Understanding Student Engagement with AI
Opens New Dimensions in Learning Analytics
AUSTIN, TX and CHICAGO, IL (SEP 18, 2024) –
Unizin, the non-profit member consortium of 14 leading academic and research institutions in the United States and Packback, the award-winning Instructional AI platform for student writing and engagement, today announced the integration of Packback student activity data into the Unizin Data Platform (UDP). The new integration provides Unizin member institutions with an important new dimension as they seek to understand how students engage with course materials and next generation AI-enabled learning tools, and analyze the impact of those tools on teaching, learning, and student success.
Packback’s Instructional AI platform is designed to enhance students’ critical thinking and writing skills by providing real-time, intelligent feedback on discussions and writing assignments, informed by course content and instructor rubrics. Integrating Packback data into the UDP, the world’s largest learning data laboratory, not only expands the data available in the UDP, but also provides an important new perspective as institutions seek to better understand how to apply and evaluate the use of AI in and beyond the classroom.
“Adding Packback data to the UDP gets us closer to being able to describe a student’s learning journey across multiple environments within a course, a semester, or an entire degree program. As the education technology ecosystem continues to diversify, understanding student trajectories across toolsets provides new avenues to support each individual student,” said Bart Pursel, Chief Technology Officer and interim CEO of Unizin. “The rapid ascension of AI within higher ed has generated an urgent need for data-informed insights into AI’s impact on student engagement and performance.”
“Students already use a variety of shortcut tools, from simple search to ChatGPT, that perpetuate homogeneity and may disengage them from active learning,” said Jessica Tenuta, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Packback. “Our goal is to help students engage more deeply with course materials, connect concepts from the page to their lived experience and articulate their own voice. By aligning our data with data from other leading learning platforms in the UDP, we hope to demonstrate the potential of Instructional AI in the classroom and beyond.”
Packback’s first product, Packback Questions is an AI-powered discussion board that uses Instructional AI-powered feedback to help students formulate well-thought and researched questions and responses to drive inquiry and engagement with course content. Packback’s long form writing platform, Packback Deep Dives is designed to provide students with comprehensive AI-powered writing feedback on their grammar, flow, structure, research, citations, and more, allowing students to iterate and learn as they write.
The UDP normalizes and integrates data from learning tools and learning management systems deployed across Unizin member institutions, including data from Canvas, Top Hat and Kaltura. Packback is already in use by 55 instructors, with almost 15,000 registered students on Unizin-member campuses. These Unizin consortium members are already integrating Packback data into student success platforms.
At Penn State University, Packback data is now being integrated into Elevate, the UDP-enabled adviser-facing application that delivers course-level analysis to help advisors identify if, when, and how to offer student support – including early in the semester when advisor support can have a strong impact on student performance and persistence.
“Compliance in the edtech industry is necessary for our institution to be able to shine a light on student patterns across multiple learning environments and support student success at scale,” said Ben Hellar, Manager of the Pennsylvania State University’s Data Empowered Learning team within Penn State IT. “When Packback integrated their 1EdTech Caliper-compliant data to the UDP, we incorporated this data into our learning analytic tools, Elevate Advising and Course Insights, in a matter of days, as opposed to weeks or months for other tools that don’t follow recognized data standards.”
About Packback
Packback is a digital writing and research tutor for every student, along with a digital grading assistant for every teacher. Packback’s mission is to help every student discover their unique voice and the writing skills to express it. Packback’s AI-enabled platform helps students build and master foundational skills such as critical thinking, writing, and research. Packback’s proprietary Instructional AI and machine learning technology provides inquiry-based online discussion and long-form writing support to over 8,000 instructors and over 1.5 million students, and is being used in hundreds of K-12 and higher education courses. To learn more visit, www.packback.co
About Unizin
Unizin provides institutions with technology solutions and partnerships that enable them to scale their use of data, analytics, digital content and learning tools to improve outcomes and guide student success initiatives. Unizin is membership-based and governed by its member universities as a nonprofit 501(c)(3). To learn more, visit www.unizin.org
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Media Contacts
Tony Labriola
PR for Unizin
Peter Lannon
PR for Packback
peter.lannon@packback.co