Research
Reading Research on Learning: In Pursuit of the Holy Grail
In Pursuit of the Holy Grail Chapter 13 Dr. David Wiley, Co-Founder, Chief Academic Officer This chapter reviews Bloom’s classic 1984 article on the “2 sigma problem.” Personally, I find this article to be one [...]
Reading Research on Learning: What You Know Determines What You Learn
What You Know Determines What You Learn Chapter 6 Dr. David Wiley, Co-Founder, Chief Academic Officer This chapter is about Ausbel’s 1960 paper on “advance organizers” (and no, it’s not “advanced organizers”). The key insight [...]
An Update On Our Community-Driven Continuous Improvement Efforts
Bob Bodily, PhD, Director of Data Science & Research In January of 2020, we started an experimental community-driven continuous improvement project with a few of our Waymaker courses. This was the continuous improvement process we [...]
Supporting Teacher-Student Relationships to Improve Student Learning
By David Wiley, PhD, Chief Academic Officer and Robert Bodily, PhD, Senior Data Scientist A substantive body of research demonstrates the incredible impact teachers can have on student learning when they know where their students are in [...]
A Framework for Continuous Improvement of OER
By David Wiley, Chief Academic Officer The potential of the "data revolution" in teaching and learning, just as in other sectors, is to create much more timely feedback loops for tracking the effectiveness of a [...]
Students Save Thousands Using OER
Providing academic research to back up claims about cost savings attributed to open educational resources, this study documents the textbook cost to students before and after OER adoption at eight institutions in a variety [...]
OER Impacts Student Success Metrics
This extensive, multi-institution study provides evidence that students in OER courses perform as well as or better than students in courses using commercial textbooks with regard to withdrawal rates, passing with a C or better, [...]
Using OER Can Boost Tuition Revenue
At Virginia's Tidewater Community College (TCC), OER courses in TCC's "Z-Degree" program have lower withdrawal rates compared to those using commercial materials. Students in "Z-courses" also register for more credits than their counterparts who are [...]