in this issuevol. 28 no. 3 campustechnology.com November 2014

3 | Campus & INdustry tech Classroom for stEM and More

32 | about us/INdex

2 | LogIN Remember the Little things

30 | C-LeveL vIew Reinventing teaching and Learning Centers

17 | soLvINg the math readINess probLem

Blended learning and adaptive software are helping students prepare for college-level mathematics.

26 | LeadINg a uNIversIty INto the dIgItaL future

5 | buILdINg a better aCademIC pLaNNINg tooL

U Arizona ditched its course catalog in favor of an interactive system for navigating the degree path.

11 | wheN youtube IsN’t eNough to maNage your Campus vIdeo CoNteNt

how new York schools manage and share video.

14 | how to brIdge the I.t. CommuNICatIoN gap

Learning to communicate with tech-challenged users can bolster it’s strategic role across the university.

19 | what’s Next for e-textbooks?

technology is moving the digital textbook from print look-alike to next-generation learning platform.

28 | dNa oN demaNd IN the CLoud

8 | CouLd oCuLus rIft redeem vIrtuaL reaLIty IN hIgher ed?

Oculus VR just might push virtual reality into the mainstream — particularly in higher education.

dEpARtMEnts

spECiAL sECtiOn: Ct innOVAtORs in dEpth

what’s Next for e-textbooks?

Empowering the World of Higher Education

Aat the eduCause annual conference last month, i sat in

on a fascinating session, “think small, Get Big Results,” led

by James Kulich, vice president and CiO at Elmhurst College

(iL). the premise: small-scale it initiatives can produce unex-

pected value on campus. And since small ideas are easy to

implement, they can have an immediate positive impact.

Kulich asked his audience to break into small groups for a

brainstorming exercise. “please share an example of a small

way you used technology that yielded a bigger result than

might be expected,” he instructed. “You might describe a

one-off smaller-scale project. You might describe a particu-

lar set of small-scale steps you took as part of a larger proj-

ect. You might describe your use of a particular piece of

technology. You might describe a pro-

cess you followed. Be creative.” A few

of my favorites from the discussion:

Eliminating charge-backs. By drop-

ping the administrative fee for its main

data center, the University of Victoria

(Canada) was able to convince most of

its “closet server rooms” to move to the

data center — cutting down on power

use, reducing duplication of service and dramatically

improving security.

DIY document camera. Lacking the budget to supply

faculty with document cameras in all classrooms, it staffers

at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts built their own

devices out of magnifying desk lamps and webcams.

Profile pics. to help people distinguish between per-

sonal and institutional Google accounts, a campaign at

north Carolina state University encouraged users to

include an nC state logo in their profile pictures to indi-

cate their work account.

Through the grapevine. since students just don’t read

e-mail announcements, st. John Fisher College (nY) rolled

out its mobile app by presenting it to the student govern-

ment and letting word-of-mouth do the rest. Usage climbed

to a peak within five days, with no other advertising needed.

Student talent. in one summer, trinity Christian College

(iL) had two student workers develop a computer services

Web site to house FAQs, how-tos and other resources. the

site has become a valuable communication tool for stu-

dents, faculty and staff.

While the group shared plenty of clever ideas, it’s also

Lo g i n

remember the Little thingssmall-scale it efforts can make a big difference on campus.

Continue the conversation. E-mail me at rkelly@1105media.com.

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20142

AdvisoryBoArdLink AlanderVice Chancellor and CIO, Lone Star College System (TX)

Jill Albin-HillCIO, Dominican University (IL)

Keith BaileyDirector, Office of Online Learning, University of Georgia

edward ChapelVP for IT, Montclair State University (NJ)

Maya GeorgievaAssociate Director, Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, NYU Stern School of Business

Thomas HooverAssociate Vice Chancellor and CIO,University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Kim Cliett LongDirector, The Center for Excellence in Distance Learning, Wiley College (TX)

Alexandra M. PickettAssociate Director, SUNY Learning Network,State University of New York

sue TalleyDean of Technology, Capella University (online)

interesting to note how difficult it was to actually think

“small.” some of the topics that rose out of the brainstorm-

ing session — remote desktop support, adaptive Web

design, virtualization, desktop videoconferencing — tended

to be a bit larger in scale. When considering ways that tech-

nology has impacted a campus, it’s understandably the big

stuff that comes to mind first. But sometimes the little things

merit equal attention.

rhea kelly, Executive Editor

teCh CLassroom for stem.

tablets, projectors, cameras, interac-

tive whiteboards, collaborative software

and more will enhance stEM learning

in a new classroom at the Rochester

Institute of Technology’s (nY) Col-

lege of Applied science and technol-

ogy. the technology Rich interactive

Learning Environment, or tRiLE, aims

“to transform education from predomi-

nantly lecture to more active learning,

where students, especially those with

lower GpAs or from under-represented

groups, benefit from this non-traditional

classroom setting,” according to a

statement from the school. Read the full

story online.

3d prINtINg growth. A company

that monitors federal, state and local

contracting has discovered that 3d

printing is expanding in the public sec-

tor. Onvia, which maintains a database

of contracting data, reported that refer-

ences to “3d printing” in bids awarded

in all education (both K-12 and higher

ed) grew from 18 in 2012 to 27 in

2013, and is expected to increase dra-

matically from there in 2014. For exam-

ple, Georgia Institute of Technology

signed a $40,000 deal this year with it

services company technical and Man-

agement Resources to provide a stra-

tasys dimension Elite 3d printer as well

as products and training. Read the full

story online.

streamLINed servers. twelve

colleges in the North Carolina Com-

munity Colleges System are streamlin-

ing their server infrastructure in an effort

to cut operating costs, lower energy use

and ramp up performance. the schools

partnered with Alphanumeric systems, a

provider of business productivity servic-

es, to deploy Fujitsu M10 servers with

Oracle solaris, reducing their server

footprint by as much as four times. the

new servers are running Ellucian higher

education software for the schools’

day-to-day business processes such

as admissions, registration, accounting,

payroll and human resources. Read the

full story online.

goINg dIgItaL. the University of

Wisconsin-La Crosse has launched a

multiyear project to convert its video ar-

chive from videotape to digital files. the

university is digitally encoding, process-

ing and meta-tagging more than 5,000

Vhs videotapes, including footage of

La Crosse history of the early 1900s,

visits from United states presidents,

footage from the 1986 Kennedy sym-

posium, pBs documentaries produced

on campus and vintage football films

from the 1950s. the digital files will be

imported into sonic Foundry’s Mediasite

Enterprise Video platform and indexed,

making the entire video library search-

able. Read the full story online.

