ICON Direct: Iowa’s Recipe for Saving Students $1 Million
Leading up to the Unizin Summit 2019, we will feature a monthly Summit-centric blog post and webcast. First up in the series is a Q&A with Annette Beck, Director of Enterprise Instructional Technology in the Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology at the University of Iowa, in which Annette will provide insight into Iowa’s inclusive access program. Then join us on February 28th at 1pm ET for a panel webinar with experts… Read More
IMS Global Caliper: What It Means for the Unizin Data Platform and the Higher Ed Community
Leading up to the Unizin Summit 2019, we will feature a monthly Summit-centric blog post and webcast. First up in the series is a Q&A with Kara Armstrong, Unizin’s Product Manager for data, in which Kara will share her knowledge on Caliper. Then join us on January 31st at 1pm for a panel webinar with experts from Unizin, IMS Global, and the University of Michigan. Kara, can you tell us about your… Read More
Major Milestones
Today’s announcement that the Unizin Data Platform (UDP) is now in General availability marks a strategic milestone for Unizin member universities. We came together to ensure that we could shape our own future for digital education, stay in control of our own data, and push for open standards with interoperability at scale. These words are often said, but it took the hard work of the committed member universities and the Unizin team to… Read More
An Interview with Jennifer Sparrow, Unizin Teaching & Learning Chair
How and why did you decide to take the lead on the Unizin Teaching & Learning committee? Stacy Morrone of Indiana University took the lead in ensuring that this group was formed, and that the conversations were helping to advance the Unizin work on each of our own campuses. It was clear that the group that came together was passionate about and dedicated to student success and affordability measures. Stacy had a… Read More
T&L Meeting in Chicago
The bi-annual Unizin Teaching and Learning (T&L) Meeting was held in April at the Big Ten Center in Chicago. Preliminary subcommittee meetings were held on the afternoon of April 4th, and flurry of excitement could be felt as the general session convened the following day. Subcommittee groups met to advance initiatives around affordable content, communications, analytics, Canvas and Instructure. Dinner groups formed that evening, enabling Unizin Consortium members to continue discussions on… Read More
Iowa Insights from 2018 ELI Conference
Hosted in New Orleans, the 2018 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) conference brought together instructors and staff from across the country to discuss “Achieving Student Success Through New Models of Learning.” The University of Iowa Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology (OTLT) presented on a variety of topics ranging from “The Impact of Learning Environments on Student Success in an Engineering Course,” to “(Re)filling the Talent Pool: Programming, Practice, and Talent Development in… Read More
How Video Content Improves Learner Experiences
Written by Unizin’s Fall 2017 video production intern Sarah Nouri. The creation and distribution of video content plays a key role in expanding and improving the way learners can access information. As a senior in college, I have witnessed a shift in the way the overall learning ecosystem operates, mainly with a growing reliance upon diverse types of video content to serve digital learners.
Solving the Learning Data Puzzle: The Unizin Common Data Model
If you’re thinking about how to improve student success – and who isn’t in higher ed? – then data and analytics about teaching and learning are probably on your mind. It can be a daunting subject. There is so much data all around us – about students and courses; the planning, design, and delivery of instruction; and learning behaviors and results – that it may feel overwhelming. How can all of this… Read More
Two Unizin Members Complete Migration to Canvas
Unizin recognizes Instructure’s Canvas as the top learning management system on the current market because of its incomparable interoperability, innovative content and analytics capabilities, and open standards. Currently, all of Unizin’s Founding Members have Canvas either fully implemented on their campus or are piloting the LMS. This summer, the University of Iowa and The Ohio State University, two Unizin Founding Members, completed their migrations from the D2L learning management system and are… Read More
Data Management: The Fundamentals
Data is becoming the most valuable digital asset, and getting data management right is as critical an issue for universities as other businesses. For Unizin, this is non-negotiable: Data belongs to the universities and needs to be accessible and standardized to enable institutions to use that information as they see fit. A common data model and architecture can accelerate management of this data for all of higher education, while allowing universities… Read More