damage a student’s sense of psychological safety and interfere with the learning process. When one of Vant Hul’s students makes a mistake during a simulation exercise, she helps them learn from it by asking questions that encourage them to reflect on their performance, such as: What just happened? How could you have handled this situation better? and What will you do differently next time?

Cultivating a positive relationship while maintaining professional boundaries and holding students accountable for their learning is not a straightforward task. Gillespie emphasizes that nurse educators need to be trained in how to help students grow their own relational competencies, as well as how to keep the “educator-in-relationship” role in mind when assessing students.

The importance of promoting dignity

In healthcare, the concept of dignity — a human being’s intrinsic worth and fundamental right to be treated with respect — is often discussed in relation to the patient who is being cared for, not the nurse who is caring for that patient. However, when it comes to training and retaining nurses, it is the dignity of these essential healthcare providers that needs to be of paramount importance to educators.

“It is a goal in nursing education to promote students' dignity and facilitate this core value,” write Tone Stikholmen, Dagfinn Nåden, and Herdis Alvsvåg in a study published in Nursing Ethics. The study found a meaningful link between the student-teacher relationship and a nursing students’ experience with dignity. When an educator was affirming, empathetic, and accepting, students were more likely to have confidence in their abilities and to be more present in patient situations.

In the student interviews conducted by Stikholmen and his colleagues, the following recommendations for nurse educators emerged:

At Pearson, we’re always listening to faculty and students and, recently, we kept hearing one refrain over and over — classroom engagement was at an all-time low. Fortunately, we knew just what to do. In fact, we had a solution ready.

For years, Pearson’s Learning Catalytics interactive student response tool has been helping instructors and students connect in meaningful ways. As soon as we knew classroom engagement was lagging, we knew we needed to host a Learning Catalytics Summit to help more instructors learn how to use — and make the most of — this incredible tool.

On August 1, we hosted the first-ever Learning Catalytics Summit to great acclaim. Attendees participated in four different webinar sessions hosted by Learning Catalytics experts. Each session focused on a specific advantage of Learning Catalytics, but they all spoke to the ways the student response tool can help instructors see learning as it happens.

The overall message: Learning Catalytics is a powerful student response and assessment tool. As session-leader Aaron Warnock said, “Learning Catalytics — and I cannot exaggerate — revolutionized my classroom.” Brad Mehrtens concurred in his session, adding, “Learning Catalytics makes a huge difference in student engagement at any scale.”

How Does Learning Catalytics Work?

Designed to work on laptops and all common smart devices, Learning Catalytics gives instructors a way to connect directly to students and know when everyone is following a lesson and when some are falling behind. This real-time assessment allows instructors to adjust their teaching in-the-moment and address student confusion before it becomes a problem.

Learning Catalytics empowers instructors to:

• Engage students with 18 question types that include graphing, drawing, multiple choice selections, open-ended dialogues, and more
• Identify misconceptions and monitor responses to find out where students are struggling
• Facilitate peer-to-peer learning with automatic grouping of students so that every group has a member who understands the material

These features are available whether the class is in-person or online, making Learning Catalytics useful in every teaching environment. As Brad Mehrtens said about his experience using Learning Catalytics with even difficult-to-connect-with classrooms, “[The students] were there, they were engaged. [Learning Catalytics] works… It’s the only thing that works.”

What Did the Learning Catalytics Summit Cover?

The summit’s four unique sessions provided a wealth of information on how Learning Catalytics works and how instructors can use it in all kinds of classroom settings and situations. An hour-long each, the sessions included:

“Unleashing the Power of Learning Catalytics in a Hybrid Environment” with Aaron Warnock

Aaron Warnock’s session focused primarily on the way Learning Catalytics’ question-and-answer function helps instructors connect with students and students learn better in hybrid environments. Aaron showed audiences how students can answer questions by drawing graphs, clicking on different regions of an image, highlighting relevant information, evaluating complex problems, or simply filling in a multiple choice answer.

Aaron noted that the different question types give instructors a lot of flexibility in the ways they monitor student learning. Plus, the questions make it easier to get students to answer without them feeling uncomfortable, because everyone participates and no one feels put on the spot.

“When I saw Learning Catalytics for the first time, and the eighteen different question types that are available, I was instantly sold,” Aaron said. “It creates a fantastic, engaging learning environment for students.”

“Transforming Large-Classroom Activities with Learning Catalytics” with Brad Mehrtens

Being a professor who routinely teaches classes as large as 600 students, Brad Mehrtens understands the challenges of connecting with students. In his session, he spoke to how Learning Catalytics helps him keep students engaged in even the largest lecture halls.

After regularly watching class attendance dwindle — particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic — he started using Learning Catalytics. He immediately had a much better sense of how well his students were learning and, to his delight, attendance evened out.

“I was as deflated by the pandemic as anyone was, and Learning Catalytics has made me excited about teaching again,” Brad says. “And I don’t say that lightly. It has completely recharged my battery and made it fun to be back in the classroom”

“Connecting with Learning Catalytics for Success Throughout Your Course” with Pamela Sandstrom

A number of years ago, Pamela Sandstrom was using other types of student response tools — but that all changed. “Once I switched [to Learning Catalytics], I’ve never even thought about using any other instant response system because of how much [Learning Catalytics] can do,” she said in her summit session.

Centered on the ways Learning Catalytics can positively impact a course at multiple moments and in numerous ways, Pamela’s talk discussed how useful the real-time data on student learning is to her instruction.

“Learning Catalytics provides formative assessment,” she said. “But to me that means that I don’t have to wait till the test, or even till the end of the lecture — [I can see] how they’re doing in the class real time”

“The Tips and Tricks You Need to Know About Learning Catalytics” with Terry Austin

During his session, Terry Austin shared his screen to demonstrate exactly how Learning Catalytics works and all the ways he can customize it for the needs of a specific class. As an instructor who has been using Learning Catalytics for a decade, he had a lot of great tips and tricks, ranging from linking Learning Catalytics to a Pearson Mastering class to using it to improve seat maps to incorporating it into classroom presentations.

“Learning Catalytics is clever,” Terry said, noting how much the tool is capable of doing. As attendees to his session and the summit as a whole learned, he was right. Learning Catalytics can empower instructors to assess student learning in-the-moment, improve student engagement, and make classroom time much more successful.

As Terry noted, there’s a good reason he’s been using Learning Catalytics for a decade.

Justin Hoshaw, associate professor of biology at Waubonsee Community College, knows that an educator must always search for more effective ways to support their students’ learning, which is why he has used Pearson's cutting-edge online learning platforms and eTextbooks in his classes for years.

Recently, Justin and a colleague conducted an extensive evaluation of their microbiology course, which included the consideration of new options for the course’s primary textbook. During their search, they reviewed Microbiology: Basic and Clinical Principles by Lourdes P. Norman-McKay. Both were so impressed with the eTextbook that they were the first educators in the country to adopt it — even before it was officially published.   

eTextbook features that support student learning

eTextbooks offer an array of unique features to support students’ learning. 

1. highlight and take notes
   
2. search for a specific term or idea
3. make flashcards based on key concepts 
4. listen to the audio version* 

The benefits of making the switch to eTextbooks

Previously, Justin encouraged his students to buy the print version of his course’s textbook, but he changed his mind after witnessing the many advantages of eTextbooks for students and educators.

For students, the ability to highlight and take notes in the eTextbook can help with overall comprehension. And when it’s time to prepare for assessments, they can use their annotations (as well as the learning objectives that accompany each section) to focus their study efforts and maximize their efficiency. As Justin says, “There are some students that are going to go back and reread the whole chapter when studying for an exam. No, let’s go back and look at those highlights. Look at the comments you added into the text. It will save you time. It will help you focus on those important concepts that you’ve already highlighted and already commented on. You are going to be more successful reflecting on that information.”

The Pearson+ mobile app that offers both the eTextbook and audiobook options is especially beneficial for busy students. The convenience and flexibility of accessing their course materials on the go helps them keep up with their assignments. “There is a benefit to being able to go through and read the text, but then having the audio to listen to as they are reading, I think that really helps reinforce the information for the students. It helps keep them on track,” says Justin.

As an educator, Justin also finds many of the features of eTextbooks and the Mastering online learning platform helpful, particularly the instructor dashboard. The analytics provided within Mastering Microbiology help him understand how his students are interacting with the eTextbook. “That was something that caused me to take a second look at having students use the eTextbook, the ability for the faculty member to go in and identify how long students have spent reading, how many comments they’ve made, how many highlights they’ve made,” he says. This is valuable information that Justin can use to support students who are struggling or falling behind in the course.

The feature Justin found most impressive about Norman-McKay's eTextbook in particular was the way the content guided students through the learning process. "What clinched the deal was the study recommendations and coaching throughout the text,” he says. “I had never seen so many tips for students to keep in mind that would help them understand the material. It was as if the instruction was already embedded into the text and coaching them along.”  

Justin’s students agree that the layout of the content and the tone of the writing made them feel more engaged with the information. “They felt like they had a tutor right there with them while they were reading the text, Justin remarks.

Pearson partners with innovative authors to create enriching experiences that meet learners where they are and inspire them to love learning. Justin’s experiences with Pearson eTextbooks and online learning platforms has convinced him that he made the right choice to switch from print to digital.

*Audiobook available in most titles

During his more than two decades of teaching, Shawn Davis has spent years searching for the most comprehensive online learning solution for higher education. Now, he believes he’s found it.

With Revel, Shawn is able to leverage high-quality tools and resources that support his teaching practices as well as his students’ learning processes.

Support for educators

Shawn is currently using Revel in his Fundamentals of Psychology course at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology (TCSPP). Though he has worked with a variety of online learning platforms over the years — including WebCT, Canvas, and Connect — Revel stood out to him from day one. “It’s a lot smoother platform than I gave it credit for,” he says. “Revel is intuitive to the point where I could really just step right in as an instructor.”

The combination of a user-friendly interface and Pearson’s comprehensive instructor support materials helped Shawn dive into Revel immediately. This head-start was especially beneficial when the template he was supposed to use for his course suddenly disappeared — on the night before the first day of classes — forcing him to rebuild his entire course from scratch in just a few hours.

Shawn says that knowing the Pearson support team was available to help him, even in the middle of the night, gave him the confidence to take on this considerable challenge. Though it’s not an experience he wishes to repeat, he was able to get his course up and running in time for his first class.

Support for students

One of the most significant obstacles of teaching an online course is keeping students focused and interested. As Shawn has discovered, Revel can help educators address this issue by providing relevant materials and targeted support for students.

With Revel, instructors can decide how granular they want to go in their course customization. They can “set it and forget it,” or pick and choose the content they want to include. “There are so many parts and pieces with Revel that it gives students the impression that I am extremely engaged and hands-on with them,” Shawn says.

Revel’s video quizzes feature is one example of a customizable content option that encourages student engagement. The quizzes give students a brief review of key concepts and then have them apply those concepts to novel problems. Based on the results of these quizzes, Revel helps students identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement.

Instructors can see students’ video quiz results on the Educator’s Dashboard and then adjust their teaching practices accordingly. “It is a really fast indicator of who is struggling,” says Shawn, “and I have used it to be able to reach out to those students to try to bring them back into the fold.”

Revel rises to the top

By efficiently delivering the tools, data, and content that support Shawn and his students, Revel has made the online teaching and learning experience more engaging and effective.

Read more about Shawn's experience with Revel in the full spotlight.

What can Revel do for you and your students?

Learn more about Revel

The landscape of higher education has changed dramatically over the past few years – a global pandemic, the push for greater equity and inclusion in education, and the advent of generative AI have all played a role in altering how, when, and where people learn. Online and hybrid degree programs have become more mainstream, enabling a larger population of people to gain access to learning opportunities.  

The need for students’ perspectives to be considered by decision-makers in higher education has never been more urgent. This need is what inspired Pearson to conduct our Student Success Survey, a review of college and university students that gives voice to their experiences and paves the way for meaningful improvement in the design and development of courses and tools in higher education. 

The challenges: time management and focus 

The top two issues facing the group of students surveyed were: time management and staying focused. 

Time management issues 

The survey responses show that students need more support when balancing their coursework with their other obligations. As one student from Merced College wrote, “I am constantly updating my time management system but none of it seems to work.”  

Time management is a significant sticking point, not because students do not know how to manage their time, but because their lives have become so busy that the usual methods of keeping track of their to-dos are insufficient.  

Many students must juggle full-time work and family responsibilities in addition to their studies. One respondent, a mom of three kids studying at the Delta College of San Joaquin, wrote, “Between classes, assignments, and activities, it can be difficult to find enough time in the day to get everything done. I try my best to prioritize my tasks and create a schedule, but sometimes unexpected events can throw me off track.” 

Once a student gets knocked off track, it can be extremely difficult to help them get back on, especially at the higher education level.  

Trouble focusing 

Challenges with maintaining focus while reading and studying was the other primary problem for the students who participated in the survey. Nearly 40% of students reported trouble focusing as a significant obstacle to their learning. 

Another Merced Community College student cites the pandemic as the turning point for their ability to focus on schoolwork. “I feel that after the pandemic I haven't been able to focus on anything.” 

That student is not alone in feeling as though the COVID-19 pandemic has had an enduring negative impact on their ability to learn, even though many aspects of daily life have returned to a pre-pandemic state of functioning. A recent study published in Psychiatry Research found a link between the increased levels of stress and fear experienced by many college students during the pandemic and ongoing issues with focus and attention. 

Pearson’s solution: Make students’ learning more efficient and engaging  

The best way to learn how a student wants to learn is to hear it directly from them. Listening to student voices is essential, especially now, which is why we continue to connect with students directly, through focus groups, surveys, etc.  

The results of the new Student Success Survey made it obvious that we are on the right track when it comes to understanding the two most significant issues for students: 

• Time management
• Maintaining focus and engagement 

We also found that the existing resources provided by Pearson have proven useful in addressing these areas of concern.  

At Pearson, we are committed to helping students improve their life through learning and provide the instructors with the tools to help them be successful. We are devoted to creating effective, engaging solutions that create opportunities for students at every stage of the learning journey. By combining trusted author content with digital tools and a flexible platform, we personalize the learning experience and improve results for each student. 

In 2022, we introduced the Pearson Excellence in Higher Ed awards to recognize faculty who demonstrate the essence of what it means to be an educator today. Over 200 faculty across the country were nominated by their peers and students for recognition in five categories. This year’s winners embody the values of Pearson and their outstanding achievements. The heartfelt submission stories illustrate not only their foundational values but how they translate that passion for all students.   

“The Pearson Excellence in Higher Ed awards are peer nominated awards that represent and identify passionate and outstanding educators who have made significant impact on students and others.  It has been a delight reading the hundreds of heartwarming nominations that we have received, and we’re honored to announce this year’s winners” said Brad Parkins, Pearson Director of Marketing, Brand and Thought Leadership. 

Without further ado, it is with immense honor that we announce the winners for the inaugural 2022 Pearson Excellence in Higher Ed awards!  