30,000 e-textbooks. in the largest

e-textbook program ever undertaken in

the United Kingdom, Plymouth Univer-

sity is rolling out 30,000-plus e-textbooks

to students institution-wide. the school

collaborated with Vital source technol-

ogies, the digital textbook arm of ingram

Content Group, to provide e-textbooks

from more than 16 publishers to stu-

dents in science and technology, busi-

ness, arts and humanities, medicine and

health and human sciences programs.

students will access the textbooks —

including the suite of learning tools built

into the Vitalsource Bookshelf platform

— directly through the university’s digi-

tal Learning Environment. Read the full

story online. 4

Industry+CampusTEChNOLOGY hAPPENINGS IN hIGhER EDUCATION

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20143

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CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20144

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webinars on demandRegister for the latest Campus

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Find out how Southern Illinois

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ELI Annual Meeting 2015

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instructional technology Council

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Las Vegas

INteraCtIve map. Claremont McKenna

College (CA) has launched a new interactive

map that is both optimized for mobile apps (so

that it can be used by those who want to find

their way around campus) and available via the

college’s Web site — so that those who are

not physically present can get the same kinds

of information. the online tool includes a way

to take a self-guided interactive tour of the

campus using the map, photos and three-

dimensional renderings within the familiar

Google Maps layout — allowing prospective

students from anywhere in the world to visual-

ize what their potential new campus might look

like. Read the full story online.Claremont mckenna’s self-guided tour

Canon’s new REALiS WUX6000 LCos instal-lation projector boasts 1,920 x 1,200 (WUXGA) resolution, 6,000 lumens of brightness and a contrast ratio of up to 2,000:1. Read the full story online.

Casio has introduced C-Assist, a free mobile application that lets educa-tors display content from their tablet or smartphone on Casio projectors. Read the full story online.

Microsoft has launched a new education program for its Surface Pro 3 tab-lets, offering discounts on bundles that include the type Cover keypad. Read the full story online.

product r o u n d u p

S T U d E n T A d v i S i n g

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20145

david raths

the University of Arizona ditched its course catalog in favor of an interactive system for navigating course options and optimizing the route to a degree.

Building a Better Academic planning tool

“We wanted a product that would be for

students to use, but also for parents who

want to check on their progress,” Vito said.

“We wanted something just as valuable for

academic advisers as it is for students, and

that would help us predict course availabil-

ity over time,” she continued. “We wanted

something that was more comprehensive

than an advising tool. if a student is coming

up on a prerequisite that they have been

avoiding for three years, we wanted to be

able to intervene more quickly. We wanted

a modern, interesting, user-friendly tool

that is also married to the degree search.”

those early brainstorming sessions led to

the creation of smart planner, an interac-

tive online system that uses advanced algo-

rithms and drag-and-drop menus to help

UA’s students navigate course planning,

creating a more efficient and engaging academic advising

experience. developed at UA between May 2011 and

June 2013, the system allows students to adjust and per-

WHen Her TWin sons were preparing for

their freshman year at the University of Arizona in 2009,

Melissa Vito got to experience for herself how challenging

it was to use the institution’s online course catalog as a

planning tool.

she found that, like most universities, UA’s degree pro-

grams were described from the point of view of the institu-

tion rather than the student. “it was difficult to figure out

what you were looking at and how things fit,” said Vito,

who is UA’s senior vice provost and senior vice president

for student affairs and enrollment management. “We relied

on the user’s ability to figure out what to do with our cata-

log. We did what a lot of schools did — take the paper

catalog and throw it up on a Web site.”

Around the same time, executives from student affairs

and enrollment management, information technology ser-

vices, and academic affairs began meeting to discuss how

to build a better academic planning tool. they looked at

e-advising tools created by the University of Florida and

Arizona State. Although those projects were inspirational,

the UA executives were convinced that there was nothing

commercially available that met their needs.

sonalize their recommended course schedule based on

their individual needs, such as enrolling in summer cours-

es or changing the order of courses based on dual enroll-

the smart planner’s overview page gives students a visual representation of their completed, needed and in-progress units. it also lists a cumulative GpA along with adviser contact information.

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Untitled-2 1 10/20/14 11:35 AM

S T U d E n T A d v i S i n g

ment, Ap credits completed precol-

lege or double-major requirements. it

has been live for undergrad majors at

UA since mid-2012.

optimizing the degree path

Often a student gets to a certain

point in a major and needs a particu-

lar course, only to find it isn’t avail-

able until the following fall. he may

be ready to graduate, but has to

return to campus for that one course,

explained hank Childers, UA’s exec-

utive director for university analytics

and institutional research. “We are

working to get [students] a heads-up

earlier to keep that from happening,

and optimize the path to degree

completion,” he said. “As all universi-

ties are, we are under pressure to

improve as much as possible our

four-year graduation rate. We view

this tool as important in achieving

that aim. Every time the student inter-

acts with the system at the start of

the year, it remaps the optimum path

to graduation for them.”

Besides helping students explore

different programs and create their

individual degree plans, the tool also

gives advisers an electronic record of

the plan that’s always accessible, cre-

ating a more efficient way to commu-

nicate requirements to students. it

also helps administrators plan their

resource allocation. “it can help us

understand what the demand is for

specific courses so we can project

what we need in terms of classrooms

and instructors,” Childers said. “We

do that projection already but largely

on the basis of history — by looking at

what we did last year, then trying to

discern what is going to be different

about this year in terms of shifts in

enrollment patterns. Our premise is

that this new tool will give us more

granular and current information.”

Because the tool only went live in

2013, the value of that aspect has yet

to be proven. “We are not far enough

along yet,” he said.4

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20146

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20147

S T U d E n T A d v i S i n g

technology to other schools, even though that was not

their original intention. Childers has worked with tech

Launch Arizona, the UA initiative responsible for commer-

cializing university-created technologies, to establish a

licensing agreement for other higher education institu-

tions to purchase rights to use smart planner. so far,

Boise State University (id) and three schools in the

California State University system have licensed it. (A

third-party vendor offers software licenses and support

to those institutions.)

“As more schools use it over the next five to eight years,

we should be able to share data across institutions,” Vito

said. “that could make it even more valuable.”

Vito noted that another benefit of this project is that it

developed active, dynamic relationships between student

affairs and enrollment management, information technol-

ogy, and academic affairs personnel. “i think what this

project really cemented for us and much of the campus is

that we can’t really talk about the academic experience or

support experience without also talking about how tech-

nology is going to be used to deliver it. that was one of

the coolest pieces of the project and that has continued

today, as we build out online education. We are cohesive

in our approach.”

David Raths is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

“the biggest challenge was to develop an engine that

would encode the various rules and preferences and to

deliver it with a user interface that people would like,”

Childers said.

Vito and Childers are eager to see if smart planner can

have an impact on time to completion and the number of

transfer students within the state of Arizona. (the advisers

at Pima Community College are among the biggest users

of the tool, Childers noted.) the first catalog was for the

entering class of 2011–12, so it will probably be another

few years before they can do the data analysis. it is also a

challenge to isolate the impact of the smart planner from

other efforts underway. “We know qualitatively that the

advisers love it,” Vito said. “they can get what they need

more quickly and therefore spend more time talking to

students. And they tell us that it is helping students get

through more quickly. We will be asking students about

their usage and get qualitative and self-reported data, and

match that up with what we are seeing and the feedback

we get from counselors. the story isn’t written yet. i would

say, ‘stay tuned.’”

sharing beyond the university

A demonstration of smart planner at a peoplesoft higher

education user group meeting drew strong interest, and

it got UA executives thinking that they could license the

how It works

Creating the smart planner engine was a programming

challenge, Childers said. “We approached it from the

get-go as a bolt-on extension to our peoplesoft student

Administration implementation. We made that decision

in 2011 — peoplesoft has been bolt-on-friendly for

quite a while.”

smart planner goes beyond what UA could encode in

the peoplesoft system as delivered, and beyond any

other commercially available student administration sys-

tem, as far as Childers and his colleagues know. “they

all support the notion of corequisites and prerequisites,

but there is still a big difference between encoding that

and encoding the four-year curriculum for a given major,

which has a recommended sequence for taking classes,”

Childers said, “so that means some soft rules as well as

some hard rules.”

