Lumen Learning User Testing Center to Examine Equity in OER Solutions

Open educational resources provider Lumen Learning is partnering with Rockland Community College to launch a user testing center that will gauge the effectiveness and cultural relevance of the company's OER solutions, particularly for low-income and minority students. Rockland is a minority-serving institution of about 9,000 students, part of the State University of New York system.

The testing center will employ paid student interns to learn about Lumen products, identify questions to investigate, recruit peers to participate and run the tests. The goal: to use the experience and feedback of a broad range of students to inform Lumen's equity-centered design process, according to a news announcement.  

"Education companies try to create products that work for everyone," explained Kim Thanos, CEO at Lumen, in a statement. "The reality is that the needs and experiences of our students are not monolithic, and our solutions cannot be either. At Lumen, our mission is to enable unprecedented learning for all students. Today, race and income are often predictors of how students will persist in courses. If we want to change that, we have to better understand the needs and challenges faced by our Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income students, and invite them to the table to actively participate in designing solutions."

Students will also be an integral part of analyzing the testing data, noted Carie Page, senior product manager for Lumen. "When you're not a student, it's easy to have blind spots. Our goal is that the interns will enrich our understanding of the students' experiences, in particular the experiences of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income students. Interns will interpret the results as students. This approach will bring student voices into the process to interpret the data through their unique perspectives. Students will also connect their work directly to career options and job skills."

Lumen said it will open additional testing centers at other MSIs over the next year. "We plan to create this user testing structure, replicate it on other campuses and share what we learn with the field broadly," said Thanos. "We believe this approach can improve Lumen's solutions, expand the models for equity-centered design and create a lasting impact for the participating students. We want the interns and the testers to be themselves and to know that their voices are valued and need to be heard."

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Three cubes of noticeably increasing sizes are arranged in a straight row on a subtle abstract background

    A Sense of Scale

    Gardner Campbell explores the notion of scale in education and shares some of his own experience "playing with scale" — scaling up and/or scaling down — in an English course at VCU.

  • AI-inspired background pattern with geometric shapes and fine lines in muted blue and gray on a dark background

    IBM Releases Granite 3.0 Family of Advanced AI Models

    IBM has introduced its most advanced family of AI models to date, Granite 3.0, at its annual TechXchange event. The new models were developed to provide a combination of performance, flexibility, and autonomy that outperforms or matches similarly sized models from leading providers on a range of benchmarks.

  • minimalist bookcase filled with textbooks featuring vibrant, solid-colored spines with no text, and a prominent number "25" displayed on one of the shelves

    OpenStax Celebrates 25th Anniversary

    OpenStax is celebrating its 25th anniversary as 2024 comes to a close. The open educational resources initiative from Rice University has served almost 37 million students in 153 countries and saved students nearly $3 billion in course material costs since its launch in 1999.

  • a professional worker in business casual attire interacting with a large screen displaying a generative AI interface in a modern office

    Study: Generative AI Could Inhibit Critical Thinking

    A new study on how knowledge workers engage in critical thinking found that workers with higher confidence in generative AI technology tend to employ less critical thinking to AI-generated outputs than workers with higher confidence in personal skills.