• Outstanding Integration of DE&I: Emily Simpson, Midwestern University   - “In addition to fostering a welcoming environment, Dr. Simpson is dedicated to preparing students to work with diverse populations and advocate for DE&I within their future workplaces.” – A. Kiraly-Alvarez
• Outstanding Student Engagement: Professor Rachel Bailey-Wood, University of Missouri - “Professor Bailey’s instruction uniquely centers her students’ humanity while engaging them in high levels of applicable learning.” – A. Thompson 
• Outstanding Teaching Throughout the Pandemic: Dr. Elizabeth Dulemba, Winthrop University  - "Her energies were not daunted during the pandemic. She created new course offerings... and created a new Illustration Minor.” – E. Koehler
• Outstanding Use of Courseware Technology: Christine Minor, Clemson University  - “Dr. Minor stays at the forefront of what is available in educational technology and often acts as a mentor in our department for others that are using technology in their classrooms.” – Dr. DeWalt 
• Pearson Digital Platforms: Yoelvis Rodriguez, Miami Dade College  - “Yoelvis is an influencer…. He is a leader among the adjuncts, and they respect his advice and experience. In addition, college wide, Yoelvis chairs an EAP technology committee.” – C. Schuemann

In higher education, students have needs and aspirations based on the diversity of their lived experiences, and they bring their rich social and cultural backgrounds with them when they learn. To serve all students, educators need to widen their teaching methodologies and perspectives to serve varied characteristics and preferences¹. They also need to consider factors such as age, learning styles, strengths, improvement areas, and more to develop inclusive and active learning strategies in their classrooms. 

The ‘7 Pillars of Inclusivity’ can help educators incorporate inclusive practices that value diversity and embed equity in the classroom.  

What Are the 7 Pillars of Inclusivity?

To create an inclusive classroom, educators must keep their students at the center of learning and provide an environment that enriches their learning outcomes.² Educators can follow seven strategies to welcome all students into an inclusive classroom experience.

1. Access

An accessible learning environment is one where students don’t experience any barriers to education. It’s vital that educators ensure accessibility for students with special needs, learning disabilities, and neurodivergence, and for students who come from diverse language, economic, and cultural backgrounds. If implemented well, a focus on equitable access will set up all students for successful learning outcomes.

Educators can create an accessible and accepting classroom by incorporating the following practices

• Design an inclusive and high-quality curriculum targeted towards positive learning outcomes.
• Provide accessible educational materials and software that meet the learning needs of students with physical and/or cognitive challenges so as to help them learn their best and feel a sense of belonging.
• Make sure learning materials are representative of and relevant to all students so that those whose first language isn’t English or who come from under-resourced communities will see themselves in what they’re learning and feel like they belong.
• Support all students by forming collaborative groups for projects when possible.
• Build relationships with students so you understand them and learn how to differentiate instruction to meet their learning needs whenever possible.
• Adopt active learning strategies that motivate students to take initiative.³ A healthy mix of reflective, movement, or discussion-based lessons and projects can be targeted toward achieving behavioral and cognitive objectives.
• Providing scholarships for deserving students. 
• Being more approachable and responsive to students’ queries.

2. Mindset

Making the classroom inclusive requires a growth mindset, which encourages an openness to understanding the diversity of students’ lived experiences. Implicit biases can pollute a growth mindset and cause educators to lower their expectations of students who require specific support to be successful.

According to the American Psychological Association, an implicit bias is a negative attitude toward a specific group of people of which one is not consciously aware.⁴ Implicit biases can include prejudices toward learners who come from low income homes, have unique cultural backgrounds, or are differently abled learners.

Educators can maintain a growth mindset by identifying their implicit biases, resolving them, and focusing on setting high expectations for all students. 

Identifying implicit biases

Practicing self-reflective techniques or collecting responses/feedback from students and colleagues can be great ways for educators to identify their implicit biases.⁵

• Self-reflection and assessment involves focusing on teaching and assessing methodologies and recognizing how those are influenced by underlying social, economic, or cultural prejudices. Educators can keep a record of their teaching methodologies, experiences, and growth through personal journals and go back to see if they have changed past behaviors or not.
• Seeking responses through observation sheets filled out by students or peer reviews from trusting colleagues can provide educators with honest opinions about their behavior toward inclusion, diversity, and equity in the classroom. 

Both these techniques can help educators identify areas of their teaching, curriculum, coursework, and assessing styles that are not inclusive or engaging and implement improvements.

Creating a positive and collaborative campus culture 

A positive attitude⁶ that’s grounded in a growth mindset positions educators to express the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their words, actions, and classroom practices. Students who feel seen, heard, and welcome are more likely to succeed in class.

On a larger scale, institutions can support diversity by promoting a positive and collaborative campus culture with events that create opportunities for all students to connect and explore differences and commonalities with each other. Educators should encourage students to attend these events and be a part of the inclusive learning community. 

3. Student Choice

Choosing to express themselves can help students be more involved in the learning process. Educators can give students a chance to voice their opinions through in-person conversations  where they share feedback about the coursework, projects, and teaching style. By being more approachable and attentive, educators can better understand their students’ challenges and devise curriculums or solutions that enable strong performance and active learning. 

4. Partnerships

Educators can promote partnerships in the classroom and school to instill inclusive learning structures and pedagogies. These can include:

• Collaborative initiatives or group projects where students are not grouped per their perceived ability levels.⁷ This encourages students to engage with each other, exchange thoughts and ideas, value group members’ diverse perspectives, and work to achieve common goals instead of feeling left out or experiencing the stigma of being in a low-performing group.⁸
• Guest speaker events where the institution/educator expands classroom or campus diversity by inviting guest speakers to share stories that are new and different. These stories can inspire students to enlarge their worldview.
• Collaborations with other educators to provide a more enriched learning environment. 

5. Explicit Communication

At the start of a course, educators can establish rules related to their coursework and class culture to set expectations for performance and collaborative behavior. They can encourage healthy communication practices by first being available to speak to all students and then organizing events or collaborative projects to ensure students learn to listen to and understand each other. 

Engaging with students through in-person or email conversations can help monitor their academic development and struggles. Educators can connect with students to discuss their progress or performance and highlight achievements and areas of improvement.

6. Policy

Higher education institutions can advance inclusivity, diversity, and equity by establishing policies focused on supporting students based on their specific needs. For example, while affordability is important to all students, it is especially important to those without personal or family wealth. A policy of providing grants and scholarships to students with real financial need can be the difference between those students being able to enroll and learn and them not being able engage in higher education at all. A culture of equity depends on policies that consider real-world needs and ensure that inequitable barriers don’t prevent students from being part of the community.

7.Opportunities

Higher education institutions and educators need to ensure that all students have an opportunity to access and complete their education. Diverse classrooms adopt strategies that motivate, support, and enhance students’ strengths and academic performance. 

Educators can support their students’ talents and potential by considering the various needs of their diverse student body and designing assessments and grading systems that are inclusive of and accessible by everyone. This can give all students the opportunity to succeed in their education.

In an inclusive higher education environment, educators model a positive growth mindset and provide opportunities for students to collaborate with and learn from one another. This is the key for supporting the success of all students, no matter their lived experiences. 

References

1. Diane Casale-Giannola and Linda Schwartz Green, 41 Active Learning Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom Grades 6–12 (USA: Corwin, 2012), 4.
2. Diane Casale-Giannola and Linda Schwartz Green, 41 Active Learning Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom Grades 6–12 (USA: Corwin, 2012), 6.
3. Diane Casale-Giannola and Linda Schwartz Green, 41 Active Learning Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom Grades 6–12 (USA: Corwin, 2012), 6.
4. “Inclusive Teaching Strategies”, Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, accessed May 12, 2023, https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/InclusiveTeachingStrategies.
5. “Implicit Bias”, American Psychology Association, accessed May 12, 2023, https://www.apa.org/topics/implicit-bias.
6. Tim Loreman, “Seven pillars of support for inclusive education: Moving from “Why?” to “How?”. International Journal of Whole Schooling Vol. 3, No. 2, (2007): 24.
7. Tim Loreman, “Seven pillars of support for inclusive education: Moving from “Why?” to “How?”. International Journal of Whole Schooling Vol. 3, No. 2, (2007): 29.
8. Tim Loreman, “Seven pillars of support for inclusive education: Moving from “Why?” to “How?”. International Journal of Whole Schooling Vol. 3, No. 2, (2007): 29.

ChatGPT is game-changing technology. As a large language model tool designed to respond to prompts based on a wealth of information it already possesses, the program has taken artificial intelligence (AI) to a new level. With just a simple request, ChatGPT can write essays, poems, computer code, and more. While some of those working in higher education are concerned about ChatGPT, many see great potential in AI technology.

Recently, Pearson hosted a well-attended AI webinar featuring a panel of education experts and innovators. Part of the conversation centered on helping educators better understand what ChatGPT offers. But the overall focus of the event was to provide perspectives and glean insights on what emergent AI technology means for educators now and in the near future.

The panelists began by discussing how ChatGPT is changing education. “This is historical,” said panelist Erran Carmel of the American University’s Kogod School of Business. “This will change everything.” Carmel and the other panelists went on to provide plenty of insight on the ways faculty can best embrace AI technology and benefit from it.

ChatGPT Concerns & Alleviations

Among those in higher education, the top three concerns surrounding ChatGPT and other generative AI include:

• Will it be harder to engage students in critical thinking and learning?
• Will cheating be more common and more difficult to detect?
• Will students leave school unprepared to contribute to the world?

While the panelists for Pearson’s webinar acknowledge the potential downsides of ChatGPT, they also recognize the many opportunities. And they have a lot of good advice on how to approach ChatGPT and related AI technologies going forward. This advice includes:

1. Adapt a growth mindset

In a recent Pearson survey, fewer than 15% of educators are ready to embrace ChatGPT. But the webinar experts agree that reticence is not the best approach. Instead, the experts recommend that educators familiarize themselves with AI technology and focus on the ways it can benefit teaching methods and student learning. Randy Boyle of Weber State University drove home the importance of embracing the technology when he said, “The organizations that are saying ‘how can we use ChatGPT to enhance our education’ are going to win.”

2. Bring AI into the classroom

“Innovative faculty find innovative ways to use disruptive technology.” 

Panelist Darcy Hardy of Anthology Education and Research Center made this point early in the discussion and the other experts agreed. Instead of banning ChatGPT and similar AI technology, the panelists advocate for teaching it. They suggest designing assignments that teach students how to use AI tools like ChatGPT and how to differentiate between generative AI and human-created works. Doing so can help students understand the applications and limitations of AI. Even simple projects where students critique work done by AI can help them see where AI provides value versus where humans provide value. Such lessons can help students prepare for a future with AI while also helping educators learn more about the ways students use and interact with the technology.

3. Discuss the impact of AI on the future  

As generative AI technology continues to improve, it will become capable of doing more tasks at a more complex level. However, this is not the same as replacing human critical thinking and expertise. Both faculty and students can learn how to incorporate AI to be more effective at their respective teaching and learning.

4. Normalize citing AI

When used properly, ChatGPT can be a student’s co-pilot. It can help them brainstorm, improve phrasing, and learn new concepts. The webinar’s experts recommend educators determine how they would like to incorporate ChatGPT into their classroom and set guidelines for students to follow. Panelist Anna Mills of City College of San Francisco said she teaches critical AI literacy and believes in “setting a norm of transparency and labeling of AI text.” She recommends students clearly label any portion of an assignment that was generated with ChatGPT or another AI tool—just like they would cite other sources.

5. Reinforce the value of writing

Yes, ChatGPT can write an essay. But how does that improve learner outcomes? The panelists agree that writing encourages critical thinking and students need to engage in it. To ensure they do, educators should reinforce the value of writing and set boundaries to ensure the development of critical thinking.

6. Continue to follow core teaching methodologies 

Just because technology is evolving doesn’t mean the foundational best practices of teaching have changed. Building a rapport with students, assigning drafts and edits, and being active in student learning can help students understand the value of education and use ChatGPT as a tool rather than a substitute for learning.

7. Modify the curriculum

Cheating has been an issue in education for a long time. And, every time technology has changed, new methods of cheating have arisen. In other words, “innovations” in cheating is not a new problem. Educators can respond to ChatGPT in the same way they have responded to other new technologies over the years: they can adjust the curriculum to help prevent the new methods of cheating and ensure students are absorbing the material. “The academic integrity issues are important,” said panelist Erran Carmel, “but we should focus on learning… Let’s not get distracted by [the cheating aspect].” 

What is the expert consensus on the future of ChatGPT in higher education? 

The panelists who participated in the webinar all agree that we are in a historic moment of change—and the potential for positive change is high. To make the most of the moment, institutions of higher education should embrace ChatGPT and learn how to make use of it.

“From a global perspective on education, I could not be more excited,” said Darcy Hardy. The statement echoed the sentiments of all the panelists. There are always challenges when it comes to new technology but, with the right approach, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can change education for the better.

As a nurse, your work entails being compassionate, ready, and strong in one of the most stressful environments. The overwhelming nature, unpredictability, and volume of your work can impact your physical and mental well-being in ways you may not realize but nevertheless feel. To avoid burnout, you have to take care of yourself while taking care of your patients.

How burnout can affect your life

Research findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicate that 31.5% of nurses who left their job reported burnout as a contributing reason.¹

Your well-being can be at stake if the quality and quantity of the work you’re doing surpasses the amount you can take. External stressors often lead to internal distress. Dealing with—or the inability to deal with—a high frequency of uncontrollable stressors could lead to physical weakness, depression, inadequate nutrition, and stress in your personal life.

What are the causes of burnout?

• Working extra hours to cover staffing issues
• Long shifts
• Lacking helpful supervision
• Not getting along with colleagues
• A high volume of patients
• Difficult patients
• Performance metrics that measure numbers and patient evaluations

The warning signs of burnout include:

• Lack of empathy and expressing indifference toward patients, colleagues, family, and friends
• Work-related exhaustion that takes a physical and mental toll
• Disinterest in work
• Feeling cynical
• Feeling depressed
• Social disconnection

If you are beginning to experience or already experience some or all of these signs, then you need to take a step to prioritize yourself.

Why you should prioritize yourself

The American Nurses Association Health Risk appraisal revealed that 68% of nurses place their patients' health, safety, and wellness before their own.²

Showing signs of weakness or withdrawing from work shouldn’t be stigmatizing. You are human and if you neglect signs of physical, psychological, and emotional weakness, you put yourself and your patients at a greater risk. Incorporating self-care practices into your routine can improve your health, decrease stress, make your personal and professional life happier, and put you in a better position to care for others.

Prioritize yourself with self-care

Our mission is simple: to help people make progress in their lives through learning. Because wherever learning flourishes, so do people. We'll only be successful when our educational materials are accessible to all users, and we’ve long been committed to providing access to learners with disabilities. That commitment is woven into the fabric of our learning materials, development processes, innovation efforts, employee culture, and partnerships.

We’re proud to have been recognized as a Benetech Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) publisher. The first third-party EPUB certification program to verify eBook accessibility. (Learn more about this achievement, and our new partnership with Benetech.)

Accessibility in MyLab and Mastering  

Pearson’s Faculty Advisors recently led best practice webinars for our two leading learning platforms, exploring accessibility features designed to help more learners succeed. (We invite you to watch the recorded webinars: MyLab or Mastering.)  

There is so much breadth and depth to what Pearson can do to help you and your students achieve the best learning outcomes.  Consider the following features and benefits that eTextbooks offer. And learn why a growing audience of instructors and students are taking advantage of our remarkable Pearson+ subscription capabilities. In fact, nearly 5 million subscribers have embraced the Pearson+ subscription platform. 

To begin, we will focus on eTextbooks. They are more popular than ever. Don’t just take our word for it. A great deal of research over the past five years shows that well-designed digital content can be understood as effectively as print and offers added benefits for students.*  

Remember, not all of your students are fully acquainted with all the capabilities of eTextbooks. Take the time at the beginning of your next course to be sure you communicate all the features and benefits of any new eTextbook, as well as Pearson+. 