As Childers explained it, UA encodes all the curricular

plans in the form of rules. the smart planner engine uses

those rules and looks at facts UA knows about a student,

plus it captures additional information from the student.

For instance, the student might be planning to go to

Europe for the fall 2016 semester, but will be on campus

that summer. After gathering those constraints and pref-

erences from the student, the engine runs to create an

optimized plan.

baCk to toC

i T T r E n d S

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20148

john k. waters

While early virtual reality was ahead of its time, Oculus VR just might push the technology into the mainstream — particularly in higher education.

could oculus rift redeem Virtual reality in Higher Ed?

users wear like goggles to experience a

completely immersive virtual world. the

VR buzz grew louder with the acquisition

of the company by Facebook for about

$2 billion. this endorsement by the social

media giant was an important nod to an

evolving technology, but news that Ocu-

lus VR had conquered the “barfing in

a wastebasket” problem most people

experienced with the headset, and that it

had lured game industry legend John

Carmack to join the company as CtO,

were signs that this tech is rapidly going mainstream.

“the [Oculus Rift] technology and interface are so novel

and intuitive that the headset itself is exciting, regardless

of the content,” Mark dunn, Yale University’s (Ct) direc-

tor of outreach and recruitment, told Campus Technology

in an e-mail. “Matching up such a cool, seemingly futuristic

technological experience with Yale’s neo-Gothic campus

soMe TeCHnoLoGies arrive ahead of the

ecosystems necessary to support them. Remember sony’s

early ’90s attempt to complement its Walkman line with a

“Bookman” device, or nuvoMedia’s short-lived “Rocket

eBook?” Virtual reality, or VR, has been wandering in that very

wilderness for decades, emerging most recently in ed tech

circles in the form of virtual worlds such as second Life.

despite the early hype and some genuinely innovative appli-

cations, these online, avatar-centric environments failed to

win a large following among educators.

But just as Amazon’s Kindle emerged at a more propitious

moment to reboot the e-book, and Apple’s ipad wiped from

memory the ahead-of-its-time newton, a company called

Oculus VR is reinventing the old approach to virtual reality

— and some colleges and universities are already testing the

waters via virtual campus tours.

Founded in 2012 by palmer Luckey and Brendan iribe,

irvine, CA-based Oculus VR made headlines this year with

its Rift virtual reality head-mounted display device, which

might seem like a strange combination, but i found they fit

together perfectly.”

dunn is referring to his experience this summer with a

demo of a Rift-based tour of his school by virtual tour pro-

vider YouVisit. the company has adapted all of its 1,000-

plus virtual college tours so that they are viewable on an

Oculus Rift headset. two of those schools — Stony Brook

Barone Firenze / S

hutterstock.com

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 20149

i T T r E n d S

i can imagine an officer bringing along a headset to show-

case to a small group of students,” dunn said. “i also think

we will want to feature the headset during some of our

on-campus outreach and recruitment events. this might

seem counterintuitive, but our existing YouVisit content

includes many campus spaces that we can’t normally open

up to visitors. Weather and timing can always make it chal-

lenging to see everything you want when you visit campus.

A virtual tour station during one of our on-campus events

would be its own attraction, and the headset itself is just

so cool, it’s easy to imagine high school seniors lining up

for hours just to try it on.”

“i would characterize what we plan to do with the Oculus

Rift as ‘enthusiastic experimentation,’” dunn added. “We

know the content is great and the experience is exciting.

We’ll keep playing around with opportunities to put it to use

until we find the perfect niche or niches.”

these are very early days for this technology, Mandelbaum

pointed out. in fact, the Rift device is still a prototype. But

Oculus VR has issued a development kit, and vendors have

begun creating software for it. “despite the fact that the

development kit made it easier to develop virtual reality tours,”

Mandelbaum said, “it still took time for our developers to

ramp up and become fluid on the platform. since it is such a

new technology, there are no standards, so our team at You-

Visit has spent a significant amount of time developing those

serving its purpose. As of this writing, the YouVisit tour of

Yale has been viewed more than 240,000 times since

2011, with an average of nearly 10 minutes spent per visit,

dunn said. But the idea of presenting potential students

with an immersive virtual reality tour is intriguing because

of the intensified impact of the experience.

“When visitors tour our campus in person, there are plenty

of oohs and aahs,” dunn said. “Experiencing those same

campus spaces in the [Oculus Rift] headset produces the

same sense of wonder, without the distance and artifice

associated with clicking through images on a browser. As i

experienced it, the [Rift] technology enhanced the campus

visit experience, rather than distracting from it — a very dif-

ficult task for any piece of technology.”

Yale is currently planning to acquire its first Oculus Rift

development kit (which the company recently made available)

to further investigate its potential as an outreach tool, and

may enlist the school’s recruiters to test it during outreach

travel this fall.

“[Yale] officers often visit high schools to meet with

groups of interested students during the school day, and

University in Long island, nY, and the University of New

haven in Connecticut — are in the early stages of develop-

ing plans to implement the technology in their marketing

efforts. Yale is one of seven schools that have tested the

technology with no definitive plans.

Other schools considering the potential of Rift-style

headset-based VR as a vehicle for moving their online

tours into virtual reality include Indiana University at

Bloomington, Audencia Nantes School of Manage-

ment in France, Texas Tech University, the University of

California, San Diego, the University of Colorado Boul-

der and hilbert College (nY).

“there has been talk about virtual reality in the tech world

for years,” said YouVisit CEO Abi Mandelbaum, “but no

device or software had come along that overcame some

of the technical obstacles and was scalable for the gen-

eral market. in september of last year, we tried it and we

thought Oculus just might be it. shortly after, we started

developing on the platform and adapting our tour footage

to be compatible with it.”

Yale is confident that its existing online virtual tour is

“I would characterize what we plan to do with the Oculus Rift as ‘enthusiastic experimentation.’ We’ll keep playing around with opportunities to put it to use

until we find the perfect niche or niches.” — Mark Dunn, Yale University

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Untitled-1 1 10/20/14 9:44 AM

i T T r E n d S

standards, such as how to navigate a

virtual tour and make selections while

only using your head, without keyboard

and mouse.”

After splashy coverage of the Face-

book acquisition and release of the

development kits, Oculus is keeping a

low profile, a source who asked not to

be identified told Campus Technology.

“they don’t want the hype to outpace

their ability to deliver,” the source said.

“they want to turn down the heat for

now and manage expectations.”

And yet there’s no lack of hype around

this technology. “One day, we believe,

this kind of immersive, augmented real-

ity will become a part of daily life for

billions of people,” Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

iribe himself said in an interview that

VR is destined to become “one of the

most transformative platforms for edu-

cation of all time.”

But Oculus VR isn’t the only vendor

pursuing the face-computing delivery of

VR. sony recently unveiled a prototype

VR headset for the playstation, and a

startup called Vrvana is at work on a

prototype for gaming called totem VR.

Although dunn sees promise in the

Oculus Rift, he can’t imagine even the

most realistic VR ever replacing the

“traditional college visit experience,”

which involves much more than look-

ing at buildings.

“We will always encourage students

and parents to visit campus to ask

questions of students and admissions

officers; see how students engage their

surroundings; and get a sense of what

an ordinary day at Yale is like,” he said.

