Using Equity-Centered Design to Promote Equitable Student Outcomes

In 2022, Lumen announced it had received a major grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to support the creation of courseware for introductory statistics classes that eliminates race and income as predictors of student success - resulting in truly equitable outcomes for students.

Research over the past decade has shown that faculty adoption of OER reliably leads to cost savings for students. However, faculty adoption of OER does not reliably lead to improved outcomes for students. The most common result of research on the effects of OER adoption is "the same outcomes at significantly reduced cost." If your goal is saving students money, then adopting OER is a terrific strategy. If your goal is consistently creating more equitable outcomes, adopting OER alone will not suffice.

In order to achieve our goal of eliminating race and income as predictors of student success, we knew we had to do more than simply promote the adoption of open textbooks. Consequently, Lumen set out to combine (1) OER, (2) technology that supports faculty and students engaging in evidence-based teaching and learning practices, and (3) professional development in an integrated courseware package that could reliably eliminate both race and income as predictors of student success.

In this webinar we will share our progress on the grant to date, including:

• our approach to equity-centered design and our innovative student co-design model
• our evidence-based teaching practices framework;
• a demonstration of specific features in the Lumen One platform that are designed to promote belonging;
• and early feedback from pilot participants.

We'll also look ahead to the future roadmap for other courses that will be available in the Lumen One platform in Fall 2023 and beyond.