Affordability  

In many cases digital eTextbooks are up to 80% cheaper than traditional printed textbooks. With our Pearson+ platform, students can subscribe to their course etextbooks at one low monthly rate or pay for the semester upfront. At the end of their subscription term, students have the flexibility to cancel, renew, or change titles to accommodate their learning needs. Pearson offers a range of features that appeal to a variety of learning styles. The user experience is elegant and intuitive.  Naturally that means the navigation makes it easy for students to make their way through the content. Many of our etextbook titles have embedded audio and video to engage students and help them understand difficult concepts in the course.  Full audiobooks are available for most titles which can help with comprehension, retention, and gives students the option to listen on the go. 

In addition, no one should underestimate the value of adjusting the speed of any audio. Certain students may choose a slower speed, but many prefer to accelerate the audio for more efficiency. In addition, a student listening may strengthen comprehension further and even activate the highlighting of the text in sync with the audio. 

Interactive features like charts and diagrams make it easier for students who may prefer to explore and analyze such engaging visuals. 

Interactivity strengthens how students study 

Markup and additional interactive features make it easier for studying than ever before. They can customize the display of content. And students are happy to know that once they return to any content, the eTextbook remembers where they left off and the learner can dive right back in. 

Additional benefits for studying include:  

• Notetaking  
• Pre-built flashcards** 
• Create your own flashcards  
• Highlighting  
• Bookmarking 
• Adjusting the point size of the text 

And the robust enhanced search engine even offers an excellent sub-menu referencing groupings of relevant videos, key terms and interactive media. In fact, Pearson+ is exploring a possible new etextbook feature regarding the way students learn, from an individual experience to a social one. Students can see who else is studying, start discussions and post links and videos. The social experience within the eTextbook is global, giving all users the ability to engage. The experience is not limited to students in a certain class at a specific university.  

Encourage your students to learn in the way they learn best.  

Content Mastery 

A study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that when students take courses that engage digitally and in-person, content mastery can occur twice as quickly, and pass rates for at-risk students can increase by 33%. 

Pearson+. Anywhere, anytime 

The Pearson+ subscription platform is the ideal way students can access eTextbooks. Among other compelling features, with Pearson+ they can consolidate all their eTextbooks, videos, audio, study tools, and supportive content all in one place. Naturally, this allows your students to work more efficiently.  

There’s an app for this 

With the Pearson+ mobile app, students can pick up at any point where they left off and learn on the go. Learners can easily read offline right in our app. So they can have more freedom to make the most of their day. Here are some of the main reasons the platform and the app are so appealing. 

Once selected, they have immediate access to the content. Students can learn on the go (with online and offline access). They can learn with their eTextbooks wherever life takes them. Pearson+ offers students instant access to their eTextbooks, videos and study tools, all in one place. With easy access through a subscription or their MyLab® or Mastering® course, our intuitive interface, enhanced search, highlights, notes, and audiobooks allow them to choose how they learn best. 

Meet your students where they are 

So why not meet students where they are, figuratively and literally. Everyone knows they are often on the run. The content is optimized for a learner’s phone or another mobile device. It’s a no-brainer for today’s tech-savvy generation. Your students are certainly accustomed to processing information from smart phones and other mobile devices.   

We are also mindful of working learners. The convenience of Pearson+ gives them the flexibility to learn wherever and whenever best suits their needs and their busy work schedule. Any student on the go can listen to an eTextbook while cooking, cleaning, driving or while tackling whatever task happens to be in front of them.  

Lastly, be sure to take full advantage of our grade-technology too. It’s a familiar feature for your class and a time-saver for you. So you can focus on additional priorities. 

Go ahead. Be the best instructor you can be. Learn more about eTextbooks and Pearson+ today. 

*Webinar: https://www.pearson.com/us/about/news-events/events/2021/12/digital-reading-in-the-modern-world.html

** Available in most titles

For instructors and students alike, the path to success has become far more challenging. Students are arriving with different life and learning priorities, and varying levels of preparation. Everyone’s working harder, in the face of greater obstacles and deeper uncertainty. Instructors and students both need more effective support, in an era where resources are scarce. Courseware has always been a key resource, but today it needs to deliver more than ever. This makes your courseware decisions even more crucial. 

Great courseware doesn’t just happen: everything about it is intentional. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how we're delivering on three of Pearson’s core priorities for building courseware that helps instructors and learners thrive – outcomes, equity, and accessibility.  

Achieve the outcomes that matter

The most important outcomes are those that learners and instructors want, to help them realize the lives they imagine. Our outcome-based design processes help us understand and identify those upfront, as a “north star” to keep all of us aligned and on track. 

When we say “all of us,” we’re talking about a wide array of world-class, cross-disciplinary experts all working together, including: 

• Learning scientists who ensure our products reflect the latest, best evidence on what helps students learn, helps instructors teach, helps people effectively use technology, and helps promote career progress 
• User experience and content professionals who build and evolve engaging and personalized digital learning platforms, maximize relevance, and present material in powerfully compelling ways
• Assessment experts who embed opportunities for continual student progress assessment, and identify opportunities to improve our products
• 6,000+ trusted authors who bring their unique voices and cutting-edge knowledge -- so students never forget they’re learning from other remarkable human beings.

All this expertise translates into real effectiveness and strong outcomes. Take, for example, the experience of The University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), which serves 305,000 online students worldwide, many non-traditional or not fully prepared for college-level work.

Responding to a goal of reducing developmental prerequisites in college-level math and statistics, UMGC faculty assessed Pearson’s MyLab^® and an OER alternative through a 2.5-year pilot encompassing 12 instructors and 6,500 students. Based on the pilot’s remarkable results, UMGC has rolled out MyLab widely. That’s translated into dramatic improvements: from 60% to 80% student success in statistics and from 50% to 80% in algebra compared with OER.

Faculty evaluations have improved, too. Freed from grading, instructors had more time to guide individual students, and they also had richer data to tailor courses around their needs. 

UMGC’s experience is just one example of how Pearson’s outcome-based design is rooted in superior learning science is helping real learners. Outcomes like these thrill us – they’re why we do what we do. 

Extend great learning to everyone

At Pearson, the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion” aren’t cliches or trendy buzzwords. They’re a way of life deeply grounded in beliefs we’ve held for generations: Every individual can benefit from learning, and learning is a powerful force for positive change. Everyone should be welcomed into learning. Everyone should have a fair opportunity to learn, and learning should work for all students.

What matters more than our beliefs is what we do about them. We’ve built, and we enforce, comprehensive policies for making sure we authentically, inclusively, and respectfully represent people of all kinds. We are committed to minimizing bias. Our content celebrates diverse identities and lived experiences (see some complimentary examples here). We draw on many best practices and frameworks to provide high-quality inclusive content. We offer practical ways to report and dialogue about potential bias in our products.We do all of this so that our products are more inclusive, more relevant, and more accurate. Our DE&I approach to content development results in better products that center learners and increase student engagement.

Finally, we understand that effectively embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion in our work is a journey. We honor and promote DE&I internally, to ensure that our offerings are created by teams who reflect those we serve. We’re proud to have earned the Human Rights Campaign’s “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality” award, inclusion in Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index, and a top grade in the Disability Equality Index, the most comprehensive benchmark for disability inclusion.

By doing all this, we’re serving learners’ demands. Our 2021 Global Learner Survey found that 80% of learners were trying to educate themselves about issues related to social justice, diversity or gender equality, rising to 84% among millennials and 85% among Gen Z.

Ensure accessibility to meet everyone’s potential

For too long, people were excluded from full access to education based on disabilities that were irrelevant to their potential. We’re determined to overcome that, one individual at a time. Our commitment is woven into our learning materials, development processes, innovation efforts, employee culture, and partnerships.

More specifically: We follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 guidelines and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act for products copyrighted 2022 or later. We’ve established comprehensive accessibility standards for creating products that are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. We’ve built a roadmap for addressing accessibility issues in our existing MyLab and Mastering courses, and we’re doing extensive audits to remove barriers elsewhere. Our teams participate in rigorous, ongoing accessibility training. As of this writing, we offer nearly 900 accessible eTextbooks, and we’re working with T-Base Communications to accelerate delivery of top-selling Pearson titles in braille and reflowed large print.

Finally, to make sure we truly understand what learners need, we work closely on an ongoing basis with key members of the disability and advocacy community, and with organizations such as W3C, DIAGRAM Center, DAISY Consortium, Benetech, and the National Federation of the Blind.

Get what your learners deserve

Delivering on these commitments to outcomes, equity, and accessibility requires extensive resources, skills, and commitment. Not all of the world’s courseware reflects these values. But we think today’s learners should expect no less – and neither should you.

Explore new ways to help your students succeed.

The big challenge

The University of Maryland Global Campus made a major decision several years ago. Instead of investing in curriculum from various publishers, the school opted to try Open Education Resources or OER back in 2014. It was a way to ease the financial burden for students.  

Years later in 2018 the school, which today has a worldwide enrollment of 305,000, reduced and in some cases eliminated developmental math as a pre-requisite. It proved to be a disaster. Unfortunately, OER didn’t provide nearly enough critical support for students who were ill-prepared for college level courses.

A perfect fit for success! 

Given the nature of the challenge, UMGC Math and Statistics Program Director John Beyers partnered with Tiffany DePriter, Statistics Coordinator/Instructor, to explore possible solutions. They decided to use an adaptive resource and elected to pilot Pearson’s MyLab and compare it to ALEKS from McGraw Hill. After extensive testing and evaluations, MyLab was selected primarily because of its continuous assessment approach to support each student’s individual pace along the way. In addition, it was an ideal way to customize the learning and fully engage with students using the remarkable array of tools that MyLab provides.

Looking for an easier, more dynamic way to inspire your students’ learning? Revel^® teaching and learning platform from Pearson will feel like a joy compared to textbooks as it integrates videos and dynamic interactives into compelling digital narratives.

The platform keeps your students on pace, provides a clear view of their engagement and performance, and is easily accessed from the first day of classes. It puts them in the digital driver’s seat and on a smoother road to success.

Revel improves students' course grades and exam scores. In our numerous research studies, the data show that students who engage with Revel are more prepared for class and get better grades. In addition, instructors benefit when they use Revel performance data to identify struggling students.

Taking a moment now to learn about Revel’s top features can help improve the learning experience for your learners of today and tomorrow.

Revel’s top 5 features —

1. Educator Dashboard: offers an at-a-glance look at overall class performance. It helps instructors more easily identify and contact struggling and low-activity students, ensuring that the class stays on pace. By identifying at-risk students you can implement early intervention strategies to help them succeed in the course.

2. Embedded Assessments allow for practice and review, improving comprehension, filling learning gaps, and providing feedback. Students can practice and quiz themselves to review concepts while easily assessing their understanding to better prepare.

3. Shared Writing Assignments foster critical thinking through writing without significantly impacting your grading burden. Throughout each narrative, self-paced journaling prompts encourage students to express their thoughts without breaking stride in their reading.

Assignable shared writing activities direct students to share written responses with classmates, promoting peer discussion. Essays integrated directly within Revel allow you to assign the precise writing tasks they need.

4. Shared Media Assignments enable instructors and students to post and respond to videos and other media. Students can also record and upload their own presentations for grading, comments, or peer review.

Video quizzes engage students while checking their understanding of concepts. Instructors can share videos accompanied by time-stamped multiple-choice questions.

5. Instructor App enables instructors to easily view performance insights and contact struggling and low-activity students to help them get back on track – anytime, anywhere.

Teaching tools to love —

Inspiring active learning enables students to explore, contextualize information, and apply concepts as they read. It unlocks students’ curiosity and immerses them in subjects, reading and practicing in one continuous experience. Research shows this approach leads to higher recall of key concepts versus passive engagement alone.

Notetaking, highlighting and more make learning fully digital and highly engaging, providing students everything needed for a course — through one continuous, integrated learning experience. Highlighting, note taking, and a glossary let them read and study however they prefer. Instructors can add notes, too, including reminders or study tips.

Monitoring student progress allows educators to monitor student progress on assigned reading, which is a good indicator of how the class is doing. By tracking reading and having the option to make it a percentage of the final grade, they can hold students accountable and keep them on track.

It's a smooth ride to the future with Revel. Read how from other instructors and the impact Revel has had in their classroom and the lives of their students:

Upon mastering a course, it’s etched in our minds along with much satisfaction and pride. That’s what happens for faculty and students alike using Pearson’s Mastering^® platform. It supports active, engaging, and immersive experiences while lightening the teacher’s workload.

You will see its interactive tutorials, real-time analytics, and tailored feedback become indispensable tools as you help prepare students for their academic journeys.

We’ve rounded up seven of Mastering’s best features that are sure to help the way you teach, engage, and ensure your students success.

7 Mastering features you can start leveraging today —

Dynamic Study Modules pose a series of question sets about a course topic that adapt to each student’s performance and offer personalized, targeted feedback to help them master key concepts. They can use their computer or the MyLab and Mastering app to access Dynamic Study Modules. Available for select titles.

Early Alerts help identify struggling students as early as possible — even if their assignment scores are not a cause for concern. With this insight, you can provide informed feedback and support at the very moment students need it, so they can stay — and succeed — in your course.

Gradebook records all scores for automatically graded assignments. Struggling students and challenging assignments are highlighted in red, giving you an at-a-glance view of potential hurdles students may face throughout your course.

Performance Analytics track student performance against specified learning outcomes at both the individual student and class level. Mastering problems are tagged to publisher-provided learning outcomes or added to course-specific, department-wide, or institution-wide learning outcomes.

Learning Catalytics allows you to pose a variety of questions to help students recall ideas, apply concepts, and develop critical-thinking skills. Students can respond using their smartphones, tablets, or laptops.

Pearson+ Channels feature an interactive hub of expert-curated short videos and practice materials providing best-in-class content for any student seeking more knowledge in a specific topic or subtopic. In addition to testing their knowledge with practice questions created by Pearson experts, users can visit the social community and discuss certain topics in message threads, ask for help with practice problems, and rank the videos and practice materials.

Scheduled Reading assigns a chapter or specific section to hold students accountable for their reading and help them prep for lectures, homework, and quizzes. Scheduled Readings populate to each student’s assignment page, and you can now link readings directly to Mastering assignments.

With real-time insights from Mastering’s analytics dashboard, you can personalize your lectures and labs, keeping pace with student life today while helping to boost student performance.

By putting more Mastering tools to work, you can help develop more confident, competent learners eager to embrace complex scientific challenges through mindful, meaningful ways and help them improve results.

See for yourself just how purpose-built Mastering truly is.

As an instructor, shouldn’t you have the flexibility, ease, and control to customize your own courses? That’s what MyLab^® from Pearson offers as a teaching and learning platform. It’s purpose-built to help advance the way you teach through a robust set of features while transforming the way students learn.

Yet, with so many available features and so little downtime, it can become quite challenging to stay apprised of lesser-known or newer features, many that help you better engage with students, improve your pedagogy, and drive academic success for all students. That’s why we’re here to help.

We've compiled a list of the top six MyLab features we suggest incorporating to level up your MyLab course, boost student success, and maximize your time in the classroom.

6 MyLab features you can start leveraging today —

Freehand Grader

Freehand Grader enables you to gain deeper insight into your students’ thinking with Freehand Grader. This new assignment type creates an authentic assessment experience for both instructors and students.

With Freehand Grader, your students can upload their hand-written assignments, illustrate their thought processes, and receive meaningful feedback on their approach. Because it's not simply about how they arrived at the answer but the process.

Dynamic Study Modules

Dynamic Study Modules help your students stay on track and achieve a higher level of subject-matter mastery. Each module poses a series of questions about a course topic that adapts to each student's performance and offers personalized, targeted feedback to help reinforce their mastery.

With real-time feedback on their performance, you can adjust your lectures to meet learners where they are and where they’re headed. In addition, students can use their computers or learn on the go with the MyLab app. Available for select titles.

