How AI Is Helping More Students Persist and Complete Their Degrees
One of the biggest challenges in higher education is not getting students enrolled. It is helping them stay enrolled long enough to complete a credential.
According to John Baker, founder and CEO of D2L, artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities to improve student persistence by making learning more engaging, personalized, and supportive.
The impact is already measurable.
Institutions using AI-powered learning strategies within D2L’s platform are seeing improvements in retention, course completion, grades, and student engagement. In many cases, students are performing better while spending less time trying to figure out what they are supposed to learn.
Building better learning experiences
Baker believes one of the most promising uses of AI is helping faculty create stronger learning experiences.
AI can help instructors transform static materials such as PDFs and slide decks into more interactive content that includes formative assessments, flashcards, embedded feedback, and engagement opportunities.
The result is not simply more content. It is content designed to help students understand whether they are learning effectively before high-stakes assessments occur.
Early evidence suggests these approaches are improving outcomes in some of higher education’s most challenging courses.
Personalization is about people
Personalized learning is often described as creating individualized pathways for students.
Baker argues that definition is incomplete.
True personalization, he says, is about strengthening human connections.
AI can help instructors identify students who may be struggling and automatically provide encouragement, resources, and guidance before problems become barriers to success. It can also help faculty deliver more meaningful and personalized feedback at scale.
Those interactions matter.
When students feel seen, supported, and connected to instructors, they are more likely to persist through challenges and continue toward completion.
Using AI to support persistence
One of the most significant benefits Baker sees is the ability to proactively support students before they disengage.
AI-powered systems can identify patterns that suggest a student may be falling behind and trigger timely interventions.
A simple message, a reminder, additional resources, or personalized feedback can often make the difference between persistence and withdrawal.
Baker says institutions deploying these strategies frequently see retention gains of five to eight percent in the first year.
For students, those improvements represent far more than institutional metrics. They represent completed degrees, stronger career opportunities, and a reduced risk of leaving college with debt but no credential.
Why AI is different from previous technology shifts
Over the past three decades, higher education has adapted to the internet, mobile technology, and cloud computing.
Baker believes AI is a bigger transformation than any of them.
Unlike previous technology shifts, AI affects the core of teaching and learning itself. It changes how students learn, how faculty teach, how assessment works, and how institutions provide support.
That reality creates new responsibilities for colleges and universities.
Institutions will need to invest in research, faculty development, curriculum redesign, workforce upskilling, and thoughtful implementation strategies to fully realize the benefits of AI for students.
The bottom line
For Baker, the most important measure of AI is not efficiency.
It is whether more students succeed.
When AI helps faculty build better learning experiences, provides more personalized support, and strengthens human connections, students are more likely to persist, complete credentials, and achieve their goals.
That is where the real value of AI in higher education begins.
Transcript
Wes (00:32.984) Hey John, it’s good to see you today. Thanks for joining us.
John Baker (00:40.689) Excellent.
John Baker (00:46.2) great to join you, Wes. Looking forward to the conversation here today.
Wes (00:49.41) Hey, I I mentioned, you know, in the intro that you’re a new member of the forum. We’re glad to have you as a collaboration partner. you’ve been at this for a long time since I wanna say D2L was founded in nineteen ninety-nine. Is that right?
John Baker (01:03.599) Yeah, that’s right. I was a third year university student at the time. You know, for me it’s always been about what’s the most important problem we could solve that would have the biggest impact on the world. I can’t think of anything more important than transforming the way the world learns because learning is at the heart of solving all the world’s challenges. and so we set out in our case to build a learning platform that could engage, that could inspire, that could break down barriers, and not just help people achieve their potential, but to help them achieve more than they’re ever even dreamed possible.
through these transform learning experiences. So, you know, been at it for almost twenty seven years. and yeah, excited for the future too.
Wes (01:38.784) Yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of amazing.
Well, I the thing that’s that’s very interesting to me is you created a pl this platform while you were a student. So I mean it’s like learner created, right?