“i can imagine, however, that this tech-

nology will provide a valuable supple-

ment to the college visit experience,

and could greatly expand the number of

visitors who are able to feel what it’s like

to be inside a Yale Residential College

courtyard, or to study inside one of

Yale’s magnificent libraries.”

John K. Waters is a freelance writer

based in Mountain View, CA.

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201410 baCk to toC

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david raths

two groups of higher ed institutions in new York state are tackling the video management challenge and sharing content across multiple schools.

When Youtube Isn’t Enough to Manage Your campus Video content

tors and CiOs at the new York

six (a consortium composed of

Colgate University, hamilton

College, hobart and William

Smith Colleges, Skidmore Col-

lege, St. Lawrence University

and Union College) came

together to deploy a cloud-based

video-streaming platform from

Ensemble Video. the project,

dubbed Mediashare, is funded

by a three-year grant from the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

derek Lustig, director of net-

work and systems infrastructure at hobart and William

smith, explained the scope of the challenge: “it was incon-

venient that everyone had a lot of different media capture

tools. they had all sorts of local processes and ideas about

how to manage their copyright systems,” he said, “so it was

a very interesting conversation for us to have to come up

WHeTHer iT’s a recorded lecture for a flipped

class or a multimedia student assignment, video has grown

into a major component of learning content at today’s col-

leges and universities. Yet many institutions continue to

struggle with managing the abundance of video on cam-

pus: having outgrown Youtube, they desperately need a

video platform that can scale to large numbers of people

across many locations; stream to many types of devices;

allow faculty to create and manage their own video librar-

ies; and share content across multiple schools.

in new York state, two groups of higher ed institutions are

tackling the problem: the new York six, a consortium of lib-

eral arts institutions, and the State University of New York

system have each taken a collaborative approach to make it

easier to manage and share video. At this summer’s Campus

technology 2014 conference in Boston, a panel of technol-

ogy executives from each group discussed their efforts.

the New york six

in an effort to share resources and cut costs, library direc-

with one video production system that can get to a variety

of users with multiple devices.”

the six institutions were using 20 different tools to capture

video, and each organization had its own way to manage

video content. the Mediashare team’s goal is to come up with

an overarching way to distribute video; most important is inte-

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v i d E o M A n A g E M E n T

services for 15. As notorius assessed video platforms, he

was looking for something that itEC could host centrally, but

that would allow for delegated administration. “We are a ser-

vice provider but we are small,” he said. “there are only 51

of us in our shop, and we are providing services across

sUnY. We want to make sure the application can scale.” he

added that Ensemble Video was flexible in creating a new

licensing model that made it easy for sUnY campuses to do

proofs of concept before committing.

SUNY Buffalo State, the largest comprehensive college

in the sUnY system, started using Ensemble Video hosted

by itEC four years ago. “since then we have amassed more

than 4,000 videos that have had over 100,000 views,” said

Melaine Kenyon, director of instructional technology.

“We are using it to bring video into Blackboard with the

‘video anywhere’ feature, not just for academic classes but

for staff training, student presentations and musical perfor-

mances,” she said, “and we connect with Automatic sync

technologies for captioning for our accessibility initiative.”

Kenyon noted that the platform has allowed faculty to

manage their own content. “We also like the dropbox video

feature that allows students to upload video content for

faculty to assess,” she added. “Our music and education

departments are using this right now and faculty members

can use the video annotation feature to provide feedback.”

the video platform is also seen as key to the success

able to come up with one way to distribute video across

all campuses for all use cases. “For each type of video we

wanted to share, we came up with a process to do that,”

Lustig said. “so we are really good at sharing guest lec-

ture series and study-abroad programs that are being

launched at the consortium level. For us, it was coming to

an understanding of what [videos] everyone has, what

devices they are launching them to, and coming up with a

way to govern this going forward.”

the six campuses are working on several course collabo-

rations, and will soon have 12 to 15 courses with shared

faculty members, noted Forney. “Video is going to be a big

part of that. having this system is going to work out well.”

video in the Cloud at suNy

Also on the podium during the Campus technology session

in Boston were several representatives from the state Uni-

versity of new York, who talked about their efforts to offer a

cloud-based video management platform for all 64 cam-

puses across the state. (Although sUnY also worked with

Ensemble Video, the speakers mentioned that there are

several other video platforms to choose from.)

sUnY’s systemwide it services organization, the informa-

tion technology Exchange Center, is basically a private cloud,

said Michael notorius, itEC CiO. it hosts LMses for 32

sUnY campuses, Banner for 18 campuses and managed

gration with learning management systems. “We had eight

learning management systems for six institutions,” Lustig said.

“We needed something that addressed that issue.”

the new York six ran a pilot with Ensemble Video in the

company’s public cloud. “that gave us an opportunity to

upload and test-drive it, embedding videos in universities’

respective LMses,” said Jim Forney, senior educational

technologist at st. Lawrence University. “We had one online

course that had trouble with an existing video system that

was dependent on Java, and they found this worked great.”

By pooling resources, the six campuses were nicely sur-

prised that they gained efficiencies in licensing costs. “We

also are able to predict and trend storage needs,” Lustig

added. “We had some campuses that didn’t have a lot of

storage available and some that had a good amount, but we

were able to leverage the total pool available across all six

campuses,” he said. “We were also pleased by the way the

system enables us to preserve bandwidth.” When users

choose to share video across campuses, the heavy lifting is

done in the cloud, he explained. “But we also have local

media servers on each campus. so when there is a request

for local media services, it is downloaded right from our

campus network. that flexibility is really good for us.”

the new York six needed to launch the video manage-

ment system in a one-year time frame, and while they liked

the Ensemble platform, they realized they would not be

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of Open sUnY, an online learning

platform rolling out across the state

system. “As we were developing

Open sUnY, we went to 10 cam-

puses across the state and spoke to

500 faculty members,” recalled doug

Cohen, associate director of aca-

demic technology services for the

sUnY Learning network. “One of

the top five initiatives they wanted us

to add in their online courses was

video, so that immediately led us to

partner with sUnY itEC on the

Ensemble offering. All Open sUnY

plus degree programs have the ser-

vice available to them.”

Cohen said he could relate to pro-

fessors’ challenges managing their

video assignments. he recently start-

ed teaching online courses in Web

design and development that includ-

ed video tutorials and assignments.

“the institution i am teaching for does

not yet have a video platform, so

immediately i was scrambling for

where to put my videos,” he said.

in addition to using the itEC-hosted

video platform, Open sUnY has a

Center for Online teaching Excel-

lence, whose multimedia develop-

ment specialists help faculty create

videos and use the Ensemble Video

system to deliver them through a vari-

ety of platforms, including Wordpress,

Moodle and Blackboard.

Although sharing media across many

campuses raises issues around

interoperability, storage, governance,

retention policies and copyright com-

pliance, the benefits of sharing video,

efficiently streaming content and hav-

ing faculty manage their own collec-

tions make it worth working through

the challenges, the panelists said.

“there are demands on higher educa-

tion to do things more efficiently and in

a collaborative way,” said hobart and

William smith’s Lustig. “We are taking

a stab at tackling that.”

David Raths is a freelance writer

based in Philadelphia.

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michael hart

A little finesse goes a long way in communicating with tech-challenged users — and more important, it can bolster it’s strategic role across the university.

How to Bridge the It communication Gap

get used to openness

higher education’s policy of

openness can be a bit of a cul-

ture shock compared to the pri-

vate sector, pointed out Bill

Balint, CiO of Indiana Univer-

sity of Pennsylvania.

