In this Complete College America Accelerator webinar recap, leaders from OpenEd Culture, The Ada Center, and the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice share practical principles for designing digital learning environments that work for every student. Angela Gunder, Christina Hubbard, and Meaghan Rajkumar offer actionable guidance for leaders seeking to build digital ecosystems that are not only innovative, but also inclusive, scalable, and aligned with student success.
Digital learning has the potential to expand access, accelerate student success, and meet learners where they are. But that potential is only realized when institutions build their digital environments with every student in mind, not just the students they imagine are in their classrooms. Too often, technology decisions are made without meaningful student input, accessibility is treated as an afterthought, and “student-centered” becomes a phrase institutions declare rather than a practice they design.
In a recent Complete College America Accelerator webinar, three leaders joined the conversation to challenge that pattern and share what it actually looks like to build digital learning that works for all learners: Angela Gunder, Principal and Founder of Opened Culture; Christina Hubbard, Managing Director of Digital Holistic Student Support at The Ada Center; and Meaghan Rajkumar, Director of Research and Strategy at the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice (CHEPP) at Southern New Hampshire University.
Principles for Student-Centered Digital Learning
The conversation surfaced three interconnected principles that, together, form a foundation for digital learning environments that advance equity and student success.
- Student voice must be built into every stage, not consulted once. Too many institutions treat student input as a one-time event, a focus group before launch, or feedback gathered after a tool is already under contract. Real student-centeredness means bringing learners into the process early and continuously, from procurement to implementation to ongoing iteration. It also means creating asynchronous options for gathering that input, because the students who struggle most are often least able to show up to in-person forums. Student-centeredness isn’t a value an institution can simply declare, it has to be integrated into every decision made on campus, from the tools selected to the processes built around them.
- Accessibility and equity are design criteria, not accommodations. Designing digital environments from a compliance checklist leaves too many students behind. The principles of Universal Design for Learning offer a more powerful model: build flexibility and choice into the learning environment from the start, so students don’t have to raise their hand and ask for special help. A useful test is to design for the most constrained learners, such as, those navigating low bandwidth, caring for dependents, or accessing coursework entirely on a smartphone, because what works for them tends to work better for everyone.
- Start with values, not technology. One of the most consistent themes across the conversation was the danger of leading with tools. When institutions race to adopt the latest platform, or pile up redundant technologies because departments aren’t communicating, they skip the foundational step of asking why. This is especially urgent with AI, where the pace of change makes it tempting to chase every new development. The more durable path is to build shared values across pedagogy, operations, and governance first, then pilot, learn, and scale from there. The starting point shouldn’t be a tool, a platform, or even a policy, it should be a clear-eyed articulation of what the institution stands for and who it is trying to serve.
Shifting the Institutional Mindset
Underlying all three principles is a shift in how institutions think about digital learning itself. It is not an infrastructure problem to be solved once and maintained. It is an ongoing practice of listening, designing, and adjusting, one that requires student voices, cross-functional collaboration, and the willingness to build accessibility and equity from the beginning rather than retrofitting them later.
As the panelists noted, this work is also vulnerable to leadership turnover. Initiatives tied to a single champion tend to disappear when that person leaves. The most resilient digital learning efforts are those anchored in student voice and embedded in the day-to-day responsibilities of the people doing the work, not attached to any one person’s name or agenda.
For institutions ready to begin, consider these questions:
- Where does student voice currently enter your digital learning decision-making process, and how early?
- Are accessibility and equity built into your course and technology design from the start, or addressed after problems surface?
- When your institution adopts new digital tools, do people across campus understand why, and how it connects to student success?
- What shared values would you want to ground your institution’s approach to AI and digital learning?