John Baker (01:50.661) Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, no. a lot of the features that we built in the early days were very much with the students in mind, including giving them a lot of transparency in terms of what was happening in the platform.
Wes (02:03.906) Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Well, let let’s start out with this. Can you think back in those twenty seven years? And is there an experience with a student or an experience as you’re setting this up that really sticks with you throughout the years and and informs what you do today?
John Baker (02:10.598) Mm-hmm.
John Baker (02:24.249) Yeah, well, there’s many. you know, I can think of one example where there was a student that spoke at her conference a few years back now, and she told her own personal journey. You know, when she was eight years old, she had a dream of becoming an Olympic athlete for the US. and her gene came to a crushing blow when she learned that she was going blind. And so in her case, she had a choice to she stay in the community and try this new experimental.
Wes (02:46.102) Oof.
John Baker (02:51.941) learning using one of our clients Gwynette online campus, or does she go to a school for the blind and and she made the choice of, you know, going to this experimental trying this online learning platform that was supposed to support her and it worked out. She became a Paralympic athlete for the US, she won medals and then she’s now studying at at college. So it’s you know those types of moments where your technology can break down a barrier
Wes (03:10.382) Well, that’s amazing.
John Baker (03:19.611) that would normally hold someone back from their dreams, is, you know, those are those are pretty magical moments.
Wes (03:24.77) Yeah, that’s a that’s a great story. That’s that’s one that’ll stick with you for a for a long time, seeing that kind of success. What kind of an athlete was she? Or is she swimmer?
John Baker (03:33.184) she was a swimmer. So in her case, McLean Hermes is if you want to look her up.
Wes (03:38.664) that’s cool. That’s great. Well, let’s talk. we’re here to talk a little bit of the future of higher ed and how AI impacts that. And we talk a lot at the forum about, you know, students first. It’s a student student first mentality. And I’m interested if you’ve seen some tangible ways that AI can reduce friction for learners today in just day-to-day learning experiences.
John Baker (03:52.272) Mm-hmm.
John Baker (04:08.497) Well, I I think the key with AI is making sure that we’re scaffolding the AI into these learning platforms in a way that’s gonna support a better learning experience. So we’re gonna graduate doctors and nurses and engineers that are better at the profession. And we want to avoid some of the risks around cognitive offloading. And so, you know, in our case, we think we can do this very successfully. you know, we’ve seen good evidence of that now with a lot of our clients where
We’re leveraging AI largely in the in the in the use case for for faculty to help them build better learning experiences for the learners. So how do we help faculty build better formative assessments, build more engagement, take you know, maybe a PowerPoint or a PDF and turn it into something much more inspiring, maybe with some flashcard exercises and some quick embedded inline assessment that helps the student understand if they’re on the right track and can hit that next button with confidence.
So making the job of faculty building really high quality learning experiences is already through a number of efficacy studies that we’ve already done with third parties, really having a big impact on increasing retention, driving better completion rates for some of these tough bottleneck courses, lifting grades. The time on tasks for students is actually coming down. So they’re scoring better on their exams, but they’re not having to spend as much time trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be learning.
Wes (05:26.709) Wow, that’s interesting.
John Baker (05:26.949) Great great metrics across the board. Yeah, no, it’s it’s really having a positive impact. We’re also seeing impact in terms of giving feedback to students or tutoring or all kinds of other areas within the system.
Wes (05:37.976) So you’ve built this in, you’ve used AI as b I mean, building it into the LMS, so you can you can use it seamlessly.
John Baker (05:44.847) Yeah.
Exactly. And there’s there’s actually a a recent article that just came out in one of the journals that really speaks to this. cog you know, the cognitive offload is there if you’re just using an AI on the side. Think just you know, students using it to support their work outside of the learning platform. But in the learning platform it actually has an increase in cognitive ability for the students because and it makes sense because we’re we’re leveraging these technologies to scaffold better learning experiences which engage, inspire and help students really
Wes (06:02.818) Right.
