Dive Brief:
- Faculty and course developers at a range of colleges have years of experience designing and implementing adaptive elements, creating a body of knowledge for their peers.
- Campus Technology reports some faculty are finding adaptive learning courses to be significantly more work, while others, including those whose institutions use course developers to lighten the load, see the new style as equally time-consuming — though in different ways.
- As schools continue to offer courses with adaptive elements, they will have more data to say conclusively whether the design is making a difference in student performance.
Dive Insight:
A number of companies offer adaptive learning software of various kinds. Shoreline Community College and Northeastern University are two schools using CogBooks, the University of Central Florida used RealizeIt, and Collin College in Texas uses Knewton. While some argue the technology has a long way to come to make an impact, many see great potential in it — especially for online and competency-based courses.