The Learning Technology Center (LTC) is sponsoring a project that will support five instructors in their exploration of Cerego’s adaptive learning platform. With the use of Cerego, the goal is to reduce DFWI rates – particularly for underrepresented minority (URM) students in their courses. If this is something you are interested in joining, keep
reading!

What is Adaptive Learning?

Adaptive learning offers an individualized learning experience for students. Instructors are able to customize their course for students through activities and assessments. This system continually adapts content and assessments based on a student’s performance. Students are able to gain feedback as well as additional learning material in order to gain a full understanding of course material.

Cerego, an Adaptive Learning Platform:

Cerego is an adaptive learning platform that instructors can use to actively engage their students and assess their learning throughout the course of the semester. With Cerego, instructors can create content for students to work through at their individual learning level. Knowledge is tested through the use of multiple choice and true/false questions, flashcards, fill – in- the – blank passages, and interactive figures. Cerego adapts to an individual’s strengths and weaknesses by honing in on the specific concepts that each individual student needs more practice with and then practice is distributed over time. This process can help remove the pressure of learning by providing content that is
customized to individual students’ needs and notifying students when they should return to refresh their knowledge. Students are able to track their individual progress over time and instructors can track their students’ progress as well, allowing instructors to identify where improvements can be made at the individual and class level.

Cerego can help instructors to:
· Support and encourage students
· Reinforce students’ persistence
· Provide students with feelings of “instructor presence” within the course
· Figure out where students are falling short and determine what instructors and         students can do to turn it around

Purpose of this Project:

Participants in this project will use Cerego to provide a personalized, adaptive learning solution to increase success for all students, particularly those in courses with high DFWI rates. More specifically, Cerego will be implemented to increase student success and improve retention rates in courses that show large equity gaps related to URM, Pell-eligible, or first generation student populations. Cerego will be used by instructors in a course that they offer both fall and spring semester to help support and encourage students to be persistent in their learning and to provide reinforcement, as a solution to mending the equity gap.

Please review the requirements for participation in this project:

Summer 2019

• Attend faculty development sessions with LTC staff (dates TBD).

Fall 2019

• Conduct at least one course using adaptive learning.
• Complete early semester check in with LTC staff.
• Support the LTC in administering an end-of-semester (IRB approved) survey about the course to students.

Winterim 2020

• Complete one enhancement to the course that will be used in Spring 2020.

Spring 2020

• Conduct one course using adaptive learning, with the enhancement discussed, and check in with LTC staff.
• Support the LTC in administering an end-of-semester (IRB approved) survey about the course to students.
• Complete a presentation on how Cerego facilitated instructor-student interactions as well as students’ outcomes in the course, at an LTC event. 

Interested? Apply here.

If you have any questions about these sessions, please reach out to the UW-W Learning Technology Center.