John Baker (06:17.071) get through the material in a in a much more efficient, more engaging way, which helps them achieve better results. And so you there are good ways of doing the you know, AI and there’s there’s bad ways of doing it. And we we definitely have been spending the last fifteen years trying to figure out how to harness this technology in a way that’s gonna really have a positive impact on students.
Wes (06:36.28) So John, when we talk about personalized education in in the future, how does AI accelerate that?
John Baker (06:39.845) Yeah. Mm-hmm.
John Baker (06:44.623) Well, I I’d I’d I’d argue there’s two key things when when we talk about personalization. So there’s the traditional individualizing the adaptive learning pathways for students. So if a student is struggling with something, here’s some remediation pathways that automatically open up that are predicted to have a better outcome for that individual student to help them get back on the right track, or maybe some enrichment pathways that open up. So we spent a lot of time doing that work and it does have a big positive impact on student experience. There’s no question about that. But there’s a second piece to this, which is
Wes (06:53.485) Right.
Wes (07:02.168) Right.
John Baker (07:13.753) I I don’t think personalization is meant to be individualization, not not by itself. I think personalization at the heart is about building better human connections. So better connections between students and other students, or students and professor, or students in the profession they’re pursuing, or the big questions in their field. You know, if we can really harness these AIs in a way that’s gonna help those students feel better connected, help them get inspired, help them with their problem solving, their creativity, their you know, their profession they’re pursuing, that’s when we get this right.
And it’s not just about that, you know, individualized pathway which is traditionally thought of as for personalization.
Wes (07:49.036) Yeah, that’s not that’s not very intuitive to think about personalization as better human connections through AI. Tell us a little bit how that can happen.
John Baker (07:52.451) No.
John Baker (07:56.817) Yeah.
John Baker (08:00.657) Well, it can just be little things, like when something you should pay attention to is in the platform, we just alert you like, hey, John, noticed you might be interested in this particular article that was just posted. So you like just being able to at mention someone’s name and all of a sudden they’re now their attention is now drawn to it, or better collaboration suites within the system or communication. but one of the best ways of doing personalization is around feedback. So we have all kinds of intelligent agents in the system that
watch what students are doing, can understand if they’re off on the wrong track and can send them a little nudge. Hey, I noticed you did poorly on the last two assignments. Don’t worry. Most students struggle. It’s part of learning. here’s some support for the next assignment. Like pay attention to the following three things. And if you ever need help, here’s my here’s my information. Here’s a picture of my cat. You know, stuff like that that enables that personalization at scale, but then it frees up time for the instructor to be able to give feedback to the student.
And feedback for me is is something separate and apart from assessment. And quite often people intertwine these two things. And with feedback, you can actually be very personal. You can say, well, congrats on the football game. That was a fantastic outcome. you know, on now on the last assignment I said to you I wanted to see improvements in these three areas. I saw it on this assignment. On the next assignment, I’m gonna be looking for the following. And you know, so the students don’t just submit something and forget. They’re they’re getting that personalized attention, that feedback.
And it will give them a reason to persist. Even if they’re struggling, all of a sudden I’ve got a a professor that cares. that is engaging in with me. And and and I think, you know, those are just a few examples of of where it could have a big impact for students.
Wes (09:36.579) Yeah.
Wes (09:44.706) You’ve seen this in your own data, right? That persistence is increased when these tools are leveraged.
John Baker (09:47.786) yeah.
John Baker (09:52.793) Yeah, exactly. It like you know, we our argument is I I don’t care if our competitors give away their software for free, we’re gonna save institutions way more when it comes to retention of students. Quite often we’ll see a client the first year see about a five or six or eight percent increase in student retention because of these strategies now being deployed across their campuses. And so it has a huge measurable impact. And think what that means for the student. You know, if if they can progress, you know, and finish their four year program on time.
and successfully. That has a huge ripple effect for their life downstream. So yeah, we care deeply about this.
