OLC Announces 2017 Digital Learning Innovation Award Recipients

NEWBURYPORT, Mass., Nov. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) today announced the recipients of the 2017 OLC Digital Learning Innovation Awards (#DLIAward). The awards were presented to honorees today during the OLC Accelerate conference, in Orlando.

"This year's field of OLC Digital Learning Innovation Award recipients reveals the diverse challenges being addressed through innovative uses of digital courseware," said Kathleen S. Ives, D.M., CEO and executive director, Online Learning Consortium. "We congratulate the honorees and thank them for sharing their success stories, which we look forward to sharing with the OLC community in the hopes of inspiring even more innovative approaches to advancing student success."

Now in its second year, the DLIAward program recognizes exemplary higher education faculty-led teams and institutions for advancing student success through the adoption of digital courseware in undergraduate programs. The award program is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success Program.

The 2017 OLC DLIAward Recipients

The 2017 class of DLIAward recipients demonstrated innovative approaches in addressing important challenges and barriers, including: improving student outcomes; altering instructional approach and pedagogy; minimizing costs of textbooks and tuition; targeting bottleneck courses; improving learning efficiency; enhancing student support; and decreasing time to course credit and degree completion.

Accompanied by a $100,000 monetary reward, the "2017 OLC Digital Learning Innovation Award: Institution" has been awarded to the following three institutions:

• National Louis University, for its use of Acrobatiq in its Harrison Professional Pathways Program, a research-driven, innovative bachelor's degree program that provides access for all students, with an affordable price tag.
• Southern New Hampshire University, for its collaboration with Soomo Learning and MindEdge in the development of four First Year Experience (FYE) courses.
• Western Governors University, for its use of Acrobatiq in a specialized online course focusing on the development of affective skills for adult learner, undergraduate nursing students.

Accompanied by a $10,000 monetary reward, the "2017 OLC Digital Learning Innovation Award: Faculty-Led Team" has been awarded to 10 faculty-led teams from the following institutions:

• California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), for its use of McGraw-Hill's Connect platform to enhance student success in a bottleneck engineering course using a flipped classroom pedagogy.
• College of the Sequoias, for its use of REVEL to help increase assignment completion, comprehension of material and overall success of under-prepared students.
• Glendale Community College, for its use of Smart Sparrow to improve academic persistence in first-generation community college students.
• Merrimack College, for its use of Pearson's MyMathLab in the redesign of a gateway mathematics course, in order to increase student success by making it more student-centered, personalized and cognizant of student learning preferences.
• Oakton Community College, for its use of BioBeyond digital textbook program and a grant from Inspark/Smart Sparrow to provide affordable textbook access and increase student engagement for a high-enrollment gateway biology course.
• Oakton Community College, for its use of Pearson's MyMathLab in extensive course redesign of its ROAD Math developmental math program.
• Quinnipiac University, for its use of Acrobatiq in an online Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program featuring personalized learning for increased degree completion outcomes.
• Richard Bland College of William and Mary, for its use of ALEKS to improve student outcomes in developmental mathematics courses through individualized learning pathways.
• Salt Lake Community College, for its use of OpenStax Tutor to help disadvantaged students improve their success in two important general education courses: Sociology and Biology.
• University of New England, for its use of McGraw Hill's Connect courseware and SmartBook/LearnSmart, Anatomy and Physiology Revealed and Physiology Interactive Lab Simulations to improve student learning outcomes and retention in a large restructured gateway Anatomy & Physiology course for Allied Health majors.

Detailed descriptions of the digital courseware initiatives of the 2017 OLC DLIAward honorees can be viewed online at https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/about/olc-awards/2017-digital-learning-innovation-awards.

A call for submissions for the 2018 DLIAward competition will be announced in early 2018. More information about the program is available at https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/about/olc-awards/dlia. 

About Online Learning Consortium

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner ? anyone, anywhere, anytime. OLC inspires innovation and quality through an extensive set of resources, including, best-practice publications, quality benchmarking, leading-edge instruction, community-driven conferences, practitioner-based and empirical research and expert guidance. The growing OLC community includes faculty members, administrators, trainers, instructional designers, and other learning professionals, as well as educational institutions, professional societies and corporate enterprises. Visit http://onlinelearningconsortium.org for more information.

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SOURCE Online Learning Consortium