This is a response from a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to criticisms Phil Hill offered last fall. I covered it here. She writes, "our work in courseware is rooted in the goal of ensuring that many more students can complete their certificates and degrees and that race, ethnicity, and income do not serve as predictors of student success... every person deserves a chance to live a healthy, productive life." To this end, they see "digital learning curricula and courseware as a critical level in helping to help enact higher quality undergraduate digital learning," the argument being that quality courseware lowers DFW rates.
If that sounds like something David Wiley would say, it should. Pendergast reports that "we're working with courseware partner Lumen Learning to do user research on a new statistics courseware for the general or introductory-level statistics course." Additionally, she says, "we're actively engaging with and centering the needs of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students and students from low-income backgrounds and the institutions serving these students in a participatory design and development approach to ensure we're designing with – not for – our focus populations."
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