Pre-built Courses and Assignments

Pre-built Courses and Assignments ease your workload, save time, and increase efficiency with MyLab’s pre-built courses and assignments. Each course has a foundation of interactive course-specific content — by authors who are experts in their field — to tailor and adapt as you see fit.

Now, whether building your course from scratch or leaning on our pre-built collection, your lessons are in your control.

Early Alerts

Early Alerts help you identify students who may be struggling or falling behind in your course sooner with Early Alerts. This feature leverages an algorithm within MyLab that projects risk levels, and alerts you when a student may be falling behind.

With these insights, you can intervene, provide support, and help keep students on track to complete the course.

Learning Catalytics

Learning Catalytics help to increase student engagement and enhance their learning in the classroom. This interactive student response tool allows you to deploy questions and surveys, and assess student comprehension. It also equips you with real-time data to help adjust your instructional strategy on the fly.

Plus, Learning Catalytics automatically groups students for discussion, team-based learning, and peer-to-peer learning.

Pearson+ Channels

Pearson+ Channels feature an interactive hub of expert-curated short videos and practice materials providing best-in-class content for any student seeking more knowledge in a specific topic or subtopic. In addition to testing their knowledge with practice questions created by Pearson experts, users can visit the social community and s discuss certain topics in message threads, ask for help with practice problems, and rank the videos and practice materials.

Whether a novice or a MyLab expert, you’ll find much more to benefit and learn from with this teaching and learning platform — one that advances the way you teach and transforms the way learners learn.

See for yourself just how purpose-built MyLab truly is. Learn more about MyLab.

Johannes Vermeer’s Woman Holding A Balance was the featured art in the October HSS eNews.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch artist. Created c. 1664, Woman Holding A Balance is oil on canvas measuring 15 5/8” x 14”. The image is courtesy of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Video is everywhere. With more than a billion hours of video footage viewed on YouTube every day,¹ it is a medium that most students are both familiar and comfortable with. The question is not whether to use videos in higher education, but how to use them to improve learner outcomes.There is plenty of research that touches on the role of video in learning, and there are even some studies that specifically examine the different ways of using video in university or college courses.

After reviewing and analyzing this research, we’re confident that most higher education courses could improve learner outcomes by supplementing instruction and other learning content with relevant educational videos.

Here are three reasons why.

1. Students want to learn from videos

Video is part of higher education even when it’s not officially part of the learning experience. Some higher education students prefer videos to written sources and many will seek out subject-related videos on YouTube, even when they’re not assigned.

In a survey of hundreds of business students:

• 71% said they used YouTube as part of their academic learning
• 70.5% believed they could learn a lot about a subject by watching related videos instead of reading a book²

In a 2020 study, a group of higher education students was given 30 minutes of online research time to learn enough about a topic to write a brief summary. On average, the students spent 8.5 of their 30 minutes watching videos. Only 15.7% of the students watched no videos at all.³

Studies also seem to show that the appeal of video is not limited to particular subjects or learning preferences.⁴ Whatever the course, and whatever the makeup of the student body, including videos can engage students in learning.

2. Supplemental videos improve learning

Videos clearly appeal to students, but do they actually help them learn? When combined with other learning methods, there is evidence that they can.

A 2021 study looked at different ways of using videos in higher education courses. The researchers found that pivoting the course to video — dropping existing teaching methods and having students watch videos instead — did improve learning somewhat.

But the biggest improvements came when video was added to the existing course content, rather than replacing it.⁵

This may be because adding video gives students more ways to understand the content. If the learning didn’t take hold from a lecture or a written text, maybe it would from a video. Whereas when video replaced other methods, if a student didn’t grasp the content from the video, they had no alternative ways in.

3. Videos can directly affect learning

Does including videos improve learning by making the course more engaging, or do the videos themselves help improve learning? Understanding this helps determine the best types of video to include in higher education courses.

A 2014 study experimented with integrating different types of videos into lectures. When the videos were mainly entertaining, students’ motivation and engagement improved. Higher motivation and engagement are associated with better learning outcomes.

But when the videos were mainly educational and directly relevant to the lecture topic, students performed better on post-lecture quizzes than those who attended a lecture without videos.⁶

This shows that while videos can affect learning by engaging students, they can also have a direct effect on students’ knowledge.

Improving learning for students at all experience levels

To summarize, based on a range of studies:

• higher education courses should include videos
• videos should supplement, not replace, existing course content and instruction
  
• videos should be educational in nature and directly relevant to the subject

When videos are integrated into higher education courses in this way, students — whatever their previous academic history — are more likely to outperform their predicted grades.⁷

Once, students looking to supplement their knowledge of a topic had to rely on the limited selection of books in their college library. Today, college students have nearly unlimited information at their fingertips. But does more information always equal better learning?

A number of recent research studies suggest that in fact, providing students with a more limited set of high-quality resources chosen specifically for the course can lead to better outcomes than when students supplement their knowledge using the internet. Importantly, it may also help to level out inequities in the learning environment.

It’s true that there is a large amount of high quality information available online, on nearly every topic imaginable. It’s also true that searching, assessing, filtering, and making use of online resources are valuable 21st-century skills. So it’s understandable when higher education courses call for students to look online for sources to cite, or to supplement their knowledge of the course subject.

But that’s just the thing: finding information online and judging its reliability are skills in themselves. This complicates learning, because:

• not all students in the course will have those skills to the same degree
• they’re not usually the skills the course is teaching (or assessing)

Reliable, or just familiar?

As you may expect from a group of people who have largely grown up with the internet, higher education students know that not everything they find online is reliable. They do think about the origins of the information they find, and judge whether they are credible.

However, students don’t always know how to make these kinds of judgments accurately.

In one 2020 study, higher education students were provided with several items from different sources and prompted to write about the items’ perspectives. More than 2 in 5 of the students (41%) assumed that certain items were credible because they recognized the source.¹ They thought they were judging the reliability of the information, but were really rating the familiarity of the sources.

Another study, also published in 2020, asked economics students to use a search engine to investigate the truth of several claims. Again, these students ended up relying heavily on sites they were familiar with, rather than truly valid or reliable sources. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of their most cited sources was Wikipedia.²

Of course, not all students make the same mistakes. For example, a 2017 study found that students who score higher for reading comprehension are also more likely to find relevant, valid results when using search engines.³ Students with previous experience of searching for academic sources may also be more accurate judges of the information they find.

But this presents another challenge to learning. It means that in courses that ask students to supplement their subject knowledge by searching the internet, those with lower reading comprehension and less academic experience are at an unfair disadvantage.

Best use of effort

Even with sophisticated search engines, sifting the vast quantities of information on the internet for relevant sources takes time and effort. So does assessing the reliability of each source.

These activities also add to students’ cognitive load: the amount of brainpower needed to complete a task.

Students’ time, effort, and cognitive load are all finite resources. What they expend on finding and assessing sources, they aren’t using to actually increase their knowledge.

All of this means that providing students with a hand-picked suite of high quality resources, chosen specifically for the course, is better for learning than leaving them to find their own online.

Providing learning resources as part of the course levels the playing field. Students with different levels of reading comprehension and academic experience will all have equally valid, reliable materials to learn from.

And because students tend to trust material provided as part of the course, they won’t use up time, effort, or cognitive load gauging whether the material is reliable.

All in one

This isn’t a call to send students back to the college library. Even if the world wide web isn’t the best environment for learning, there are still clear benefits to digital learning.

In fact, digital platforms allow us to free up even more of students’ cognitive load for learning: by providing suites of reliable resources under the same roof as learning and assessment.

_____________________________________

This is the thinking behind Pearson+. No switching, searching, or wondering where to look. Everything needed for the course, all in one place – leading to better, more equitable outcomes for all.

Sources

¹ Banerjee, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, & Roeper, 2020

² Nagel et al., 2020

³ Hahnel et al., 2017

Brought to you by Pearson’s Online Program Management team

Discover how next-gen OPM is driving learner success through innovation. It’s here and it’s powerful. 

Brought to you by Pearson’s Online Program Management team

Stackable courses offer immense promise to both learners and institutions. To get started with them successfully, it helps to learn from early adopters – including expert innovators such as Maryville University. 

Maryville is a nationally recognized pioneer in access and opportunity, meeting learners’ fast-changing needs, and helping people quickly gain practical value from education. Even before the university launched stackables, it partnered with leading regional businesses to offer targeted short-term certificates and badges for employee upskilling, reskilling, and career progress.  

As Maryville president Mark Lombardi says, “We have entered an era of the democratization of education where access and opportunity are expanding and workforce training on a continual basis is a career imperative. Universities must be able to deliver different types of education and high skill training on a variety of platforms to meet the needs of a growing and diverse workforce and a wide array of employers.”  

Stackables: A Natural Next Step 

One key element of Maryville’s growth strategy involves attracting learners who’ve earned some college credit but no degree. These are typically working adults who want to earn promotions or transition into better careers. For learners like these, stackables are attractive and efficient. 

According to Katherine Louthan, Dean of the School of Adult & Online Education, “We’re solving for future of work issues, focused on upskilling in areas with high industry demand. Students in our existing degree programs tell us they need to dive into the content areas more quickly, so they can showcase what they’ve learned to advance in their position or even start new careers. This is a reasonable approach and one we wanted to accelerate for learners so they can apply what they’re learning right away, and gain value whether they complete a full degree or not.” 

Innovation That Builds on Strength 

As Maryville moved into stackables, says Louthan, it made sense to build on existing program strengths. “Where were our signature programs? Where are we growing in the future?” 

Maryville is especially strong at the intersection of business and technology. It had already launched highly successful programs in areas such as cybersecurity, data science, and software development. Its Fall 2021 stackable launch plan focused on these strengths and included five undergraduate-level certificates in computer science: the three aforementioned subjects, plus artificial intelligence and UX/UI.  

All are offered for credit towards a degree, or stand-alone for immediate credentialing. Like all of Maryville’s degree-linked stackable offerings, they carry the same pricing and fees either way.  

Two post-bachelor’s certificates, Big Data and Machine Learning, are offered as stand-alone and embedded within Maryville’s graduate programs in computer science, offering a shorter time commitment and a seamless onramp into a full graduate program if and when learners are ready. 

In another example of programmatic innovation, Maryville is offering a new post-bachelor’s certificate in Communication Sciences and Disorders, designed for career changers planning to enroll in master’s programs in Speech Learning Pathology (SLP) or doctoral programs in audiology. These individuals often already have a bachelor’s degree but need multiple courses to “level up” before they can pursue graduate work. 

Communication Sciences and Disorders bundles an essential undergraduate-level foundation in crucial areas such as voice, speech, language fluency, swallowing, and hearing disorders. Carefully crafted to prepare learners for highly competitive graduate programs -- including Maryville’s – it also connects learners to innovative “learn by doing” resources such as the Master Clinician Network. Through MCN, learners can take part in guided observation and start building clinical skills even before they enter graduate school. 

Off to a Strong Start 

Since the Fall 2021 launch, early signs are positive, says Louthan. “We’re getting great feedback from students who are experiencing success. We’ve had a lot of interest in areas such as AI and UX where many professionals need to upskill to stay relevant or advance. Our content is also aligned well with employer feedback. We believe we’re creating a successful starting point in addressing students’ growing demand for more flexible options. Whether they will go on to complete their degrees is yet to be seen. We are more focused on whether they are achieving their goals, and we hope they will come back to Maryville when they are ready to, or need to, upskill or reskill again.“ 

“Challenges always exist in times of change,” says Louthan, “and we are in a time of significant disruption in education and industry. As we work to drive down the cost of education, having a menu of options to meet both learner needs and market demands will require continuous analysis. We also recognize that while certificates are attractive in emerging areas of technology and computer science, some more traditional areas may still require a degree. Students have shared that during this transitional time many employers still require a bachelor’s degree for consideration. 

“Considering the future of work and the rapid rate of change, we know the model must shift so we can offer learners what they need and want to reach their goals – whatever their goals may be. As lifelong learning evolves, we will continue listening to our learners and employers to best meet their needs. We believe milestone achievements matter to students and they should be recognized for their achievements and able to apply them along their learning journey. We are focusing our work on their success and their ability to achieve their goals.” 

Placed in broader context, stackability fits well with Maryville’s key strategic goals and institutional mission: to create a global, student-centered active learning ecosystem, to drive transformational innovation around learner outcomes, to define its success by learner success, and to expand access and opportunity. 

As Dean Louthan concludes, “We understand education isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different students have different circumstances and considerations, and Maryville is committed to being as inclusive and accommodating as possible. Our certificate programs underscore this mission, serving as alternative paths to meet learners where they are — and help them reach their career goals.” 

Learn more, and explore Pearson's online learning offerings and OPM services  

Brought to you by Pearson’s Online Program Management team

How do you deliver value to learners and employers alike? In the hot field of cyber security, the University of North Dakota has cracked the code with the design of its recently launched online program.

The University of North Dakota is a public research university in Grand Forks, N.D. It offers more than 120 online degree and certificate programs, encouraging students from around the world to explore more than 225 fields of study every year. UND is dedicated to its mission to provide transformative learning, discovery and community engagement opportunities for developing tomorrow's leaders.

Designing transformative online learning experiences

In consultation with Pearson Online Learning Services, Vice Provost for Online Education and Strategic Planning  Jeff Holm chose to align the cyber security curriculum with highly sought-after and industry-recognized certifications. Advancing skills in cyber security can mean better job security, higher pay and more leadership opportunities for learners — program features that align with the university’s mission.

To create a program that appealed to a broad audience while meeting UND’s high pedagogical standards, UND and Pearson established a collaborative working relationship. The teams partnered on course development, tailoring courses to 14 weeks each. Both partners agreed that this gave learners the right amount of time with the material and addressed their needs for convenient, short courses that deliver work-ready skills.

The university also relied on the partnership for market research and insights, marketing and enrollment support to widen its reach. The strategy was to give more learners valuable career preparation by including certificates in the degree program. With the addition of cyber certificates to the online program, learners can gain recognizable, industry credentials as they move toward earning a full degree — making them more valuable to employers sooner.

“UND offers a variety of options so learners can tailor their M.S. in Cyber Security to fit specific interests and career goals,” Holm says. “The cyber security master’s program offers four tracks (or) stackable academic certificate options.” One certificate is mandatory. Learners can select two of three other certificate options and graduate with a master’s and three academic certificates. The tracks and certificates include:

• Cyber Security Analyst track aligned with the EC-Council Certified Threat Intelligence Analyst (CTIA) certification
• Ethical Hacking track aligned with the EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification
• Computer Forensics track aligned with the EC-Council Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (CHFI) certification
• Secure Networks track aligned with the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification

We’re proud to announce our learning solutions have won the following awards.

MyLab^® Math and MyLab Statistics won the CODiE Award for “Best Higher Education Mathematics Instructional Solution,” which recognizes the best instructional solution that offers mathematics curriculum and content for students in higher education math subjects.

Revel for Political Science/History/Sociology/Psychology also won the CODiE Award for “Best Social Sciences/Studies Instructional Solution,” which recognizes the best instructional solution for social sciences/social studies curricula and content for students in the higher education or PK-12 markets.

In addition, we were a finalist for the following award.

NCCERConnect was a finalist for the CODiE Award for “Best College & Career Readiness Solution,” which recognizes the best digital product or service that develops 21st Century workforce skills and knowledge for students.

The CODiE Awards were established so that pioneers of the budding software industry could evaluate and honor each other’s work. Today, the Awards continue to honor excellence in leading technology products and services. At Pearson, we've been creating innovative learning experiences since the Awards began in 1986, and our latest award-winning instructional solutions are evidence that we’re never satisfied with the status quo. Keep reading to learn more about what makes them unique.