Wes (10:28.888) So I the way that I see this is, you know, student first, and it has a huge impact for those students who are they’re they’re more persistent, they they finish their degrees, they actually get through. So that’s the the first area that we can celebrate. The second is it’s great for the institutions themselves. Like keeping students moving, seeing them go through the system and and succeed is great. The the third one.
that doesn’t get talked about a lot is really good for the system generally to be able, I mean there’s nothing worse than a student for students and for the system, than students who attend for a while, incur debt, and then don’t complete and don’t have a credential that helps them in the workforce. So this this way to invest and to help students initially actually is really
John Baker (11:19.791) Yeah, exactly.
Wes (11:27.362) Beneficial to the system itself.
John Baker (11:30.061) absol absolutely. I I think you know, anytime you can have this kind of a measured impact on the quality of the experience, it has a human impact. It has that ability for that student to now build a great life, a big a great career. you know, and ideally it encourages them to recognize that, hey, my university was a fantastic learning experience. Maybe I’ll come back and do some upskilling, you know, to help me advance in my career. because we’ve built a better system, because we’ve built a better learning model.
Wes (11:59.468) Right. Well, John, I really appreciate your time today. I’m gonna I’m going to leave you with this last question and we’ll conclude. Tell me how you feel about the future of higher education with regard to the AI impact on education that that is we’re feeling right now and that is coming.
John Baker (12:19.727) Well, I I’ve been in the space long enough. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but where I’ve ushered in internet into many classrooms, helped them with mobile transition, because in the early days no one thought they would ever learn on a mobile device. So I need to think back to that now. cloud was a b another big transition, but AI is bigger. AI is gonna be more transformative because it is getting at the heart of the real transformation. You know, we’re gonna change how we learn, we’re gonna change how we assess.
We’re gonna change how we actually tutor. And so this is a big, big transformative moment for higher education. And so there needs to be significant investment. So there’s investment into the research. So how does the scholarship of teaching and learning change now with the advent of AI? Because it’s significant. you know, these new tools are in the hands of students already. So it’s not like you can put the genie back in the bottle and pretend they’re not there.
And so the the natural tendency for a lot of institutions will be kind of go back to the way things used to be, you know, twenty years ago. That’s not right. That’s not the way w way forward. So we need to now retool, rebuild. And so there’s strategies like formative assessment, which might be a good, you know, stop along the way that we’re really leaning into, but there’s there’s more to work to be done on that research. Curriculum change, upskilling of the workforce, you know, the adoption of AI technologies into the institutions. There’s a lot of capacity building.
Wes (13:21.891) Yeah.
John Baker (13:42.327) And research that’s got to be done to support all this. And so, you know, for me, you know, I I keep coming back to the the main point here, which is like the work that our university and college clients are doing right now today has never mattered more. Because learning is how we get through this transition, through the disruption that gets created, and also seize the opportunities that gets created. And it’s also at the same time, like if people are displaced, like they got to go back to upskill.
Wes (14:02.295) Absolutely.
John Baker (14:09.177) And so we need to invest in our institutions right now to sort of, you know, leverage these technologies in new ways to help support society at large. And so the work that’s being done right now has never mattered more and you know we’re trying to do our best to partner very closely with our educational clients to help them through this next phase of adoption.
Wes (14:29.442) Great, great concluding remarks there, John. We’re so happy to have you on as a collaboration partner. And that experience that you just outlined, going through the internet, going through mobile devices and cloud and now to AI, it’s really remarkable. You’ve got you bring that experience to all of this that will really help our institutions and the system. So we appreciate you having having you as a partner and we appreciate your input on today’s podcast.
John Baker (14:58.555) Thank you very much, Wes. None of us can do this alone. The journey matters. Thank you for the collaboration. Thank you for the partnership. All the best.
Wes (15:04.684) You got it. Thanks. Talk to you soon.