From the New Media Consortium:
New Media Consortium (NMC) hosted the Personalized Learning & Student Success Summit at SXSWedu on March 7-9 in Austin, Texas.
The summit convened grantees and partners of the Postsecondary Strategy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and served as a call-to-action for education leaders to first imagine if and then commit to trying new, evidence-driven to bolster student success for first generation and low-income students in higher education. With the imagine if theme continuing as the underpinning philosophy, this report summarizes the conversations and ideas that unfolded, emphasizing the need for collective action at scale and setting the stage for the NMC’s Personalized Learning Initiative.
At the heart of the series of events was the notion that in the next ten years, the US is going to need to grow the number of college graduates to 40 million. Unfortunately at the current success rates and capacity, nation’s postsecondary institutions will fall short of that need by some 11 million graduates. Nearly half of students who most aspire to filling that need end up dropping out — students disproportionally from low income, minority, immigrant, or single parent families, and other disadvantaged groups. Imagine if the network of leading institutions, organizations, and companies could catalyze solutions to address this shortage, increasing access and equity all over the nation.
The summary report explores how the event provoked thinking and dialog about how to do that. More than 100 organizations committed to expanding student success, 177 individuals representing those organizations, and 79 outstanding presenters came together for three days of conversations and workshops in the middle of one of the fastest growing educational events in the country. All of them were devoted to exploring innovative and proven ideas and engaged in crafting solutions for widespread implementation. Over 1,600 people — almost a quarter of the entire SXSWedu audience — joined them by taking part in one or more of the 11 sessions that were part of this event.
Direct to Summary Report (7 pages; PDF)
See Also: NMC Launches iOS and Android Apps for the 2016 NMC Horizon Report
About Gary Price