What is MyLab?

MyLab Math and MyLab Statistics use data-driven guidance to improve results for students, with engaging, interactive content by expert authors that better helps them absorb and understand difficult concepts from developmental math to differential equations.

MyLab gives instructors a comprehensive gradebook with enhanced reporting functionality that makes it easier for instructors to understand which students are struggling, and which topics they struggle with most.

Featured art: Cézanne’s Gardanne

Cézanne’s Gardanne was the featured art in the April HSS eNews.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a French artist and post-impressionist. He painted Gardanne in 1885-1886, with oil on canvas, measuring 31 ½ x 25 ¼.

There's a well-known quote from Norman Vincent Peale’s famous book, The Power of Positive Thinking, that says, “Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.” You’ve likely heard it — or some version of it — numerous times, and the reason for that is because it’s true. And this may be especially true of higher ed environments, where helping students cultivate successful habits and mindsets is top of mind for instructors.

No one embodies this idea more than Dr. Nora Junaid, professor at the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts Amherst. In fact, everything Nora does seems to radiate positivity, which has been the guiding force behind her success as an instructor & mentor.

Positivity starts with yourself

When Nora joined the Isenberg School in 2016, she was handed two Introduction to Business Information Systems classes, with 220 students each. She got through the first semester without knowing exactly how to approach it.

“I didn’t have a structure, I wasn’t sure about the software, I wasn’t sure about the book, and I didn’t feel that I had a good connection with the students,” she says.

It was clear something needed to change. Nora spent every day of that first holiday break poring over the course, thinking of strategies to reorganize it and coordinate her TAs. By the time break was over, she’d revamped it entirely into something she felt would work much better for everyone, faculty and students alike. When she saw her evaluations after the second semester ended, they were up by at least 30% — a huge jump.

The course quickly became very popular, and more courses were opened to meet demand. What started as two sections with 440 students has become 5 sections with around 900 students enrolled per semester.

Building a positive team...

With such an in-demand course, Nora can’t handle it alone. She manages 25 TAs, each of whom teaches a section, and three PhD students, and they all must be in sync so that every student gets the same positive teaching experience.

Nora is quick to point out that fostering camaraderie, transparency, and positivity among her TAs is important to the success of the course and helps in mentoring and coaching her team. Using weekly meetings, online message chains, and other technology helps them stay on the same page and feel supported without demanding too much of their already busy schedules.

“Most faculty fail to realize that these students have a life, they have courses, they have dissertations. I make sure I show them that I have their backs and that they’re appreciated. It makes them feel a step above being just an undergraduate student and helps them a lot.”

...building a positive community

Creating a positive and supportive environment for 25 TAs is one thing; replicating that for 1,800 students a year takes something entirely different. Nora recognizes the special considerations needed to keep them motivated and engaged.

Going into a lecture with 219 other students can be intimidating, exhausting, and de-motivating. There’s no guarantee the instructor will notice if you’re even there or not. To help build a more connected community, Nora again turned to technology.

She developed her own app, Nora’s Corner, that students can download for free and get insights about everything that’s going on in the course, their TA’s contact information, and an open forum in which they can ask questions anonymously. She also created an Instagram account for the course — @excel.ninja — featuring her and the TAs answering questions & uploading lighthearted but still helpful posts.

“We’re using technology to let students know that ‘Hey, we’re a community, we’ve got you — no one’s going to slip through the cracks.’ It’s a huge motivator for both students and TAs.”

“We are changing students' lives”

“I knew I was onto something,” Nora says. “After that first semester with the revamped course, I realized that being a lecturer was my passion. I didn’t want to apply for assistant professor positions, I just wanted to work on improving as a lecturer."

The thing that really fuels her is seeing learners succeed because of a piece of information she shared or a skill that she taught them. Providing that influence and focusing on how to help students stay positive by using positive teaching strategies is one of her biggest drivers.

“We are changing students’ lives. When they come into the classroom, there’s an ‘a-ha’ moment you can see in their eyes. No amount of research and no paper or journal publication can satisfy an instructor in that way,” she says.

Nora admits that the idea of changing the world by changing students’ mindset sounds like a bit of an exaggeration. But when you're teaching and influencing 900 students a semester, and you can positively affect one thing in their thinking, then the scope of that change becomes very real.

Have you been hearing the term “burnout” a lot lately? What is it? What are the signs? How is it different from just plain old exhaustion?

Psychology Today defines burnout as "a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress."

Recognize the signs

If you are experiencing most of these symptoms you may be experiencing burnout.

• Having trouble getting yourself to work or getting started on work or a lack of motivation.
• Noticing your job performance has slipped. Burnout can happen slowly so compare your performance to that of previous years vs. weeks or months.
• Experiencing changes in your relationships with those around you either by having more conflicts or being more withdrawn.
• Spending a lot of time thinking about work when you’re not working. If you can’t turn your brain off during family time or when you should be sleeping, it could be a sign you’re in burnout mode. ¹
• Finding it harder to concentrate. Is it more difficult to plan a lecture or answer a complicated student question? ²

You’re not the only one

If you checked off most of the items above and are feeling burnt out, know you’re not alone. 52% of employees say they are experiencing burnout and 75% have experienced it at some point in their career. ³

Kevin R. McClure, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, shared this about his experience with burnout: “I hit a physical and emotional wall. I was tired — tired in a way a nap couldn’t fix. At the end of a particularly long day, I remember a Zoom meeting in which a colleague suggested that we find a way to recognize our graduating master’s students. My immediate response was: ‘Do we have to?’ It was uncharacteristic enough for another colleague to say they were worried about me.” ⁴

The pandemic seems to have only increased the number of people experiencing burnout. A survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 70% of the faculty members they spoke with currently felt stressed, while back in 2019 only 32% said the same thing. Plus more than half those surveyed were seriously thinking about retiring or changing careers. ⁵

There is hope — Coping with burnout

Burnout, if not addressed, can lead to serious impacts on your physical and mental health. McClure (with the help of his colleague) recognized the signs and was able to do something about it and you can too.

Try some of these techniques to get back to your old self.

• Don’t view burnout as failure
• Prioritize mental health (enough sleep, good nutrition, exercise, socializing in a safe way)
• Take time to do activities that take your mind off of work (reading, cooking, running)
• Find ways to express all your emotions about the situation and keep a close support system (human or animal)⁵

When it comes to burnout, it’s important to remember you’re not alone — most people experience it during the course of their career. There are many ways to overcome it, you just have to recognize the signs.

Watch Dr. Rachel Hopman-Droste's recorded webinar to learn more about managing burnout in the classroom

The pandemic threw the Needles Unified School District a curveball. They weren’t prepared. No one was. But when businesses shuttered and life slowed down, educators, parents and caregivers found another level. And they found a renewed sense of community, a focus on academics, and a new playbook for schooling post-pandemic.

Giving faculty tools to be better online instructors is essential to delivering successful courses, programs, and learner experiences.

Develop online courses that work for students and faculty

The best online courses are co-created with learning experts who know how to communicate the faculty member’s message most powerfully. These experts help instructors from concept to delivery and have provided these tips to help you think through your online presence.

Create an effective online course

Your faculty are experts in their disciplines, with strong networks in their fields, and a deep commitment to students. But they may not feel comfortable with teaching online or structuring their course content. That’s where higher ed leaders can make a positive impact. You can provide experts and training to take courses designed for an in-person classroom and adapt them for the virtual world.

Administrators can ensure that faculty receive specialized guidance on structuring and organizing course content for online spaces and environments to make it as engaging and informative as possible. They can connect faculty with resources and tools to review courses before they go live with students. They can help standardize instructional design across courses so students are immediately comfortable when they start a new course.

COVID-19 has put online learning in the spotlight. As more students need to turn to virtual settings to stay on track with their education, institutions pivoted to provide their courses online.

So how should your institution prepare beyond the moment to launch and grow online? Ask yourself the following questions about investment money and strategic opportunities.

How should you fund your online learning strategy?

As you prepare to launch your college’s online offerings, you’ll need to find a source of funding. Tuition streams will only gradually grow to contribute, so where can you acquire these funds? Institutions have several options:

1. Tap internal resources — If you have discretionary funds to use to establish online learning programs, this may be a great way to go. Much of the online program investment is needed upfront.
2. Leverage fundraising — Some institutions have received generous donations from forward-thinking alumni to expand favored online programs.
3. Borrow funds — Many institutions have pursued this path, but in today’s market securing financing may be more difficult than before.
4. Use partner investments — Investments from an outside educational provider like an online program management (OPM) company may fund your launch. They can work with you in multiple ways to help you meet your online goals.

Launching a meaningful online presence can require significant start-up capital and ongoing investments as you evolve and scale.

How to assess the market for your online learning programs?

Once you make the decision to launch online and find the money to do so, the next consideration becomes making sure there’s a viable market for your “product.”

46.9% of distance students now attend 5% of institutions.

You’ll want to be strategic in how you assess your opportunities and set up your programs. Here’s how:

1. Conduct market research — Professional market research can objectively assess student demand and shifting labor markets.
2. Evaluate your brand — Does your brand stand out in the market? You’ll want a solid understanding of your differentiators, strengths, reputation, culture, and ability to deliver.
3. Name and price your program — This attention to detail will help you establish yourself in the market and leap ahead of the competition.

To grow online you’ll want to identify niches, clarify and extend your differentiators, and invest more heavily in branding and outreach beyond traditional markets.

Explore our resources for more insights to help build your online program.

From test optional to online learning, the whole college search, application, and enrollment process has changed for applicants and schools in 2020.

In fact, by harnessing these changes, we may open doors for new ways that:

• colleges can assess applicants
• applicants can evaluate their choices
• adult learners can gain new job skills

Learn how from Joe Morgan by watching the video below.

This spring, thousands of institutions rushed to deliver instruction online at scale. Many were new to online learning, and no two institutions or instructors approached it exactly the same way. But most recognized that it’ll play an important role going forward, and most saw room for improvement. In this blog post, we’ll share five key considerations for your institution to deliver richer, more successful online learning experiences.

1. Develop more compelling online courses and curricula

Translating your faculty’s expertise online requires new techniques and mindsets. Instructional design must be integrated with user experience engineering, technology, visual design, writing, accessibility, web development, quality assurance, project management, and more.

2. Focus on helping faculty succeed

Support faculty all the way to success, with course development help and training that reflects their needs and respects their expertise. The right course development experts can help faculty optimize their own content and course structures for online learning environments, integrate more engaging media and learning modalities, and foreground real-world relevance. The right training ensures that technology serves faculty instead of the other way around.

3. Improve student support to improve outcomes

Online students require seamless support from first contact through graduation. This requires institutions to break down silos, collaborate creatively, and sometimes change culture. Consider: how do students tell you if they’re encountering serious life challenges? How do you respond? Can programs and faculty work more closely with tutors to anticipate student needs? Can each student turn to a specific individual for timely, relevant help that orchestrates all your resources?

4. Choose resources with a track record of success

For each online learning function, whether internal or external, expect a track record of success. Have they met their commitments? Have they built the types of programs you want? Can they do it at scale? Do they understand how technologies and students are changing? Are they agile and collaborative? Will they act as agents of change, recommend and execute on innovations, and help you deliver on your institution’s online strategy?

5. To sustain enrollments, get the marketing right, too

You need to get your marketing strategy right, and yesterday’s strategy may not be right anymore. Today, you’re competing with gap years and dropping out indefinitely, not just other institutions. You have to rethink how you demonstrate your value to students — and that may require objective, outside assistance.

We can help

Our white paper offers more insights in all five areas. And we’re available to discuss your unique online learning challenges. See how we can help you and your students succeed — no matter what comes next.

Get the white paper

No matter their major, university, or year in school, most students can agree on one thing: buying textbooks is one of the more frustrating experiences that college has to offer. But the recent unexpected shift to online learning and digital course materials is making this less of an obstacle. Four students from across the nation shared their experiences with their textbooks and course materials — and told us why access to digital has changed the way they view studying.

One of the most common complaints students have about their course materials is the actual process of acquiring them. Sarah F., a political science student at the University of Missouri, dreaded having to visit the bookstore at the beginning of each term.

“The only way you can avoid the bookstore is ordering your books online, but there’s a waiting period, so sometimes you don’t even get your books in time for those first couple of homework assignments. I hate having to organize all of that — it’s probably one of the worst things I have to do in college.”

The recent shift to online learning has already led to a shift in course materials in most cases. As faculty look forward with uncertainty, they know that comprehensive, flexible, and cost-effective solutions are key to a successful course, no matter the future of their course delivery. The College Board estimates that a year’s worth of textbooks and supplies can cost the average student a staggering $1,240.¹ Zach D., a marketing student at the University of Iowa, has found that, while the cost of textbooks can be frustrating, there’s something even worse — the cost of books that go unused.

“I spent $200 on this book and will only get $20 at the end of the semester for it, when I didn’t even need it in the first place.”

In his experience, the digital course materials he’s been assigned have actually been utilized in class and have helped him keep up on his own time, while physical materials have often gone untouched.

For all four students, digital course materials have been more affordable than physical materials (Zach estimates they’ve saved him several hundred dollars this year alone.) And they all agreed that digital materials were more useful to them.

Rachel H., a business administration major at the University of Colorado Boulder, has discovered a whole host of game-changing benefits to using digital materials. “It saves time in the first place because you get your book on the very first day and can start studying right away, instead of waiting to get the book in the mail. And if you’re trying to search a textbook for something, you can literally do it with your keyboard. Also, a lot of the Inclusive Access that I have has additional online study materials in it, like flashcards and practice tests. It’s extra studying my professor doesn’t give me, but is still a part of the textbook, so I can go in and study in different ways that they provide…it’s definitely had a positive impact on my grades.”

Digital materials also help students by allowing them to learn when, where, and how it works best for them, especially during these unprecedented times. Jesus H., a business management student at California State University Fresno, found that, because of their flexible nature, the digital materials he had access to sometimes contributed even more to his success than attending lectures did.

“For an accounting class I took, I learned a lot through MyLab™ Accounting. It prepared me a lot for my exams, and I passed because of the digital materials. It was convenient, it allowed me to save time, and I could study anywhere. It was very beneficial, and because of that I’m now trying to stay with classes I know will be using digital materials instead of print books.”

Through the Covid-19 lockdown and institutional shift to distance learning, technology is what has kept us together. As almost every aspect of students’ lives becomes digitized, it’s no wonder that pairing technology and education works so well for them. The benefits of digital products and course materials were clear even before the recent disruption to education, and have become even more apparent with the widespread shift to online and HyFlex learning models.

A study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation even found that when students take courses that engage digitally and in-person, content mastery can occur twice as quickly, and pass rates for at-risk students can increase by 33%.² Sarah is certain that she’s enjoyed those benefits throughout her college experience, thanks to digital course materials.

“I’m kind of able to be successful either way, but it’s about making it easier for me to be successful. It’s about putting everything in one place and keeping me organized — letting me search through and study the materials I need to, and giving me assignments that I can complete online that are more interactive than they would be otherwise. The culmination of all those things make it easier for me to succeed. Students can still succeed when they’re using paper materials, but I think having the digital materials gives us even more advantages and helps us be just that much more successful.”

During this historic time, faculty around the country in all disciplines are adopting digital solutions to support delivery of their courses and help improve affordability and student success.

Sources
¹ “Average estimated undergraduate budgets by sector, 2019-20,” College Board
² “Student Success: Digital Learning,” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

In April, Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research surveyed 187 presidents at colleges and universities to see how their priorities have evolved after one month into their COVID-19 response. A similar survey was conducted in March.

