Lumen Learning

What Lumen Learning is

Lumen Learning is an educational technology company in Portland, Oregon, that makes digital courseware for colleges and universities. Its About page states the mission as expanding "access to high-quality learning experiences" and says the company develops "affordable digital courseware and faculty professional development resources that help educators support student learning while reducing financial barriers to education."

The reader is a college instructor, department chair or institution choosing course materials for a class, especially a high-enrollment gateway course. Lumen does not sell a school-wide LMS. It sells courseware that runs alongside the college's own LMS, the home page promising LMS integration, "customizable course materials, and responsive faculty support," and it sells professional development for the faculty who teach with it.

Its foundation is open educational resources (OER). The company's story, as the About page tells it, began in 2010 when Kim Thanos and Dr. David Wiley received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help faculty adopt OER; two years later, with further support from the Gates Foundation and the Shuttleworth Foundation, they founded Lumen Learning. Kim Thanos is listed as Founder & CEO and David Wiley as Co-Founder, with Wiley also signing the company's Open Content Blog as Chief Academic Officer.

The courseware products

Lumen One. The home page describes it as "Evidence-Informed Courseware for College Gateway Courses," bringing together features from across Lumen courseware and "developed to promote equitable outcomes in gateway courses." The About page lists what an instructor and students get: tools to connect students and faculty, "Personalized study plans with immediate feedback," a way to message students directly, a "Supported peer community to provide students with meaningful help," embedded tips on effective teaching practice, and "Culturally relevant varied content." The company calls it "the first courseware product built with a focus on equity."

Waymaker. Personalized courseware that "uses high-touch personalized learning tools to strengthen metacognition and automated messaging to better support faculty." Its feature list covers easy setup, "Day one access for students," personalized study plans for each student, a "Large bank of assessment questions," easy communication with students, and interactive content with immediate feedback.

OHM (Online Homework Manager). A homework and assessment system "designed by educators" that "includes thousands of interactive assessment questions to help students master math and other quantitative skills." It offers day one access, template courses, "Algorithmically generated assessments," a variety of question types "with the option to use Desmos calculators," and an "Interactive and editable electronic textbook with immediate feedback."

Faculty quoted on the About page describe the LMS side in practice. One Coastal Carolina University instructor says Waymaker supports instructors "with instructor resources" and posts grades into the LMS; a Northeast Texas Community College instructor says OHM made it possible to "spend more class time on active learning."

The course catalog

The catalog sorts courses into Social Science, Business & Economics, College Readiness, Humanities & Languages, Mathematics and Natural Science, and tags each with the product it runs on. The current list includes:

• On Lumen One: Introductory Statistics, Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, Psychopathology (Abnormal Psychology), Lifespan Development, Introduction to Business, Business Communication, Accounting for Managers, Computer Applications for Managers, Human Resources Management, Organizational Behavior / Human Relations, Principles of Management, Principles of Marketing, Biology for Majors I and II, Biology for Non-Majors I and II, College Success, English Composition 1, Quantitative Reasoning, and U.S. History I and 2.
• On OHM: Prealgebra, Beginning Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, College Algebra, Precalculus / Trigonometry, Calculus 1, 2 and 3, and the Developmental Math Emporium.
• On Waymaker: Macroeconomics, Microeconomics and Retail Management.

The home page highlights four. Introductory Statistics was "Built in partnership with The Dana Center at UT Austin." Introduction to Psychology "includes specific applications to the APA Introductory Psychology Initiative’s student learning outcomes and integrative themes." Introduction to Business uses "timely, real-world case studies," and Quantitative Reasoning lets faculty "choose from a wide range of topics to accommodate a variety of course structures, including corequisite." The company calls its courses "ready-to-teach to get you going quickly."

On authorship, the FAQ says the content "is created by experts and peer reviewed by experts," and that Lumen's continuous improvement process keeps it up to date.

Pricing and what is free

The FAQ answers the price question directly. The words and pictures in the courseware are OER "and can be freely accessed through our Course Catalog," and "in 2021 over 158 million people around the world accessed this collection of static content." The interactive layer is paid: "Lumen's Waymaker and OHM courseware, which complement our static OER content with interactivity, practice, feedback, and personalized learning tools for students costs $35 per student." Lumen Circles also carries a cost that "varies based on the format of the Circle." Institutions can request a demo from every page.

Because the content is OER, the FAQ explains the 5R permissions under the Creative Commons definition: retain, revise, remix, reuse and redistribute. Unless otherwise noted, the company's own site content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Faculty professional development

Lumen Circles are "professional development experiences that use virtual learning communities to connect faculty members with peers and help them hone their expertise as student-centered teachers." The About page says they are "Grounded in evidence-based teaching practices and self-reflection" and suited to any faculty member in any discipline and at any stage of career, and a company blog post describes them as asynchronous.

Track record and team

The FAQ says Lumen courseware "was adopted by faculty at over 500 US colleges and universities in 2021," and the community page says Lumen supports "500+ colleges, universities, consortia, and systems across the United States." The home page reports that Lumen was "named one of TIME’s Top EdTech Companies in America." The team page runs from product and learning design through sales regions (West, East, Midwest, Southeast), customer success and customer support to engineering, including an AI data engineer. Testimonials come from faculty at Howard College, Salt Lake Community College and the University of Mississippi, and from students at SUNY Empire and Mohawk Valley Community College. Contact runs through info@lumenlearning.com, a support page and a community page.

Who it suits

Lumen Learning suits a US college department that wants low-cost, OER-based materials for a gateway course, with personalized practice and homework that posts into its LMS, at $35 per student for Waymaker or OHM. Math departments get a large algorithmic homework bank in OHM; psychology, statistics, business and biology faculty get ready-to-teach Lumen One courses. Colleges working on faculty development can add Lumen Circles. It is not a school LMS or a product for primary and secondary schools, and an institution looking for administration, enrollment or a course catalog outside the subjects listed will need other tools.