“By our very nature, we have a

more open, shared governance

of the user community,” he said.

“You have to be ready to explain

how and why you’re doing what

you’re doing, especially when you’re making changes.”

in the private sector, for example, an it leader might only

need the buy-in of one person, whoever it is that runs the

business unit, to make a change. “At a bank, the manager

puts out a memo and says, ‘this is the way it’s going to

be,’ and that’s the end of the story,” Balint noted.

not so in the higher ed community. there are multiple

users with varying levels of autonomy throughout a cam-

pus. Often it isn’t just a question of what the it profes-

sional says to a particular individual, it’s having the emo-

You’ve sPenT Hours on the phone with a

user whose problem, you finally discover, is nowhere close

to what he has been describing to you. Or you’ve gotten

that excited call from a professor who has just learned

about “the most amazing technology ever” and wants you

to get it for her “immediately.” (never mind that the tech-

nology costs a mint or won’t actually suit her needs!)

Every it professional at a higher education institution has

had these experiences. it doesn’t matter if you’re a one-

person team at a small community college or part of a

massive it department at a major university.

Failed communication is just one symptom of the chasm

that sometimes exists between it professionals and the

faculty, students and administrators they serve. And while

it’s tempting to blame the user, the truth is it’s up to it to

find a way to get the right messages across. “You’ve got

to go to where people stand,” exhorted Joanna Young, vice

president and CiO at Michigan State University. in other

words, put yourself in the user’s shoes; listen as much as

you talk or fix; and learn how to speak on his terms.

CT asked two seasoned it leaders for their advice on

how to do just that.

tional intelligence to understand that person’s role in the

entire organization.

Young drew an even broader picture, citing the increas-

ing consumerization of technology in higher education. “it

can lead to a lot of diversity and decentralization,” she

said, “and higher ed tends to have that as an attribute.”

Consequently, it is incumbent on the campus it leader,

Young said, to help each department, unit and individual

understand how their technology needs fit in with those of

the larger institution.4

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i T M A n A g E M E n T

“We see it all,” Young said, “and we have a responsibil-

ity to help the larger organization by showing them how

each part works together.”

Maybe that user really could use — and afford — that

product X he’s begging for. But maybe you know of some-

body in another part of the campus who is accomplishing

the same goal with something else. Maybe there’s a non-

tech solution to accomplish that goal. that’s when those

communication and leadership skills come in.

“it’s not about bits and bytes a lot of the time,” agreed

Balint.

find the right Level of Communication

it professionals, noted Balint, “aren’t one-size-fits-all.

there are certain individuals who perhaps are a little bit

more introverted. Maybe what they love to do is solve

problems, and not talk about them so much.”

place those people in roles where they might not interact

every day with the user community, he recommended. those

with sharper communication skills, place closer to the user.

then, work tirelessly on what messages you deliver to

your community and how: When you are making changes,

how verbose do you want to be in your communications?

how technical can you get? how many messages do you

send out?

“We have a core set in our customer care function that

is responsible for any editorial content that goes out,”

Balint said. “Any training, documentation, news items,

9 I.T. CommunICaTIon EssEnTIals1) Listen before you talk. Even if you have to count to 10 — twice — find out what the user needs or wants before

you start talking.

2) use the faQ page on your web site. You can head off lots of the most common questions this way. think care-

fully about how you frame your questions and answers, and then test them with nontechnical people before you

put them online.

3) Create cheat sheets. Going beyond the FAQ, write up some step-by-step instructions for some of the more

common challenges users call with and send them to the users once you’ve solved their problem — so they can

learn how to handle it themselves.

4) put your most extroverted people in your customer service function. And allow those it professionals who

may be a bit more introverted to work on projects that require less interaction with the public.

5) don’t assume a user is stupid. Lack of a specific knowledge does not equate with lack of intelligence. it’s your

job to supply the knowledge.

6) don’t just fix, teach. As much as possible, show the user how he can either avoid the same problem again or fix

it himself the next time it happens.

7) stay jargon-free. no A.C.R.O.n.Y.M.s., and if you do use one, define it.

8) take it step-by-step. And don’t leave any steps out when you’re walking users through a solution. don’t assume

they know to do anything.

9) above all, don’t snicker or roll your eyes. Even if you’re on the phone and the caller can’t see you. they’ll know.

and carefully. say, ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want

to accomplish?’”

the campus it leader, she pointed out, is in a unique

position in the organization. to a greater extent than almost

anybody — maybe even the college president — it pro-

fessionals, if they are doing their jobs correctly, know what

is going on all over the institution.

explain the big picture

When a user comes to it with the excited “i want to buy

product X” demand, “Often,” Young said, “the common it

reaction is dismay.”

But instead of putting the user on the defensive by jump-

ing straight to all the reasons buying product X would be

a mistake, she said, “i coach people to come at it quietly

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i T M A n A g E M E n T

whatever. We have people — and

sometimes we have focus groups —

who help us with it.”

Everybody on an it team — regard-

less of how much time they spend

interacting with the public — should

work to communicate better. Balint

said it professionals spend as much

time discussing the challenges they

have with users as vice versa.

And they know, he said, that “with-

out a user community, they don’t

need us,” so it’s important to work

together.

make sure It Is

viewed as an asset

Finally, Balint and Young agreed, it’s

important for it leaders to ensure that

campus leaders — presidents, deans

and department heads — understand

the important role the it team can and

should play in the institution.

As devices and technology become

more seamless and user-friendly,

there is the tendency for nontechnical

people to forget about them. Users

might be unaware that there are tech-

nology solutions to their challenges.

For example, pointed out Balint, with

higher ed institutions facing budget-

ary problems and personnel reduc-

tions, often technology can be used

to automate certain tasks once done

by employees. “But maybe the admin-

istration just doesn’t know that’s a

possibility,” he said.

Always, said Young, “your role

should be to frame things in terms of

alignment.”

in order to both communicate more

effectively and be viewed as an asset

to the institution, she said, today’s it

professional must look for ways to not

just fix the user’s problem with a lap-

top or find a forgotten password, but

to help solve the challenges of the

entire organization.

Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based

freelance writer and the former exec-

utive editor of thE Journal.

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Blended learning and adaptive software are helping the state of tennessee make sure its high school graduates are prepared for college-level mathematics.

Solving the Math readiness problem

a hybrid approach

to attack the problem head-on,

the state piloted a blended

learning program called sAiLs

(seamless Alignment and inte-

grated Learning support). By

aligning and embedding the

tennessee Board of Regents

college developmental compe-

tencies with the tennessee

department of Education bridge

math standards, sAiLs essen-

tially moves the developmental

math course from college into

the senior year of high school.

developed by high school teach-

ers and community college instructors, the self-paced

math course is designed for low-scoring students with

college aspirations. students learn online in a school com-

severAL YeArs ago, 75 percent of graduat-

ing high school seniors in tennessee were not ready for

college-level math. “it was clear that this was not accept-

able and something needed to be done,” said Robert

denn, dean of honors and special programs at Chatta-

nooga State Community College (CsCC). “the lecture

and homework model was not working.”

tennessee is not alone: College math readiness is a

persistent problem for higher ed institutions across the

U.s. According to a 2014 report from ACt, 57 percent

of ACt-tested high school graduates across the coun-

try failed to meet math readiness benchmarks. When

these students show up for their first year of college,

they must take developmental classes to catch up —

and too many never pass those courses. But by com-

bining college and high school math content in an

online environment taught in high school computer

labs, educators in the state of tennessee believe they

have found a solution.

puter lab with a teacher on hand to help. those who suc-

cessfully complete the course are deemed ready to take a

college math course, saving them time and money.4

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T E A C H i n g A n d L E A r n i n g

each week to educators and administrators across the

state. “All the statewide reports aggregate data, but they

can also show data about individual high schools and even

classrooms,” squires said.

the determining factor of student success is engage-

ment, said denn. “if they are not successful, it is not

because the conceptual framework is not right,” he added.

