We are beginning to see positive indicators of Active + Adaptive’s impact on students’ academic performance. If this trend continues, we will support the expansion into more sections of the existing A+A courses along with new courses & disciplines. Here are some of our thoughts on how to further leverage this framework and ultimately improve the student experience at PSU.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PATHWAYS

A common application of adaptive courseware is to provide students the chance to review essential prerequisite concepts at the beginning of a course. When applied to each course along a student’s pathway towards a degree, the courseware could create the scaffolding for students to continually practice and build upon prior knowledge.

A MAPPING OF COMPETENCIES WITHIN A COURSE

Employers and professional schools evaluate candidates based on the transferable skills they developed in their undergraduate education. A student’s transcript does not provide the level of transparency they are seeking, however. Adaptive courseware could provide a solution. Once faculty identify which relevant skills students develop in their adaptive course, we can help them map these skills to individual assessment questions. Students’ performance on these assessment questions would provide evidence of achievement for each skill, which can be added to an eportfolio.

FLEXIBLE DEPLOYMENT OF ADAPTIVE LESSONS MODULES

Faculty are developing adaptive lessons which build students’ proficiency in core abilities like writing and research. From these efforts, adaptive lessons could be available to all students anywhere along their academic journey. Faculty, in turn, could insert these lessons into their blended course to give students needed practice prior to writing assignments and research projects.

DIGITAL ASSISTANT FOR STUDENTS

Our current pilots investigate how best to use analytics from adaptive courseware to support human intervention for struggling students. In addition to this human element, we want to better understand how students interact with the courseware and how it can provide them with meaningful, real time feedback and prompt them to stay on track.