Digital content is a powerful tool for learning enablement. With the planning, teaching techniques, and support, colleges and universities can successfully integrate digital content and online learning into their learning ecosystem and student experience. This discussion focuses on how participants can use digital content to promote equity and inclusion and improve retention rates and outcomes.
Research finds that 65 percent of students skip buying textbooks due to cost, even though 90 percent report this negatively impacts their success. This puts some students at a disadvantage and creates inequities in the student experience. To best support all students, higher education institutions need innovative strategies that promote the affordability of course materials.
At its core, digital content is a powerful tool for learning enablement. With the proper planning, teaching techniques, and support, colleges and universities can successfully integrate digital content and online learning into their learning ecosystem and student experience. Moreover, digital learning boasts benefits like rich search functionalities that allow students to quickly get the information they need, analytics that colleges and universities drive retention, and cost savings by automating administration workflows.
This session explores survey findings focused on improving the student learning experience with digital content. Attendees will gain insight into what role digital content plays in students’ journey, how deeply content is integrated within the students’ learning experience, and how to analyze students’ knowledge, usage, and outcomes. Attendees will take away actionable tips for using digital content to improve retention rates and outcomes.
The discussion focuses on how participants can use digital content to improve retention rates and outcomes, including:
- Digital and hybrid learning: learnings from the last academic year.
- Digital learning requires strategic planning.
- Eliminating barriers to learning helps increase student retention in online education.
- Digital content supports a universal learning design.
- Data should drive decision-making and inform improvements.
The presenters will guide attendees through each discussion point to help them identify gaps in their digital content strategy. As a result, participants will be armed with the knowledge needed to make the business case for implementing a robust digital content student to drive retention and enable students to achieve better experiences and outcomes.
The presenters will use the following to support the presentation:
- A student survey conducted by a university during the 2020/2021 academic year.
- Data science analysis found a positive relationship between usage of digital content and improved academic performance. Students who used a digital platform achieved an increased mean module mark of 2.8 percentage points higher on average.
- Students who were assigned more course texts through a digital content platform achieved better academic performance. Students who were assigned one textbook only, on average achieved a mean module mark of 60 percent, and this increased to 66.5 percent for students assigned four textbooks through a digital platform.