Dale Johnson

Via the Observatory of Educational Innovation

Dale John, manager of the Adaptive General Education Program for EdPlus at ASU, shared a few of the things ASU is doing to create better courses with more meaningful learning outcomes.

Johnson, who studied at ASU and Harvard, currently works with faculty and staff to advance and expand the use of adaptive courseware in introductory classes at ASU. The ultimate goal is to improve student success by implementing adaptive learning.

"The historical process is that teachers have to wait until the first exam to understand how students are performing. With our system, we have the information early in the course,” Johnson said.

One thing’s for sure, classroom sizes won’t be getting bigger anytime soon. Johnson said that ASU is moving away from huge rooms with passive students, and moving towards classrooms that are smaller and have more team activities. Johnson said that ASU has been following this process to actively improve courses:

• Implement active learning with the objective of encouraging critical thinking and problem solving.
• Make sure students possess mastery over a topic by helping 90% of students get a C or better.
• Grow student retention by reducing the course dropouts.
• Supply teachers with applicable data that can help identify struggling students early on.

As ASU continues to implement adaptive learning through this process, teachers will gain more assistance and students will be better prepared to succeed.

Read more about adaptive learning