Top concerns

In the survey, presidents were asked about their level of concern with potential short-term and long-term issues at their institution in regard to COVID-19. Below are the top 5 issues about which they were very or somewhat concerned.

Top 5 short-term issues

1. Mental health of students (91%)
2. Disproportionate impact on students from low-income backgrounds (87%)
3. Accelerated rates of student attrition (84%)
4. Short-term unbudgeted financial costs (86%)
5. Mental health of students (87%)

Top 5 long-term issues

1. Decline in overall future student enrollment (90%)
2. Inequitable impact on underrepresented students (90%)
3. Overall financial stability (88%)
4. Ability to afford to employ staff & faculty (81%)
5. Decline in alumni/donor giving rates (56%)

Challenges with remote learning

The survey found that over the course of a month, presidents were having fewer challenges at their institutions ensuring academics standards remained high, having technology support available, and training faculty less familiar with digital delivery.

You can download a copy of the report, Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis, Part II: A New Survey of College and University Presidents, here.

Additionally, the editors of Inside Higher Ed held a webcast discussion about the survey’s results. You can view the recording here.

Download and personalize our digital postcard to express your thanks to the educator who’s inspired your love of learning. Taking the time to write a note about how they’ve helped you grow or see things differently can go a long way in making them feel appreciated.

Instructions:
Step 1: Click to download the postcard
Step 2: Upon opening the file, type your message in the editable fields on the back of the card
Step 3: Export as a PDF under the name of your choice
Step 4: Open the newly saved file to ensure your text has been embedded into the document
Step 5: Attach to an email and share with your teacher

Download the postcard

Thick skin in junior english class

Matthew Ventura, Ph.D., recalls a high school English teacher who taught him a hard but important lesson.

“Mr. Davidson was really tough,” he says. “He felt no shame ripping apart our essays.”

“Despite the criticism, he spent so much time giving us detailed feedback,” Matthew says. “It really affected me.”

“Not only did I become a better writer,” he says, “I realized that a Mr. Davidson-like level of feedback can help improve critical thinking skills like few other things.”

Important skills, better teaching

Matthew went on to study and develop new ways to teach and assess 21st century skills like critical thinking.

An early collaboration, the Physics Playground, was a digital game that walked students through complex physics concepts with outcomes and processes that mimicked real-world experiences.

It was a breakthrough.

“These kinds of natural, playful simulations,” Matthew says, “help students strategize their way through tough subjects—and provide an opportunity for teachers to provide feedback based on where each student is in the learning process.”

“Imagine a class of 400 students,” he says. “How can a teacher be like Mr. Davidson and provide such granular, one-on-one feedback to everybody?”

Innovative digital platforms, he says, provide a trifecta of benefits:

They teach effectively. They lead to one-on-one feedback for students. And they’re scalable.

The need for problem-solvers

“It was an opportunity to explore some basic questions about critical thinking,” Matthew says. “What do we mean by ‘critical thinking? How can we improve it?”

It’s part of a conversation, he says, that’s been batted around by academics for decades.

“More and more employers want to hire good problem-solvers,” Matthew says.

Good problem-solvers, he says, can spot opportunities for innovation thanks to critical thinking skills—”so these questions were important to try to answer,” he says.

Critical thinking in specific disciplines

“Skills for Today” reviews the history of definitions around critical thinking. It summarizes leading research on the various methods of teaching and assessing critical thinking.

The paper also takes the discussion about critical thinking in a new direction.

“There is so much talk about broad critical thinking skills,” he says. “What we want to start exploring is: How can we improve critical thinking in particular disciplines?”

A speech class might employ new critical thinking teaching methods in debate exercises, he says.

An IT course might show students how to find bugs in computer code.

A business or economics class might guide students to weigh issue pros and cons in order to make tough decisions.

“We want to provide an actionable framework for educators in this new approach,” Matthew says, “so we can reach more learners and prepare them for tomorrow’s workforce.”

Next-generation teaching tools

Matthew emphasizes that critical thinking skills are skills—and that they are only improved with practice.

He hopes his paper can be a part of making this practice more effective.

“We hope this research helps us develop new learning tools that benefit learners,” he says, “and, at the same time, guides teachers to bring new teaching approaches into their classrooms.”

This article was originally posted on June 26,2017

E-babies by the hundreds

This fall, in college classrooms across the country, hundreds of students studying psychology will say goodbye to traditional textbooks and hello to a virtual child.

These new parents won’t raise their children in their dorm rooms, but rather on their laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

This unique “parenting” experience is made possible by a brand-new digital learning product called The Dynamic Child.

Students raise their child from birth to age 18 and see how their parenting choices affect the child over time.

A big idea, and a joint effort

“The Dynamic Child” is the invention of Dr. Frank Manis, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.

After years of teaching child development courses with traditional textbooks, he began to brainstorm ways to make the material more engaging to students, most of whom had never been parents.

It took dozens of educators and researchers more than five years to develop “The Dynamic Child.”

Amber, an Executive Editor in Psychology, works with higher education professors to create the learning materials used to teach psychology courses nationwide.

“Our shared goal is to create and promote materials that help educators teach child development and other subjects in the most innovative, exciting ways possible.”

Erin is an expert in what’s called “learning design.”

“The course material is important, but the learner’s experience is equally significant. I’m there to make sure it’s always top-of-mind.”

A chicken-and-the-egg predicament

One of the biggest challenges along the way, Amber says, was deciding if students should read the online course material and then raise their virtual child, or vice versa.

“Raise first or read first? It was a true chicken-and-the-egg moment for me,” she says.

“It may sound like a little thing, but the way you sequence learning objectives for a course can have a huge impact on how much and how deeply the students learn.”

Thankfully, Amber says, she knew exactly who could help her answer her question: Erin.

“I introduced Amber to the research concept of ‘anchored instruction,’” Erin says.

“It tells us that there are cognitive benefits of having an experience first and then learning the theories and research that support it afterward.”

“In this case, the research suggests that ‘anchoring’ the course material in the real-world experience of raising a virtual child was the way to go.”

How it happens

For students using “The Dynamic Child,” the parenting process starts with a personality questionnaire.

It has 25 questions and takes about 30 minutes to complete, Amber says.

Students are asked things like, “What were your favorite subjects in elementary school?” and “In high school, did you prefer to socialize in small or large groups?”

All that data is used to create a unique personality profile for the student’s virtual child, Amber says.

Students can pre-select physical characteristics for their child, but the gender is determined randomly by the program.

After the child is “born,” students give him or her a name, Amber says.

“That helps the student develop an emotional bond with their child,” adds Erin.

“Research says that such an emotional investment leads to better learning outcomes.”

Making decisions as a parent

For the duration of the parenting experience, an avatar of the growing child takes up the right half of the student’s screen.

On the left side, students are presented with dozens of realistic parenting scenarios related to their child’s physical, mental, and social growth.

“Topics include sleep training, dealing with shyness, and overcoming adversity in academic, musical, and sporting endeavors.

“Students select from four different courses of action at each decision point, so there are an infinite number of eventual personality outcomes, and no two students will have identical children,” Amber says.

Over the course of the semester, the virtual children grow from birth to age 18.

The effects of a student’s parenting style can be seen in the child’s behavior over time, Amber says.

“The child is responding to the parent and vice versa.”

“It’s bi-directional—a two-way street—just like a parent-child relationship is in real life.”

A full launch this fall

This fall, more than 60 college professors across the country will teach child development courses exclusively via the “The Dynamic Child” product.

Pearson will host the learning experiences through its Revel platform.

Students can access the “Dynamic Child” portal from any device.

“In addition to getting to learn course material in an innovative and engaging way,” Amber says, ‘The Dynamic Child’ costs just $80—significantly less than most traditional psychology textbooks.”

Erin and Amber say they have high hopes for The Dynamic Child.

“We love the product,” Amber says, “and we think students and professors will, too.”

“We spent months and months reviewing the research on anchored learning and incorporating it into the final product design,” Erin says.

“We think it’s the type of homework students will truly be excited to do.”

“Without Access To Education, You’re Depriving People Of Freedom.”

A NOTE FROM PEARSON CEO JOHN FALLON: President Trump is considering rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the US. Started in 2012, this program allowed 800,000 young people, who came to the US without documentation as children, the basic opportunity to work and study without the threat of deportation. About 200,000 of these DREAMers, like Ricardo, are currently enrolled in higher education.

A Famous Face

If you’ve ever watched the DIY Network on television, Kayleen McCabe’s is a face you may recognize.

She is the host and star of “Rescue Renovation,” a show that helps homeowners who are in over their heads. Renovation projects turn from disastrous “befores” into jaw-dropping “afters.”

When Kayleen is not in front of the camera, she’s traveling the country telling students the story of how her long-time construction hobby turned into a successful career.

Growing up different

“As a little girl, I was always building stuff with my hands,” Kayleen says.

“My dad was a welder by trade, so I learned a lot of what I know from him.”

“We did repairs around the house, built fences, and worked on cars together.”

“I didn’t realize how unique that was until high school,” Kayleen says.

Kayleen says most of her classmates had no idea what they wanted to do after graduation.

Kayleen was different.

“I knew, even then, that I wanted to work in the construction trades,” she says.

Trusting her instincts

Although knew she wanted a career in construction, Kayleen didn’t enroll in trade school after high school.

“I made good grades,” she says, “and I felt pressure to do what the other ‘good students’ did: go to college.”

One year and two schools (Red Rocks Community College and Colorado State University) later, Kayleen called her parents with some news that ultimately wasn’t a surprise to them: college wasn’t for her.

“I could’ve saved a lot of tuition money by following that instinct earlier,” Kayleen says.

“I am so grateful that when I eventually did, my parents were supportive.”

The first foray into television

Shortly after graduating from high school, Kayleen says, her cousin called her with a proposition.

“She was a producer on the TV show ‘Trading Spaces.’”

“She knew I liked working with my hands, and she said she could help me get a production assistant job.”

From her very first day on the set, Kayleen says she was hooked.

“I would bounce of out of bed at 5 am, vibrating with excitement about whatever we got to build next.”

“It was the first time I fell in love.”

The mentor of all mentors

On the set of “Trading Spaces,” Kayleen met a master craftsman named Frank.

“He was this grumpy-looking older guy with a big bushy mustache that was permanently stained from tobacco,” Kayleen says.

“But he taught me more than I could ever explain.”

“I could ask him anything, and he encouraged me to learn, to try, and most importantly, to fail,” Kayleen says.

“Being in an environment where I felt so safe to do that was the best gift I ever received.”

“Learning the way that I did—on the job—was more of an education than I could ever have gotten from going to college.”

“Rescue Renovation”

“Rescue Renovation” is currently in its fifth season on TV.

Kayleen says she is immensely grateful for her continued success—especially in a field that is traditionally dominated by men.

“When the show first started, I was one of the only female hosts on our channel—or any other one.”

“It’s different now, and I cannot wait for that to keep changing.”

When she travels for her show, Kayleen says, she is often able to help drive that change.

“I like to leverage a plane ticket as much as possible.”

“I’ll find out what schools are close to the airport and call them up. I say, ‘Hi, I’m a woman in the trades, can I come talk to your kids about career opportunities in my field?’”

“To the best of my ability,” Kayleen says, “I will continue to leverage what fame I’ve garnered to help recruit more and more young women into the construction trades.”

Connecting with audiences on smaller screens, too

In her spare time, Kayleen produces short, instructional videos for her followers and fans. She hosts them on her personal web page.

Topics range from cabinet building, to clamps and fasteners, to drill skills.

“I want to get them into the hands of middle and high school teachers so they can show their kids what working in the trades is really like.”

“Growing up, my teachers had nothing like that. In terms of recruitment, I think it could be game-changing.”

Something to strive for

Kayleen says she is constantly thinking about the future—for herself and for construction trades overall.

“I want to double the number of students I talk to every year … until that becomes impossible.”

Already this year, Kayleen has made incredible progress towards her goal. She has trips planned to Indiana, Ontario, Nebraska, Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, Abu Dhabi, and Mississippi—all in the next few months.

“Someday, I hope I am able to travel full-time, speaking to students and giving them scholarships to study the trades.”

“I want to be the Bill Gates of power tools,” Kayleen says.

“And my passport has a lot of room in it.”

A big deal at the time

In the early 1990s, Bill Clements highlighted students in his college classes at Norwich University on websites he built from scratch.

“I’d post a ‘Student of the Week’ and the students really got a kick out of it,” he says. “They’d call home to their families and say ‘hey, Mom, my picture is on the Internet!’”

It was a big deal at the time, Bill says.

That was more than 20 years ago. Now, Bill is Vice President and Dean of the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies at Norwich, overseeing the learning of the approximately 1,800 students enrolled in online programs.

A history of service

Founded in 1819, Norwich University is the oldest private military college in the United States and is considered the birthplace of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). With a student body of approximately two-thirds in the Corps of Cadets, the school’s online population also serves a high proportion of military students.

“Overall, I’d say the online-only degrees are 40% military students,” Bill says.

Several of Norwich’s online programs are designed to serve military students. The Master of Arts in Diplomacy and Master of Arts in Military History, in particular, have high enrollments of military officers.

“We get a lot of students who are military officers preparing for promotions or additional leadership roles and are looking to our online programs to bolster their professional capabilities,” Bill says.

The university recently conducted a Gallup survey of its alumni and the results confirm what Bill has always known to be true.

“We’ve heard from our students and alumni—military and civilian—that our online programs made it easier to earn a degree,” he says. “They graduate and get good jobs with good salaries.”

“There’s been a positive impact on their lives as a result of their education.”

Higher ed 3.0

Thirty years ago this month, Bill was teaching at Temple University and finishing his doctoral degree.

“It was a big week for me,” he recalls. “I had just signed my contract at Norwich, had a birthday, my second daughter was born, and I was defending my dissertation.”

Bill recalls talking to a colleague also on the verge of completing his doctorate about where they might be in 30 years.

 “We knew we wanted to be in leadership positions that would allow us to be a part of the changes we knew were coming,” he says. “We didn’t know what those changes would look like, exactly, but we were eager to begin our careers.”

That colleague went on to have a successful career in higher education and together, Bill says, they’ve seen the evolution of “higher ed 2.0.”

“When we went through school, higher education was still ‘version 1.0.’ It was lecture halls and slides full of notes,” he explains. “Throughout my career, I’ve seen the evolution of ‘version 2.0,’ where we took that physical classroom and moved it online with little change.”

But now, Bill says, he’s looking forward to the next 30 years and the evolution of higher ed 3.0.

“That next version has to move beyond just replicating lectures,” he says. “We have to ask how can we make learning more effective, how do we make it more engaged, how do we make it more affordable?”

He also believes higher education is a lifelong process.

“You can’t just get a degree and get a job and never go to school again in today’s economy,” he says. “How is higher education going to adapt to that?”

Gemma Weir launched a non-profit when she was just nine years old.

Yes, you read that correctly: nine years old.

She started Fluffy Love, an organization that collects and donates new stuffed animals to children who could use a cuddly companion.

Most of the toys are donated to a children’s hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.

Gemma also donates stuffed buddies to tornado victims and local shelters.

To date, Gemma has collected and donated more than 3,000 stuffed animals.

A small start

Fluffy Love began a long way from those 3,000 stuffed animals.

“At first, we got the word out through church groups,” says Gemma.

Soon the stuffed animals came pouring in – and not just from her community in Grand Prairie, Texas.

A Facebook page helped spread the word.

“That got an incredible response,” says Gemma’s mom, Heather. “We also received hundreds of toys from friends and family in Scotland!”

Gemma says it’s been amazing to watch Fluffy Love spread joy in her community.

