As 2025 comes to a close, the Online Learning Consortium reflects on a year defined by innovation, inquiry, and an unwavering commitment to advancing quality digital learning. This “OLC’s Best of 2025” collection celebrates the moments that resonated most deeply with our community, spotlighting the most-attended webinars, the most-read OLC Insights articles, and the most impactful OLC research. Together, these highlights offer a snapshot of the ideas, challenges, and emerging practices that shaped digital learning in 2025—and point toward the conversations that will carry us forward.
Best of OLC Insights
From timely explorations of emerging practices to reflective pieces grounded in research and lived experience, these top five OLC Insights articles resonated with educators, instructional designers, researchers, and leaders navigating an evolving higher education landscape.
- New Federal Digital Accessibility Requirements: What Higher Ed Needs to Know and Do Now – Outlines the U.S. Department of Justice’s updated Title II ADA regulations and explains why the new, enforceable digital accessibility standards—aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA—represent a significant shift for higher education institutions.
- Rethinking K-12 Education in the Age of AI – Argues that treating AI as a simple add-on to existing K–12 systems misses a critical opportunity and calls on educators to fundamentally rethink what quality education should look like in an AI-powered world—shifting the focus from memorization and efficiency to creativity, critical thinking, ethical awareness, and future-ready skills.
- Introduction to the TrAIT Framework – Introduces the TrAIT (Transparency in AI and Teaching) Framework, a practical approach for helping educators intentionally integrate AI into teaching by setting clear expectations, modeling responsible use, and fostering student understanding, reflection, and ethical engagement with AI tools.
- Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Understand AI Adoption in Higher Education – Examines how higher education can thoughtfully integrate AI into teaching by using Bloom’s Taxonomy to distinguish which cognitive tasks AI can and cannot support, emphasizing that while AI may assist with lower-level knowledge and processes, meaningful understanding and sense-making remain fundamentally human responsibilities.
- Rising Through Resilience: 10 Ways to Empower Students to Thrive in the Face of Adversity – Explores how educators can intentionally cultivate academic resilience by embedding evidence-based coping, problem-solving, and self-regulation strategies into teaching practices to help students navigate adversity, persist through challenges, and thrive both academically and personally.
Best of OLC Webinars
OLC webinars experienced record attendance this year, and the five most popular sessions reflect the questions and challenges that were top of mind for our community, ranging from practical strategies for advancing accessibility initiatives to innovative approaches for incorporating AI into digital learning.
- AI in Action: Real-World Innovations in Course and Program Integration – Examines how educators are embedding AI directly into courses and programs to boost engagement, personalize learning, and improve outcomes through real-world examples, implementation lessons, and practical takeaways.
- Leveraging AI for Accessible and Inclusive Learning: Practical Strategies for Diverse Learners – Explores how to use AI to quickly create more accessible, inclusive course content (alt text, captions, transcripts) and more equitable assessments through practical demos and ready-to-use strategies.
- From Policy to Practice: Navigating the New Federal Digital Accessibility Rules for Higher Education – Unpacks the U.S. DOJ’s new ADA Title II digital accessibility rules and provides practical steps for institutions to meet WCAG 2.1 AA requirements before the April 2026 compliance deadline.
- Call Us Irresponsible: Designing Online Curricula for the AI Era – Rethinks “AI-proof” course design using a model for embedding LLMs into online curriculum and provides concrete ideas for AI-integrated assignments that build creativity, critical thinking, and digital fluency.
- Engaging Online & Hybrid Learners: Using Custom GPTs to Facilitate Interactive Learning Experiences – Explores how custom GPTs can reduce transactional distance and boost engagement for “accidental asynchronous” learners, with examples for building interactive, student-centered learning experiences.
Research in Focus
In Student Engagement and AI: Research Overview and Findings, OLC’s Research Center (in partnership with D2L) investigates the impact of AI on student engagement in higher education. Specifically, this research aims to better understand how students are using generative AI tools, how they view AI’s role in their educational experiences, the effects of AI use on student engagement, and how instructors can support students in effectively using AI to enhance their educational experiences. Explore the Report.
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