Building Institutional Capacity Through Digital Learning Professional Development

This week, we are featuring Every Learner Everywhere’s Course Catalog. Thanks Every Learner for this great resource!

Because digital learning has become a baseline institutional responsibility, colleges and universities must support professional learning for faculty and academic leaders. Meanwhile, instructional technologies evolve faster than conferences can accommodate.

Within that context, Every Learner Everywhere has launched a new course catalog designed to extend its capacity-building work beyond in-person services into a format that more educators can access. The catalog of self-serve, asynchronous courses assists faculty, instructional designers, advisors, program directors, and other professional staff working to strengthen digital teaching and learning. Every Learner designed the growing selection of short, structured courses to enable individuals and cohorts to access them quickly with minimal coordination.

The catalog of professional development courses on digital learning range across topics such as assessment, student success, and flipped classrooms. Several focus on the effective use of AI in particular. Most of the courses cost $200-250 per user.

The catalog is designed for a range of institutional contexts. Some early users access the courses to complement the existing professional development their campus offers, while others use them to provide structured support on a campus that may not have a center for teaching and learning.

A typical course requires around 20 hours of work and is designed to be completed in three or four modules over a few weeks, though users can work at their own pace.

Designed by subject matter experts

The courses on digital learning emphasize building capacity and applying practical ideas by focusing on instructional design, digital pedagogy, and the day-to-day decisions faculty make when teaching. The goal is to help faculty formalize practices and move from awareness to application, offering concrete ways to adjust course design, assessment, or instructional practices.

To ensure the courses reflect work shaped by practitioners who are actively teaching, designing, and leading within higher education, Every Learner looked to subject matter experts and instructional designers to develop the catalog. Norma Hollebeke, Associate Director, Innovation and Programs at Every Learner, emphasizes that the team seeks experts who represent current practice. “We look for the people who can create a rich experience for their colleagues,” she says,

“We were able to get innovators, the ones who are deep into the classroom itself or institutional leadership, who are actually in the field doing the work.”

For example, the AI-related courses drew on the expertise of Angela Gunder, CEO and Founder of Opened Culture, and Josh Herron, Lead Faculty in the Department of Applied Scholarship in the College of Integrative Learning, University of Arizona Global Campus. They are the co-authors of AI Literacies in Practice: A Comprehensive Playbook for Higher Education from WCET.

Some courses required collaboration between multiple contributors, reflecting the complexity of the topics they address. For example, a forthcoming course on Critical AI Leadership involved input from three of Every Learner’s network partners, APLU, QEM Network, and WCET.

Badges, pathways, and facilitated courses

The catalog is also structured to support cumulative learning. Learners can currently earn digital badges in individual courses via the Accredible platform, and in the near future, related courses will be grouped into pathways that offer stackable credentials. For example, one pathway will be on AI-ready teaching and learning excellence. These pathways are intended to help participants build depth over time without committing to an extended program.

The current catalog emphasizes self-paced, on-demand courses, but Every Learner expects future offerings to include facilitated courses, options with live virtual sessions, and formats designed specifically for program and institutional leaders.

As the catalog grows, Hollebeke says the topics and formats will expand in response to participation and feedback. Together, these updates will expand the catalog’s impact as a practical, low-friction way for educators to engage with digital learning practices. Explore the Every Learner Everywhere course catalog.

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Author: Every Learner Everywhere