American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) American Democracy Project (ADP) established the National Blended Course Consortium (NBCC), a multi-campus effort to develop and disseminate two innovative online courses, created in the Argos Education adaptive platform, used by Inspark, and compatible with any learning management system (LMS):
"Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21st Century" is an all-in-one digital textbook and interactive course, pushing the boundaries of an online high-impact practice (HIP) for students in their first year and beyond. Global Challenges is project based and relies on open-educational resources (OER) from a variety of disciplines, making it suitable for all majors.
"Science for Citizens" is a series of fully online modules designed to complement other required materials for a general education and interdisciplinary first-year courses, and has been empirically demonstrated to improve students' critical thinking skills.
Leveraging the adaptive technology of the Argos Education platform, these high-quality, low-cost, multidisciplinary courses create high-impact intellectual experiences to develop students’ civic and critical thinking skills. Originally funded by a four-year grant from the Teagle Foundation , the teams leading this project leveraged the power of faculty collaboration and technology to create this series of courses that begin with problems and issues, not disciplines, capturing student interest and involvement.
Students are engaged when they are interested, involved, passionate, when they feel what they are doing is meaningful and has value, and when academic courses and programs connect to students’ core concerns, life experiences, and deeply held values. These courses provide a model for doing just that with an adaptive framework that leverages technology to enhance student cognition and improve online learning experiences. How? We translated one-on-one conversations with students and instructors from real classrooms into the adaptive digital platform and student experience.
This project originated with the American Association for State Colleges and University's (AASCU) American Democracy Project (ADP) — a network of 296 public colleges and universities serving 2.7 million students across 48 states plus the District of Columbia that is committed to preparing students with the knowledge, skills and experiences to be informed and engaged citizens. AASCU and ADP have worked diligently to build civic engagement as a lifelong practice and to instill civic agency across their institutions. ADP was established in 2003 as a nonpartisan initiative of AASCU in partnership with The New York Times. Since its inception, ADP has organized national and regional meetings; a series of national initiatives; a national assessment project; and hundreds of campus initiatives, including voter education and registration, curriculum revision projects, campus audits, special days of action and reflection, speaker series, and award programs. Learn more about ADP at AASCU here.
Today, the digital courses are offered through Inspark Science Network.