Recently, a little boy came up to Gemma at church. He was holding a stuffed animal in his arms.

“He told me that he had broken his arm and wound up in the hospital,” Gemma says.

“A nurse gave him the stuffed animal. He said it brought him so much comfort as he went through something scary,” she says.

The toy had been donated by Fluffy Love. 

Learning along the way 

Gemma is now enrolled at Texas Connections Academy, a virtual public school that gives her the flexibility she needs to pursue her work with Fluffy Love.

“I can get ahead on schoolwork a few days a week, then focus on Fluffy Love,” she says. “I’ve really learned the importance of time management!”

Two schools recently invited Gemma to speak to students about her project.

“I was nervous, but it was amazing experience,” Gemma says. “The students at both schools were super receptive.”

One school was so inspired by Gemma’s story that students decided to have a toy drive for Fluffy Love.

Encouraging kids to dream big

Watching Gemma find her passion has been one of Heather Weir’s greatest joys as a parent.

“Gemma was very shy and quiet growing up,” Heather says. “It’s been incredible to watch her grow with Fluffy Love.”

When it comes to supporting their kids, Heather has one simple but powerful piece of advice for parents: encourage ideas.

“Parents should always get behind their kids,” Heather says. “It can help them find what they love and flourish.”

Inspiring others

Gemma is now in ninth grade – and Fluffy Love has grown alongside her.

Last year, the organization officially became a 501(C)(3)-certified non-profit.

As she looks toward the future, Gemma sees plenty more opportunities for Fluffy Love to inspire positive action.

The mayor of Grand Prairie, Texas proclaimed December 12^th as Gemma Weir Day in recognition of her service to the community.

“I hope it’s a day that inspires everyone to follow their passions and think about how to make a positive difference in other people’s lives,” Gemma says.

Inspiration from experience

Debbie Goldammer remembers spending a lot of time in the hallway as a fourth-grade student.

“Every day, my teacher would tell us to copy our spelling or math from the board at the front of the room and every day I asked where it was and got sent to sit in the hall,” she recalls.

Debbie couldn’t see the board well enough to read the writing.

“For me, as a young kid, being sent to the hall made me feel like I was bad. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong.”

Eventually, Debbie’s father noticed her poor eyesight and she got her first pair of glasses. After that, her trips to the hallway stopped.

“My teacher never took the time to see that I couldn’t see,” Debbie says.

That experience as a young child inspired Debbie to become a teacher herself.

“I became a teacher because I wanted to watch for those things,” she says. “If kids couldn’t see or couldn’t hear, I wanted to watch for that and help them.”

Debbie spent the last 40 years doing just that; she recently retired from a career teaching.

Getting started

Despite getting glasses and making the decision to become a teacher, Debbie didn’t always excel at school.

“I never really tried and focused in school,” Debbie says. “It was mainly my mom going ‘get your homework done, get your homework done.’”

It wasn’t until Debbie’s seventh-grade math teacher held her to a higher standard that she realized she could do more. When she moved into eighth grade without being placed in the advanced class, the teacher demanded a reason.

“She said, ‘you were my top student last year, you…belong in the top class,’” Debbie says.

Debbie moved to the advanced math class and experienced her second learning epiphany.

“That’s when education became important to me,” she says. “I saw it could get me someplace if I worked.”

The right emphasis

Debbie always planned to teach fourth grade—the same grade she spent so much time in the hallway—and chose elementary education for her college major.

One trip to her academic advisor’s office changed those plans—she was only a few credits from earning a minor in math.

She spent her early years teaching math to sixth-eighth graders before moving back to her hometown to teach eighth-grade math in the same classroom for the next 32 years.

“I really liked junior high kids,” she says. “They’re their own little beast—they still respect you but want to try you…there’s a lot of change happening in a short time.”

Returning home

Spending the majority of her career teaching in the community where she grew up was special, Debbie says, particularly when it came to teaching the children of former students.

“I have 100 percent of the support [of my former students],” she says. “Former students who are now parents know what I will do for my students.”

Including adding a new class to her teaching schedule.

Not long before her retirement, Debbie took over teaching a dual-credit college algebra class, allowing students to earn college math credit while in high school.

“My principal asked me three times to teach the class and I said no three times,” Debbie recalls, saying she didn’t feel qualified even though she was certified.

“The fourth time, he said, ‘You’re the only one certified to do this, this is for the kids,’ and I couldn’t say no to that.”

Debbie says she can’t count the hours she spent preparing and studying so she would be ready to teach the class. She even turned to YouTube for refreshers.

“I wanted to make sure I could teach the kids as best as possible,” she says.

Moving forward

Debbie spent the first few weeks of her retirement cleaning out her classroom, getting it ready for its next occupant. But not everything had to change: a Goldammer will still be teaching eighth-grade math at Butler High School. Her daughter, Heather, will be moving down the hall to take over her mother’s classroom and schedule.

“I spent the first few years of my career determined not to be just like my mom,” Heather says. “But along the way, I’ve found my own path and now I feel like I’m stepping into her shoes without mimicking her.”

For her mother, Heather’s choice to follow a similar path is a point of pride.

“Heather could have gone into anything she chose,” she says, “but she chose education.”

When teaching a science class, we often use experiences in the lab to foster critical thinking skills and reinforce the concepts we introduce in lectures. But with campuses closed, students cannot access the lab.

So what do you do? Is it better to forget about labs at all, or is there value in online or hands-on at home methods? This is what one study published by the Journal of Formative Design in Learning tells us.

Don’t ditch labs

Students who take lecture and laboratory concurrently outperform their lecture-only peers, regardless of whether that lab is face-to-face or non-traditional.

Non-traditional labs can be as effective as face-to-face labs

• A good non-traditional lab tool can increase test scores, improve students’ attitudes and preparedness for the hands-on lab, and strengthen conceptual knowledge.
• In one particular study, the students said the online laboratory experience was the same as or better than their prior experiences in the traditional setting.
• Students can access the lab whenever and wherever suits them. Flexibility will be important at the moment, particularly for those suddenly having to care for children.
• In an online lab, students can reflect on what went right and what did not go as planned, and then can repeat the experiment as many times as they need.
• Virtual chemistry labs can help students visualize structures and processes at the molecular level and allow types of experiments not possible in a standard undergraduate laboratory—e.g., quantum chemistry.

Examples of online labs

Online labs can range from simple videos and games, to graphing and 2D simulations, to interactive 3D virtual reality experiences. Simulations, as mathematical models of processes in the physical world, allow users to manipulate parameters and can be used by faculty to customize laboratories in various disciplines. Some examples include:

• Virtual dissections (see Practice Anatomy Lab in Mastering A&P)
• Chemical reactions (see Chemistry simulations in Mastering Chemistry)
• Laws of motion experiments (see PhET simulations in Mastering Physics)

Examples of hands-on at home tools

Hands-on kits available from various vendors can provide students with practice of experiments, and manufacturers usually assume liability. One example is Chemistry LabPaqs from Hands on Labs (http://holscience.com/)

A good tool should have

• Software that is easy to install, user-friendly, and intuitive, yet challenging.
• Experiences similar to the traditional laboratory.
• Useful sequences for learners that scaffold their use of the system.
• Some form of feedback (even if it is just immediate results of labs and simulations).
• Help for visualizing and demonstrating concepts and constructs that might otherwise be difficult to observe (depending on exactly what domain it is).
• Alignment with the learning objectives across all learning activities.
• Clear instructions (even if the task is more open-ended in the lab) and criteria so students know what to focus on.
• The ability for students to “experiment” in the environment without penalty.
• Digital laboratory manuals that accompany hands-on lab kits must also be user-friendly and intuitive.

Source:
Rowe et al., Efficacy of Online Laboratory Science Courses (2017) Journal of Formative Design in Learning

From on-screen to first-hand

Jason Agins says he was “an armchair traveler” as a kid.

“I watched a lot of Lonely Planet, and anything else on the Travel Channel.”

Years later, he says he still loves to explore, although now he sees the world first-hand.

Proof: he’s visited 55 countries in the last 6 years.

(He says he doesn’t have a favorite. It’s a four-way tie between Turkey, Japan, Russia, and Mexico).

Today, with South Florida as a home base, Jason has forged a career in non-traditional education that lets him connect with students in other parts of the world every day—through his computer screen.

A global teacher

Jason is the Master Teacher of International Communities for International Connections Academy (iNaCA), a K-12 global online private school.

“I work with our 230 or so international students,” Jason says.

“They have to learn not only how to be virtual students, but also how to learn from American teachers and, in effect, get an American education.”

“The complexity and nuance that’s involved in that is constantly challenging—for them and for me,” Jason says.

“But helping my students grow, and learn, and go on to do awesome things is so worth it.”

Meeting face-to-face

You’d think Jason’s global adventures might have taken him to see some of his students in their home countries.

Not so, until last year when for the first time, Jason met one of his former students face-to-face.

“At the same time she was a student at iNaCA, she was helping take care of her sick grandmother, and had other family obligations at home in Latvia as well,” Jason says.

To get her to graduate, Jason says he spent a lot of time on the phone and on Skype talking through her different priorities.

“Considering the circumstances, she wasn’t the strongest student,” he says. “But she had grit—and she graduated.”

Eight months later, while traveling through Eastern Europe, Jason met up with her and her family.

“All my kids are superstars,” Jason says, “but she’s a really special success story.”

A new venture

Jason’s passion for people around the world had another effect on him as a young man: he spent a lot of time listening to talk radio.

“You certainly don’t see a lot of kids tuning in to AM radio.”

“But I thought it was so cool that from my living room, I could hear stories from people all over the world.”

That interest in storytelling is something Jason recently circled back to.

As he did with travel, Jason found a way to work it into his job.

A podcast is born

“After AM radio fell off the map, so to speak, I took up listening to podcasts,” Jason says.

“Having worked at iNaCA for several years now, I’ve taught and met so many incredible
students.”

“One is in Cirque du Soleil. Another is a child movie star in France. One student enrolled because her family is doing mission work in Brazil to fight human trafficking.”

“These kids are amazing,” Jason says, “and I realized nobody was documenting that.”

A few months later, Jason released the first episode of his own podcast, which showcases the stories of international iNaCA students.

7 episodes in

Jason hosts the podcast himself.

“I try not to talk much,” he says.

“I’m just there to ask the probing questions and get the students comfortable. The stories, the good stuff, comes from them.”

So far, Jason’s released 7 hour-long episodes. Four more are on the way.

Jason says he’s gotten enthusiastic feedback from early listeners.

“It’s so cool to have a student say to me, ‘I downloaded all the episodes on my phone!’”

Jason says he plans to continue producing the podcast indefinitely.

“My love for travel and radio and conversation just converged. It was the perfect storm.”

The next generation

Jason’s wife, Stephanie, also works for iNaCA.

“She likes to travel as much as I do,” he says. “Maybe more.”

The couple is expecting a baby girl this spring.

Jason says they have no plans to stay grounded after she arrives.

“Of course she will be well traveled,” he says.

“We went to Mexico City over winter break, so technically, she’s already been on her first international trip, he says, “with many, many more to come.”

Jason blogs about his world travels here.

Instructors are an integral part of teaching and learning, regardless of whether it takes place face-to-face or online. During the current crisis, many are discovering that delivering high quality teaching online requires some changes. If you are supporting instructors who are transitioning from the classroom to online, once you have a chance to come up for air we have eight strategies for effective training.

1. Work from the ground up to obtain educator buy-in

The success of any type of professional development program depends partially on the buy-in from participants. They need to believe this is being done ‘for them’ not ‘to them’.

Due to the relatively new nature of online learning, instructors might have misconceptions (e.g. about the level of rigor of online learning). To avoid this, clearly communicate important points about the transition. Using technology isn’t just an emergency response, it will be a method used in the future.

As well as referring to research when developing an online training program, ask for feedback from instructors, and make sure it’s taken into account. You could send a survey, or conduct focus groups.

2. Offer high quality professional development opportunities

Whether you are training instructors that will be teaching online or face-to-face, the same rules apply. High quality professional development is training that is:

• Ongoing
• Reflective
• Supports the construction of a professional learning community
• Based in classroom practice
• Grounded in current research
• Tailored to instructors’ specific needs and embedded in their daily lives
• Diverse, offering a wide range of learning activities

3. Give instructors authentic learning experiences

Run the training on the same platforms that instructors will be using in their class so they can experience roadblocks (e.g. signing onto the platform) or challenges (e.g. navigating content) that students might experience.

Use content that instructors will use in real life. For example, if an instructor will be teaching Science, learning that content during training will help the instructor become familiar with the types of resources or labs available online and how to navigate them.

4. Differentiate instruction and use a wide array of resources unique to online learning

When instructors transition to an online environment they will likely introduce new and different types of instruction, and these strategies should be modeled during the training.

For example, training should include both synchronous and asynchronous discussion, as well as the use of various resources including web-cameras, videos, instant messaging, and online whiteboards.

5. Online teaching pedagogy and content are important, but an online teacher training program should also focus on soft skills

In addition to online pedagogy and subject matter, instructors need to be competent in organization, time management, and self-direction.

A great deal of an online learning course is asynchronous and is therefore occurring at a student’s pace. Teachers need to know how to best organize this mode of learning, when to be available for student inquiry, and when they are “out of class time”. Conversely, instructors should also be self-directed so that they know when they are “in class time” and monitor discussion, or grade assignments. (Read more about developing these skills here)

6. Develop a community of online instructors

Developing a community gives instructors a support system as they are delivering their courses so they can share experiences and best practices. You can:

• Pair new instructors with mentor veteran instructors.
• Create the space for instructors to collaborate.
• Use online environment tools, such as discussion boards with questions posed by a veteran instructor, chat rooms that are monitored by faculty who trained the instructors, and/or asynchronous discussion.

7. Expect instructors to demonstrate mastery before they teach their own course

Given that online instruction requires active, hands on learning techniques, these should be the types of activities instructors should demonstrate as an end of training assessment.

8. Train instructors to be aware of data security

When all information in the course is being transmitted online it becomes easy to leave data vulnerable for security breaches.

• Teachers should ask students to reduce their transmission of personally identifiable information to times when it is necessary. When transmitting files, they should be locked and/or transmitted through a secure file transfer site.
• Instructors should house student background, demographic, and identifying data in a secure file, and performance data should be transmitted privately and securely.

Shadowing dad from the start

“As a little girl, I followed in my dad’s footsteps—literally,” says Holley Thomas.

“Carpentry has always been his hobby, and he had a workshop in every house we lived in.”

“I followed him around, watched him build things out of wood, and asked a lot of questions along the way.”

It’s an approach that has served Holley very well later in life.

Going to college like dad, too

When it came time to apply to college, Holley says she again followed in her father’s footsteps.

“I enrolled at Mississippi State—just like he had decades earlier.”

“But I learned very quickly that college wasn’t for me.”

After her freshman year, Holley left Mississippi State and moved back home to live with her parents.

“At that point, I didn’t know what I wanted to do in terms of a career,” Holley says, “but I was sure that a traditional four-year degree wasn’t the right path.”

Finding her own way

After a few months of soul-searching back home, Holley says she had a conversation with her dad about her future.

“He told me about a robotics program he’d heard of at the local community college,” Holley says.

“I’d always liked working with my hands, and always trusted my dad, so I made an appointment to talk to the Program Director.”

Holley says her instincts proved right.

“After our conversation, I signed up for classes.”

Degree requirements

A year and a half into her two-year robotics program, Holley says she had a surprising realization.

“As I was reviewing the course requirements for graduation, I saw a welding course on the list.”

“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’ll probably be in a hot shop with a bunch of smelly guys.’”

