I recently attended the ALMAP Summer Meeting. ALMAP is a program funded by the Gates Foundation, with the goals described in this RFP webinar presentation from March 2013:
We believe that well implemented personalized & adaptive learning has the potential to dramatically improve student outcomes
Our strategy to accelerate the adoption of Adaptive Learning in higher education is to invest in market change drivers… …resulting in strong, healthy market growth
As the program is in its mid stage (without real results to speak of yet), I’ll summarize Tony Bates style with summary of program and some notes at the end. Consider this my more-than-140-character response to Glenda Morgan:
@PhilOnEdTech was the agenda of the Gates Summit online at all?
— Glenda Morgan (@morganmundum) June 30, 2014
Originally planned for 10 institutions, the Gates Foundation funded 14 separate grantees at a level of ~$100,000 each. The courses must run for 3 sequential semesters with greater than 500 students total (per school), and the program will take 24 months total (starting June 2013). The awards were given to the following schools:
- Arizona State University Online
- Saint Leo University
- St Petersburg College
- Excelsior College / Missouri State University St Louis / Metropolitan State University of Denverc
- SUNY Empire State College
- Rio Salado College
- Northeastern University / Shoreline Community College
- North Carolina State University
- University of California at Davis
- Essex County College
- University of North Georgia
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- Capella University
- Savannah Technical College