“it is because of secondary issues stopping the student

from properly engaging.”

tennessee is already reaping the benefits of sAiLs. “We

have flipped it from 75 percent needing remediation to

only 25 percent,” noted denn. From August through

december of 2013, students saved 6,350 semesters of

learning support (remedial math) and $3.5 million in tuition

and books, according to the sAiLs program. “By all the

calculations,” denn said, “we think the return on invest-

ment for this program is 10 to 1.”

Even though the program is still new, denn said he and

his colleagues receive calls regularly from superintendents

around the country asking how to replicate it. “We share

everything about what we do, including what it took to scale

up,” he said. “A lot of things have been tried to solve this

dilemma, but we think we have found a solution and at a low

cost per student.”

David Raths is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

extend that model to students who need more help.”

the 2012–2013 sAiLs pilot, with four community col-

leges working with 20 high schools, showed promising

results. At Chattanooga state, more than 80 percent of the

students in the pilot entered college ready to take a college-

level math course. Eager to build on that success, the state

provided $1.12 million to scale the program up. in 2013–

2014, sAiLs expanded to 13 community colleges and 122

high schools, and it is now moving toward a full statewide

rollout. it is expected to serve 184 high schools and 13,636

students in the 2014–2015 school year.

“there were logistical challenges, as there are any time

you manage growth,” denn said. “But we have almost every

district in the state clamoring for spots in the program. We

have support from every sector in the state, from the gover-

nor’s office to the Board of Regents to superintendents, and

chambers of commerce. that really helps.”

One of the benefits of having an online program is that it

generates real-time data — when students are struggling,

schools can intervene quickly with more resources. some-

times principals and parents are asked to get more

involved. “the college partners can see everything going

on in the software,” squires said. “there is transparency

and teamwork between the community college and the

high school.” dru smith, who manages and ensures the

quality of the sAiLs program at CsCC, sends out reports

schools that participate in the sAiLs program have to

take a completely new approach with their math students,

noted John squires, mathematics department head at

CsCC. “these students have an average ACt score of

14, and the traditional lecture classes did not work for

them,” he said. instead, sAiLs students use pearson’s

MyMathLab adaptive learning software as a central part of

the course. “We require that students spend at least 50

percent of the class time at the computer,” said squires.

in a mastery-learning model, students have to pass each

competency before they move on to the next. “that is not

the typical way math is taught in high school,” he added.

sAiLs field coordinators assist teachers in making the

transition to the new approach.

early Courses get results

the sAiLs program builds on an earlier program at Chat-

tanooga state called EChO (Early College hybrid Online),

which offered accelerated students in high school the

opportunity to take college-level courses such as calculus

and statistics.

denn and Kim McCormick, CsCC’s provost and vice

president for academic affairs, studied the data from the

EChO program. “it showed that if high school students

take one early course, their persistence in college improves,”

said denn, who is sAiLs’ program director. “We sought to

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19 CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 2014

what’s Next for e-textbooks?technology is moving the digital textbook from print look-alike to next-generation learning platform.By Dian Schaffhauser

the dIgItaL textbook of tomor-row probably doesn’t look like a book at all. Imagine, instead, an online service that remixes itself on the fly for consumption via any device, with concepts tailored to a specific student’s knowledge gaps and learning style — and ex-amples and problems updated to immerse the learner in timely, compelling content.4

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CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201420

nobody is delivering that particular experience yet. in fact,

most digital textbooks look just like their printed brethren

with extra features tacked on, such as the ability to high-

light text, insert sticky notes, look up the meaning of a word

and bookmark pages. “Glorified pdFs,” as Boundless CEO

Ariel diaz called them.

still, the technology is out there to move the e-textbook

beyond the “digital with extras” model. As david Anderson,

executive director of higher education at the Association of

American publishers, described, learning platforms from his

members incorporate text content, adaptive learning materi-

als, quizzes, tests and games. Artificial intelligence can de-

termine where a student is strong and weak, and “drill the

student until the student performs better,” he noted. the data

generated through those mechanisms is sent back to the

professor, “who can monitor it as the class is going along and

adjust his or her instructional priorities.” those same plat-

forms, he said, allow the faculty member to choose individual

chapters from a textbook and add

his or her own “extraneous mate-

rials in as part of the coursework.”

CT spoke with some of the in-

dustry players to find out how

they are moving toward the next-

generation e-textbook.

pearson: Integration

and Interactivity

pearson is one of the biggest ed-

ucation publishers in the higher

ed space. its MyLab & Mastering

adaptive learning products are

used by 11 million learners each

year, and its digital products have

eclipsed the 50 percent mark,

which means it sells slightly more digital than print materials.

the company’s latest digital offering, REVEL, mixes text,

interactive exercises, infographics, social features and vid-

eo segments for students, who can use it on their mobile

devices. And it gives faculty the means to track the time

students spend on each reading assignment as well as their

performance on assessments. the first release, which saw

immediate adoption at 50 institutions this fall, addresses

three general education courses: introduction to psychol-

ogy; introduction to sociology; and public speaking and

Communications. these are areas where neither pearson

nor its competitors were solving the main problems, ac-

cording to paul Corey, pearson higher Education’s manag-

ing director: “What we’ve heard over and over again from

students is, ‘have everything in one place. don’t make me

go to three different products to get my whole out-of-class

experience. And address the affordability issue.’”

Regarding that latter item, he added, “this isn’t unique to

pearson, but it turns out that we can price these initial prod-

ucts at 40 to 50 percent of their print product [equivalent].”

For each of the REVEL subjects, pearson tapped interac-

tive technology it either owns or already integrates with. the

sociology course, for example, will use social Explorer, which

pearson uses in a number of its sociology textbooks. the Web-

based service provides access to current and historical cen-

sus data and demographic information; users can create maps

markET shIfTs simba information reports that in a $7.18 billion market that includes sales of

new textbooks, used textbooks and multimedia materials, sales of digital versions

of print editions of textbooks came in at a paltry $54 million in 2013 (up 6 percent from

the year before). however, sales of used textbooks (which cuts publishers out of the

transaction entirely) generated 33 times more revenue: $1.8 billion in that same period,

albeit down 7 percent from the previous year. At that rate of growth and shrinkage, sales

of e-textbooks will finally surpass used textbooks in about 27 years — hardly the kind of

optimistic outlook publishing company shareholders would be happy about.

it’s in the category of “digital materials” where publishers are seeing the strongest growth

— double-digit in recent years. simba estimates that the multimedia segment, as the com-

pany calls it, generated $1.08 billion in 2013, up nearly 18 percent from 2012. that rate of

growth is accelerating. As Vital source technologies COO Kent Freeman observed, “pub-

lishers are turning themselves into software companies. they’re fundamentally changing

themselves from publishing organizations to software development houses.”