“But I was truly enjoying school for the first time in my life, and I was so close to finally earning my degree, so I bit the bullet and signed up.”

An unexpected love

The first day of welding class, Holley says she showed up in shorts and flip flops.

“I learned very quickly that it wasn’t the proper attire,” she says.

After that initial hiccup, Holley says, everything changed.

“The second week of class, we went to the shop to weld for the first time.”

“I fell in love that first time I struck an arc.”

“After I earned my two-year degree,” Holley says, “I stayed on an extra year to get my full welding certificate.”

More than a model employee

Today, Holley is Lead Quality Inspector at KBR, a global engineering and construction company.

During the day, she manages the welding operations on complex construction sites in Oklahoma.

Four evenings per week, she is a welding instructor, teaching courses to her KBR colleagues.

Throughout the year, Holley says she travels the country to talk to high school students about her experiences in the construction industry.

In 2015, Holley’s hard work was formally recognized when she was named Craft Professional of the Year by Associated Builders and Contractors.

She was nominated by her colleagues at KBR, who submitted an essay celebrating Holley as a top welder, a generous teacher, and a leader in her field, helping to recruit women to a traditionally male-dominated industry.

“It feels so good to know that I am viewed as a positive light for my company and for the industry overall,” Holley says.

An open mind, and an attitude to live by

Holley says she owes her professional success to two things: parents who encouraged her to pursue her own path—and a positive attitude.

“The coolest thing about my parents—and especially my dad—is that they’ve always been supportive of my siblings and me, no matter what,” Holley says.

“They encourage us to follow our dreams, and are there to help pick us up if we fall or fail.”

Holley says the personal mantra she’s developed as a welder is rooted in their positivity and open-mindedness.

“I come to work every day with a great attitude, wanting to learn something new.”

“Taking the initiative to expand my skillset makes me a better employee,” Holley says.

“And it makes me a better instructor and mentor, too.”

Looking forward to the future

Holley says that in the future, she plans to become more involved in recruiting new members to her industry.

In particular, she says, she wants to offer support, advice, and encouragement to young women considering a career in construction.

“I was once in their shoes, unsure of my future,” Holley says.

“Without that encouragement, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

“Now it’s my turn to pay it forward.”

You may have seen it splashed across your newsfeed – an X-ray of a human skull with tiny bones poking out above the neck. Bones that never used to be there.

The image came from a study published in Scientific Reports, which linked the bone deformities to excessive time spent hunched over looking at screens. Within a few days, headlines spread across the globe like missives from a dystopian future: ‘Teenagers Grow Horns From Smartphone Usage.’

Technology has changed the way we live, learn, work and communicate. It’s no surprise that a research paper suggesting it’s also reshaping our bodies went viral.

It’s equally unsurprising that the sensational headlines were quickly debunked.

The ubiquity of smartphones has fueled the ongoing debate about the effects of screen time. Even major tech companies like Google and Apple – the very professionals who build and evangelize this technology – are rolling out new products aimed at helping people track and reduce their screen time.

A Pew Research Center study found that 95 percent of American teenagers have a smartphone or access to one, and about half are online on a near constant basis. That translates to about 6.5 hours a day consuming screen media, not including time spent using media for school or homework, according to a separate survey.

So, what do we know for sure? Though the next generation isn’t at risk of developing horns, here are a few things science has confirmed about the effects of screen time.

Screen time affects sleep quality

Smartphones are such an intimate part of our lives that we’re bringing them into bed with us. A new report from Common Sense Media found that 29 percent of teens sleep with their mobile devices in bed with them and an additional 39 percent sleep with their device within arm’s reach. Though it may seem harmless, notifications are hard to resist – nearly 40 percent of teens said they wake up to check their phones at least once during the night. Studies have shown that the light emitted from devices impacts the body’s circadian timing, making it more difficult to fall and stay asleep.

Screen time should be very limited for young children

Children are increasingly learning how to use technology before they can talk, walk or read. But research suggests that exposing young children to too much screen time during formative early years can impede their development. A recent study found that, on average, children ages two to five spend two to three hours a day in front of a screen—and that increased screen time is linked to behavioral, social and language delays. For reference, The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends one hour per day of high-quality programming alongside a parent for that age group.

Uninterrupted screen time affects vision

Ophthalmologists agree that digital eyestrain is a real problem. Kids spending too much time on screens can experience dry eye, headaches and blurry vision. These symptoms are usually temporary – and a result of not blinking enough while looking at a device. The solution? Take a break. The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends taking a 20-second break for every 20 minutes of screen time.

Screen time keeps us more connected

Experts agree that one of the great benefits of our digital lives is the ability to connect with people anywhere in the world at any time. A 2018 survey of teens’ social media use found that “connecting with friends and family” was, by a long shot, the primary reason teens believe social media has had a positive effect on people their age. Teens who responded directly to the survey also emphasized how social media enables connections with new, likeminded people. As one 15-year-old girl wrote, “It has given many kids my age an outlet to express their opinions and emotions and connect with people who feel the same way.”

All screen time is not equal

It’s easy to think of screen time as all-encompassing, but the reality is much more nuanced. A University of Michigan study of children ages four to 11 found that “how children use the devices, not how much time they spend on them, is the strongest predictor of emotional or social problems connected with screen addiction.” In other words: it’s all about the content. Aimlessly scrolling through social media and watching TV are common examples of passive screen time that don’t benefit cognitive development. But active screen time that uses technology for creative, educational and engaging purposes can significantly benefit children, and should be encouraged as technology continues to play a prominent role in their lives.

Many of us are having to move teaching quickly online (tips here if you are still setting up your course). Once you have your technology in place, take a deep breath. Teaching online requires different types of interactions with students. We’ve simplified what works into nine strategies based on research that will help set you and your students up for success in your newly online course.

1. Know the technology

• This is new to everyone, so be prepared to troubleshoot and let your students know you are working on it. Take an hour to familiarize yourself with the technology. Most companies are offering additional training right now.
• Be very clear to students about where they should go for technical support (good digital technologies will have support services). Make the contact information readily available, and be prepared to direct students there if they come to you.

2. Expect the unexpected and remain flexible

• At some point technology will fail, whether it is a video chat not connecting or assignment and/or resource links not working properly.
• Have a backup plan for all assignments and assessments that rely on technology.
• Be transparent in your communication to students about technology failure. For example, put a policy in place that outlines the actions students should take if they are unable to submit assignments due to technical issues.
• Don’t be afraid to solve technical challenges in real time, such as during synchronous discussions or collaborative real-time activities, to save time.

3. Create and maintain a strong presence

• Send a message to all students, by video if possible, to welcome them to online learning and reassure them.
• Use video chat rather than basic instant message when interacting with students.
• Get the students talking by beginning discussions in the discussion board, and then contributing rapid, regular, and open responses to questions.
• Use non-verbal communication such as emojis.
• Complete your profile with professional and personal traits.

4. Set clear expectations for the course

• Online learning is new to the students as well. Make it clear to students how their grade in the course will be determined now (participation often makes up a much larger portion of the grade than in face to face classes).
• Set expectations for response time. For example, make it clear that you will respond to emails within one business day, otherwise students may expect you to answer an email within a few hours, and disengage if you don’t.
• Share resources for students on how to be an online learner. We have one from college students and from professors.

5. Establish a sense of comfort and develop a community of learners

• Students are looking to you to set the tone. Demonstrate enthusiasm and excitement about teaching the course to alleviate fear, anxiety, and isolation.
• Humanize yourself by posting a welcome video, a biography, photos that tell stories about what you are doing to keep busy during social isolation, links to news articles or video clips.
• Encourage each student to personalize their homepage and spend time going around the class asking students to share information about what they have posted.
• Incorporate instant messaging, web cameras, blogs and vlogs.
• Ask questions that empower participants to question each other, and elicit rich discussion.
• Respond to the community as a whole rather than directing all responses to individual participants outside of the community.

6. Promote reflection and communication through quality asynchronous discussion

• Return to posted topics that have not been fully discussed and promote contribution and reflection.
• Monitor participation and contact students individually if they are either not participating, or are taking over conversations and not permitting contributions from other individuals.

7. Have a good balance of active leader and active observer

You will begin the course as the manager of the learning community. As the course progresses, slowly transfer the responsibility to the community of learners. The online community building steps in point 4 will help with this. You should also gradually retract further out of communal discussions.

8. Request regular feedback and be mindful of misinterpretation

• Check in with your students to see how things are going. You can do formal or informal surveys to assess attitudes, workload and challenges. Make course correction as necessary — we’re all learning.
• Use ad hoc quizzes to assess learner comprehension of material.

9. Regularly check content resources and applications

• Regularly check all links, resources, modules, and activities. Online content can move or change, which can lead to disengagement.
• Assist students who are having difficulty navigating course links or managing the material spanning across various web pages.
• Model the process of navigating to websites that are not embedded in the course, and demonstrate how to appropriately manage keeping track of navigation when jumping from site to site.

Getting the partnership right

We’ve partnered with Wake Forest University for years. For example, we support its nationally respected online graduate program in counseling. It’s been a success for everyone — especially students, who are achieving strong academic and career outcomes.

So, when Wake Forest’s School of Medicine sought to deliver two new, purpose-built degree programs, it was natural for them to talk to us. However, Wake Forest’s School of Medicine has distinct capabilities and priorities.

Its entrepreneurial leaders asked us: How can we customize a partnership that reflects our internal resources and capabilities? How can we use our ability to provide funding to help launch these online programs?

We offer multiple models for delivering our best-in-class services. Together, we built an innovative, co-investment agreement that gets the risk/reward balance right for both parties.

The final contract promotes shared interests and alignment (like traditional revenue share agreements) but Wake Forest’s upfront contributions allow us to share the financial risk. That way, we created a shorter contract commitment that will allow us to make changes, if the market changes quickly.

Meanwhile, Wake Forest benefits from the same comprehensive online program management services that are already working well for the University — from our strong national marketing expertise to one-on-one student coaching and support through graduation.

Innovative curriculum to transform healthcare

Launching this fall, these online programs are a perfect example of an institution that’s found an unmet opportunity to use its strengths and positively impact the lives of students and society. Let’s look at each one:

• Wake Forest’s Master of Science in Clinical Research Management will empower professionals throughout the clinical research field to move research and development forward, advance health and save lives. Through an engaging, supportive and interdisciplinary online program environment, participants will learn how to select and apply relevant scientific knowledge, critically analyze research designs, help construct/lead clinical trials and improve patient care.
• Wake Forest’s Master of Science in Healthcare Leadership will prepare a new generation to transform healthcare for the better. Graduates will be exceptionally qualified to lead their organization and improve patient outcomes. They’ll be ready to address everything from strategy to culture; change management to innovation.

Online education is about helping more people thrive. That’s what Wake Forest is doing — and we’re excited to partner with them.

To learn more about our customizable models, world-class expertise, and the resources we offer, contact us.

Learn more about Wake Forest’s new online master’s programs in Clinical Research Management and Healthcare Leadership, and the other biomedical graduate programs offered by the Wake Forest University Graduate School of Arts and Science.

As institutions analyze their student demographics, they’re seeing that 40% of today’s college students are at least 25 years old, 73% have jobs, and 21% work 20 hours a week or more. They’re not always present on campus — they’re digital learners, relying on online tools and tech more and more every year. Almost three million students enroll in online classes, and another three million have at least some online coursework.

They’re parents, veterans, and caretakers for older family members. Unlike “traditional” students, who only make up a fraction of the population of potential learners, many start their higher education much later than the age of 18. And as a growing force in the educational space, they’re a cause to rethink how we approach teaching. To that end, we’ve spoken to non-traditional students and their professors to find out how tech can support (and fail to support) their learning.

How edtech can support non-traditional students

1. Make lessons accessible to all

Alyssa Kropp, an integrated design instructor, discovered that using programs that bridged the gap between different types of students was a foundational step toward moving her lesson plans forward.

Because all of her students use laptops or smartphones to participate, her most successful materials involve visual, auditory, and closed captioning approaches that attune to diverse learning styles.

“A lot of students are new to design, and so I always encourage online materials — they are interested in being exposed to different methodologies.”

Kropp has taught many international students, ESL students, and students who have started their college careers later than average. Accessibility within digital learning tools is incredibly important to her: “My students come from India, Vietnam, Dubai, the UK — all over. They come from a variety of economic backgrounds and social classes, which brings a different style of diversity.”

Tip for admin: Engaging work can be assigned online, giving your faculty the leeway to develop interactive lessons during the classroom hours. If the tools that you are using for non-traditional students aren’t successful, give your faculty opportunities to incorporate digital learning materials and change their approach.

2. Allow for mobility and class access on the fly

Non-traditional students tend to take different approaches toward making headway in their courses. For Ryan Glassman, a computer science student, his coursework and online class schedule require him to study at unusual times.

“More and more of my lectures are being video recorded, which is nice when you have a huge computer science class. I can catch up on those lectures online, which is a lot better than asking another student for notes.”

Digital tools allow Glassman to manage his time more efficiently while living in a hectic city landscape, “I’m cognizant of how much time I spend commuting each day, which is about an hour and a half each way. I try and relegate classes that have a ton of reading, and I restrict my reading to my commutes.”

“It’s harder for me than most to make use of physical resources like TA hours or review sessions on weekends because I don’t live on campus. So I try to make as much use of the remote stuff as I possibly can.”

Tip for admin: Hold training sessions for faculty on how to provide online course forums that allow students to ask questions remotely. Other students, TAs, or professors can respond with answers. The online forums provide an easy way for non-traditional students to speak up without feeling embarrassed.

3. Engage at your own pace

More than anything, smart tech opens up opportunities to improve a student’s higher education experience, no matter what else they’re juggling. Brianna Maldonado, a United States Marine Corp veteran and student of mental health counseling, is a visual learner who seeks out online videos in addition to her studies.

Maldonado’s unique style of learning leads her to watch educational videos online that supplement her clinical studies: “We’re learning a lot about psychology theorists right now, and online videos can condense materials that are easy to understand. I can pause on keywords that will be useful for midterms.”

Tip for admin: Visual learners thrive with supplemental video materials and in-person engagement. Remind faculty how meaningful one-on-one interactions with non-traditional students can be. Often, digital learning materials provide instructors with data and insights into student learning and study habits they can use to help provide personalized support to these students during office hours.

When you ask the right questions of your non-traditional classroom, you become a step closer toward a pathway to student achievement. For more strategies for enhancing learning for this demographic with digital tools, visit Pearson’s website on institutional leadership.

Education Dive recently explored how Maryville, Arizona State, and the University of Maine are igniting (or reigniting) growth via online education. They know the economy won’t stay strong forever — and even if it does, there will be fewer 18-22-year-olds to fill campus classrooms. Online learning is a key to their strategic response.

Ed Dive makes powerful points about the opportunity in adult learning (30 million potential students). Also: the importance of scale and infrastructure in online programs, the investments required to succeed, and the tough competition.

Based on our experience running 350 online programs with our university partners, we agree — and we’d stress that you can succeed.

One way, as our partner at Maryville told Ed Dive, is to “find the unmet need.” Right now, sizable opportunities exist if you know where to look.

Next, widen your geographical reach. You can draw students from across the country, and the right national marketing can have a “halo effect” on campus enrollments, too.

Once a student’s enrolled, retain them — by helping them progress, graduate, an achieve their career goals.

And remember, it’s easier to build a great online program with a strategic partner who can fill in the gaps wherever you need it, whether that’s in strategy, investment, marketing, recruitment, student support, or across the board.

We believe it’s worth your time to go read Ed Dive’s article. Once you do, tell us what you think. And let’s talk. This topic is critically important, and so is this conversation.