Nationwide initiative aims to provide innovative courseware designed together with students of color to eliminate race and income as predictors of success
Portland, Oregon/ April 13, 2022 – Lumen Learning, a leading provider of teaching and learning materials, today announced it has been awarded a significant grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further its work in creating and implementing equitable courseware. Lumen was chosen as a result of its long history of creating change in education and providing innovative, high-quality and affordable digital learning courseware to students and educators nationwide. Since its founding, Lumen Learning has set industry benchmarks through its commitment to increase equity, access and affordability in education. This grant will extend this work, focusing specifically on eliminating race and income as predictors of success for students. The selection process for the grant was highly competitive and included dozens of publishers, edtech organizations and institutions of higher learning.
Today’s announced grant will support Lumen Learning to create new courseware for Introduction to Statistics that can serve as an exemplar of courseware centered on equity that makes a meaningful difference in student success. To achieve this, Lumen has established partnerships with Minority Serving Institutions across the United States, allowing Lumen to work directly with their target student demographic in co-creating relevant courseware materials through student-led user testing centers. Both Rockland Community College in New York and Santa Ana College in California have opened user testing centers on their campuses to assist Lumen Learning in gaining valuable insights and helping establish relatable courses for Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and low-income students. Additionally, Lumen Learning has a partnership with Howard University to gain guidance and feedback on course and platform development, learning from Howard’s rich history of success supporting Black students. This game-changing approach will set a precedent for how to better personalize education for students of the future.
“We are extremely grateful to have received this incredible grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This will allow Lumen Learning to aggressively and purposefully advance racial and socioeconomic equity through rapid innovation of our proven courseware and faculty professional development experiences,” says Kim Thanos, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumen Learning. “This grant will propel us faster to our goal of implementing more relevant digital learning and improving outcomes for Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and low-income students. Improving outcomes for these students, whose needs have not been met by existing solutions, is an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ challenge.”
Specifically, the grant will provide funds to create new Introduction to Statistics courseware that will replace traditional textbook packages and provide students with a rich, interactive, and personalized learning experience, as well as a complete range of support for faculty members. Introduction to Statistics has been identified as one of 20 “gateway courses,” which are foundational, lower-level courses that large numbers of students are at risk of failing and that lead to significant dropout rates between the first and second year of college. Introduction to Statistics has both high annual enrollments and a high failure rate of 24% nationally. The implementation of Lumen’s unique model in this critical course can have a strong impact on increasing efficacy for all students.
The grant is part of the Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success strategy, which is dedicated to ensuring that many more of today’s students complete their certificates and degrees and eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student success. This goal directly aligns with Lumen’s mission to advance racial and socioeconomic educational equity. The foundation’s approach is built on research showing that active learning, including through digital courseware, reduces drop, fail, and withdraw (DFW) rates when compared to the traditional lecture format. Further, blended learning courses that combine classroom instruction with digital courseware generate the most impactful results for students. Lumen’s evidence-based programs are proven to build not only more effective learners, but more impactful teachers.
“Key insights from this work will inform subsequent courseware development and help us advance our mission to support unprecedented learning for all students across a broad range of gateway courses,” says Dr. David Wiley, Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning. “Investment from this grant will deepen our expertise in equity-centered design. We believe that the best courses foster community and connection and promote a sense of belonging where all students feel represented and appreciated.”
Additional partners in this endeavor include Digital Promise and The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). Lumen’s Introduction to Statistics courseware will be ready for piloting in January 2023 and will be broadly available in fall 2023.
If you’re interested in being part of the development or piloting process, please visit info.lumenlearning.com/statistics. OR, if you’d like to see a demo, sign up here.