$

D i g i t a l t e x t b o o k s

and reports to illustrate demography data and social change.

the public speaking course uses pearson’s own Media-

share, a file-upload service that lets students post speeches,

visual aids, video assignments, role plays and group projects.

And the psychology course uses My Virtual Child, an interac-

tive simulation of raising a child from birth to age 18 that allows

students to monitor the effect of parenting decisions over time.

mcgraw-hill: adaptivity and mobile

in recent years, McGraw-hill Education has focused on

morphing itself from a textbook company into a “learning

technology company.” According to doug hughes, higher

ed chief sales officer, the company had to evolve to address

the problems in education today: “the incredible amount of

students who never complete college; the soaring student

loan debt default rate; [graduates] having trouble finding the

kind of jobs they want because some employers see them

as not well enough prepared to enter the workforce. these

are real problems. if you take a pragmatic view of the world,

while the content is important, a textbook on its own is never

going to meaningfully address any of those problems. More

modern learning technologies do in very big ways.”

A major area of technology investment for McGraw-hill is

adaptive learning: in 2013 the company acquired ALEKs,

Web-based software developed with national science

Foundation money at the University of California, Irvine.

through adaptive questioning, the software assesses a stu-

dent’s knowledge and delivers targeted instruction on top-

ics he or she is ready to learn next. Courses covered include

mathematics, business, science and behavioral sciences.

Earlier this year, the company bought Area9, an adaptive

learning company it had long teamed up with (and invested

in) to develop Learnsmart, McGraw-hill’s suite of adaptive

products in English/language arts and social studies. the

software adjusts its content based on the student’s self-

professed confidence level about concepts and periodically

prods the student to review the topics most likely to be for-

gotten over the course of the semester. the acquisition of

Area9 also included a technology called smartBook, which

uses data from Learnsmart to tailor e-textbook content to

students’ learning needs.

next up for McGraw-hill, hughes hinted: “A world-class

mobile experience, to deliver all these types of cutting-edge

technologies on tablet devices and mobile devices.” the

move to mobile fits well with international demand, hughes

noted. “if you get outside of the United states, you’re going

to find that a lot of countries and societies don’t really even

have computers, but they have mobile devices. Mobile al-

lows a great deal of portability and interactivity of all sorts

in a way that’s very natural and elegant. Until recently our

industry hasn’t been very good at delivering in that format.”

Cengage: understanding students

Whereas the competition is focusing on building out tech-

nology platforms, Cengage Learning is putting more em-

phasis on understanding what it calls the “student work-

flow” — what challenges the student, how the student

studies, where the student goes for information and so on.

to understand the interaction between student and fac-

ulty member, the company arranged to sit in on office hours

with 40 students meeting with 40 faculty members. “We

did lots of interviewing afterward to see how they went,”

recalled Chief product Officer Jim donohue. “the percep-

tion from the instructor was that it was a great meeting, that

the student learned a lot. the perception from the student

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“mobile allows a great deal of portability and interactivity of all sorts in a way that’s very natural and elegant. until recently our industry hasn’t been very good at delivering in that format.” — Doug Hughes, McGraw-Hill Education

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D i g i t a l t e x t b o o k s

was as if they were in a different meeting. they really mostly

didn’t know what was going on, didn’t really feel that it an-

swered their questions, and more importantly, didn’t even

know what questions they should be asking.”

Cengage is now expanding that research into 21 Voic-

es, a project intended, according to its Web page, to help

Cengage employees “understand and empathize with col-

lege students in order to gain insights into their daily lives.”

twenty-one college students were chosen through an ap-

plication process this summer to represent different re-

gions, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well

as majors and academic and extracurricular interests. Each

student embodies a “persona” to help Cengage understand

his or her life from “end to end,” donohue said.

On a weekly basis, participants will conduct a self-reporting

activity, such as blogging, drawing or taking photos; monthly, a

program researcher will talk with them about their submissions;

quarterly, the researchers will spend a day with the students

observing their lives; and annually, participants will attend a

summit to go over the research. students will sign one-year

contracts and receive $250 per month for their efforts.

Ultimately, Cengage hopes the research will help it design

products that better engage students and identify new ways

to help them succeed. the company’s Mindtap platform, for

example, is an online system that molds “MindApps” — learn-

ing resources such as readings, multimedia, interactive activi-

ties and assessments — into a “learning path” that guides the

student through the curriculum. instructors can customize the

learning path for the class by mixing MindApps and other Cen-

gage content with their own materials. An analytics dashboard

available to faculty and students reports on “engagement lev-

els,” which are calculated through number of times logged in,

time spent in Mindtap and the types of activities accessed.

According to donohue, Mindtap will evolve to tell students

where they stand in relation to the rest of their class, as well

as where they stand in relation to students taking a compa-

rable class throughout the country. it will help students un-

derstand how much time they’ll need for specific activities, or

create activities to suit students’ time constraints. For exam-

ple, if a student has five minutes available, the software cre-

ates a “learning burst” that lasts that long, giving the student

something to do on a topic or area he needs to focus on.

flat world: Competency tracking

in its early days, Flat World Knowledge innovated by publishing

free digital versions of its textbooks and providing instructors

with an easy way to customize their content. the “free” part of

the operation eventually disappeared, replaced by a $42 digi-

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201423

mIxIng and maTChIngWhat’s the key to a more innovative curriculum? Modular content, according to Boundless CEO Ariel diaz. “it’s

thinking about content on an atomic level, an individual concept, an individual image, an individual key term.” By

breaking up content into modules, instructors can “take it apart and have it fit their curriculum much better,” he said.

to facilitate the customization of content, Boundless’ instructor platform includes a content management system that controls

versions on a par with Github, the collaborative tool for building and managing code. the result, noted diaz, is that “every in-

dividual one of our over 10,000 modules across our 20 subjects has its own version history.” When an educator customizes a

given book and assigns it to students, the platform “locks” the version of the content so it doesn’t change out from under them.

that version is then made available to other instructors who may adopt it and make further changes. Auxiliary content such as

quizzes can also be changed around, added to, deleted and revised, then fixed in place.

Modularity is an important component in adaptive learning, diaz pointed out. “if you have modular content plus an adaptive

learning engine plus a competency-based curriculum, you start getting to this world where the content is in service of the learn-

ing outcomes the students need, and you can navigate it to multiple paths on any device in a pretty elegant and useful way.”

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CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201424

tal “study pass” that offers access to pdFs, mobile-compatible

content and relatively run-of-the-mill study features.

the company moved back into innovator mode in January

when Brandman University, a private nonprofit institution

that’s part of Chapman University (CA), announced it would

work with Flat World in developing the platform and content for

a new online, competency-based bachelor’s degree in busi-

ness administration. that’s a four-year degree “that is com-

pletely on the ipad,” crowed Flat World CEO Chris Etesse.

As part of the deal, Flat World is building a new learning

platform with some compelling capabilities. students will be

able to take proctored exams directly on the device by stream-

ing real-time video to a company that monitors for cheating.

Content can be mixed from multiple sources — Flat World,

open educational resources or content licensed from other

publishers — and it will all take on the same look and feel as

if it came from the same source. A social platform will enable

students, educators and others (including an unnamed but

well known mainframe that likes to answer questions) to post

questions and answer them, creating an ever-growing body

of content that will live on outside of a given course’s use.

And the platform will allow faculty and students to track and

assess mastery in project-based experiences.

A key aspect of the platform is modularity, explained Et-

esse. Flat World’s instructional designers are working with

Brandman’s faculty “to curate 38 courses, map them to 88

competencies, 367 learning objectives, 1,500 topics [and]

5,000 concepts,” he said. if students are struggling with a

given concept, the professor can swap out the content and

even do testing on various approaches to the material. “Re-

ally, for the first time you can actually measure how different

cohorts of students are learning in that experience,” Etesse

said. “i think it’s exciting, because you could do A/B testing

on what’s working and what’s not working.”

Although the new Flat World platform will offer adaptive

learning pathways, Etesse conceded that the company is “sort

of in the first inning of adaptivity. there are a lot of things we

don’t know yet.” What sets Flat World apart from other com-

panies’ efforts in this area is its decision to share its adaptive

algorithm with its partner institutions. “We want to update it

and modify it with [their help] rather than take a black box ap-

proach. We think you can’t really do research on something

unless you know exactly what’s happening in that black box.”

knewton: fine-tuning with data

Knewton made big news three years ago when it built an

adaptive learning product for Arizona State University’s

remedial math courses. As students work online with Knew-

ton Math Readiness, the program analyzes “vast amounts

of anonymized data” to calculate what a student knows and

how he learns best, and then recommend what he should

study next, as a company-published case study states.

According to Jose Ferreira, Knewton’s CEO and founder, the

product was “very successful. it lowered the dropout rate at

AsU by about a third.” More specifically, after two semesters

of use with about 2,000 developmental math students, course

withdrawal rates dropped by 56 percent and pass rates in-

creased to 75 percent from 64 percent. that was enough to

convince a whole bunch of publishers — Cengage, Macmil-

lan, Wiley, pearson and others — to work with Knewton in

integrating its adaptive technology into their course materials.

Adaptivity is in a transitional moment, Ferreira noted. One

way to achieve it is to take a concept, build a quiz around

it and make up “some arbitrary number” of questions the

student needs to get right before moving on to the next

concept. “that’s the easy way to do it,” he said.

the “harder” way, as Ferreira described it, is a fine-tuned,

much more personalized approach. “instead of having liter-

ally tens of thousands of sentences, the exact same ones,

the same order, the same end-of-chapter practice ques-

tions, the same examples, the same difficulty levels, you get

a real-time, dynamically generated textbook with optimized

view down to the sentence, down to the practice question,

based exactly on what you know and how you learn it best.

it’s like your own perfect textbook.”

With Knewton, all of the student data generated through

the use of those “perfect textbooks” is anonymized and ana-

lyzed to determine the next best step for people who appear

D i g i t a l t e x t b o o k s

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201425

to be just like the student doing the studying. “We can look

at their learning graph — like a fingerprint — and say, who is

like this next student?” said Ferreira. “At the time they had to

learn this particular concept — cell division or subject-verb

agreement or rules of exponents — they knew a lot of these

other concepts that are around the level of mastery that this

next student has. they had certain learning patterns or strat-

egies that seemed to work well for them.”

sometimes, even when effort and ability are comparable

across groups of students, some just turn out to be luckier

than others: they studied just the right concept at the right

point in the process; they answered just the right number of

practice questions. the “right” approach to adaptivity, said

Ferreira, takes all of that into account as well, pulling data

from across multiple publishers — Knewton’s customers —

to find the “perfect strategy” for that student.

While Knewton has continued working with traditional

publishers to develop its adaptive tech, it has also shifted its

attention back to individual institutions. “in the earlier days

we had to do a lot of stuff by hand. And now it’s more of a

seamless process,” said Ferreira. “We’ve made it so much

easier to use, we can do those kinds of small applications.”

in other words, if a university has developed its own course

materials, it could partner with Knewton to add adaptivity

directly — cutting the publishers out of the deal altogether.

What’s more, in a private beta program, Knewton is de-

veloping an open adaptive learning platform that “will allow

anyone to create his/her own personalized, adaptive course

for free,” according to a message board post soliciting beta

participants. Could it be that the company is now refining

and automating its techniques so precisely that it expects to

be able to offer the “perfect textbook” to individual depart-

ments, faculty members or even students?

Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor of Cam-

pus technology.

D i g i t a l t e x t b o o k s

ThE E-TExTbook busInEss modElthe first forays into digital course materials were driven by cost reductions, according to Kent Freeman, COO of digital

curriculum platform Vital source technologies. Early adopters included for-profits as well as experimental institutions,

where decision-making was more centralized and individual faculty and departments had less say in adoption of a given curriculum.

What usually happens, however, is that students have to figure out where to obtain textbooks on their own — “in the local

store, online, in digital form, in print form, through purchase or rental,” noted Freeman. that approach “doesn’t really offer the

publishers any real opportunities to work the price points.”

Because students have so many options for obtaining course materials, the focus on cost savings has only gotten publishers

so far. But with today’s increasing institutional focus on student outcomes, said Freeman, publishers are scrambling to figure

out how to leverage technology to make the learning experience better. “When you think about the ‘speed bumps’ that have

prevented digital from taking off as rapidly as it has the potential to do, the issues are all pretty familiar to our industry: the be-

havioral and structural challenges associated with institutions’ migration to digital; the need for more compelling content that

fully leverages the capabilities of technology; and the need for a better user experience,” he said. “We feel like we are already

making significant progress on each of these issues.”

the ultimate goal for publishers: to attain institutional licensing instead of having to rely on student licensing. in that scenario,

publishers could achieve “100 percent sell-through,” where they’re paid for every student in a class. in turn, institutions can

negotiate volume discounts. “if publishers know [100 percent sell-through is] going to happen, if the institution is willing to

work with the publishers and with fulfillment providers such as Vital source, then [the institution has] gained some leverage in

that conversation,” explained Freeman.

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david raths

Leading a university Into the digital Future

administrators at the University of Oklahoma

embarked on the One University digital initia-

tive — a broad, sweeping campaign to ensure

the institution will take its place in the digital

realm — they were determined to sustain its

momentum for the long term.

“Obviously it’s a challenge to get an institution

this large excited about a campuswide project,”

said nicholas hathaway, OU’s vice president of

executive affairs and administrative affairs. “We

started with the people most excited about the

idea, and as word has spread we have increased

the size of the group that is the steering com-

mittee, so now there is a group touching a large

part of the campus that is meeting on a regular

basis to sustain the momentum of the effort.” the steering

committee does not have a formal membership like a typical

university council or committee with three-year terms, hath-

away explained. “We chose people who were interested,

engaged and capable of having influence on campus first.

As additional people with the same characteristics come to

Category: Leadership, Governance and policy

Institution: University of Oklahoma

project: One University digital initiative

project lead: nick hathaway,

executive vice president

tech vendors/partners:

Apple

Camp pixel

delcom Group

Google

MakerBot

nextthought

Okapi studio

Openstax

Route 92 Consulting

soMe universiTies announce campus-

wide technology initiatives with great fanfare, only to see

enthusiasm fizzle after a few early successes. so when

our attention, we add them to the group.”

One University comprises several different projects:

Janux, a new interactive learning community created

in partnership between OU and technology vendor next-

thought. Janux is a form of open courseware, combining

multimedia-rich content with interactive social tools and a

Courtesy of the U

niversity of Oklahom

a

the University of Oklahoma’s One University digital initiative is a technology strategy for a broad, sweeping campaign to ensure the university will take its place in the digital realm.

to generate enthusiasm for the one university digital Initiative, ou converted the university bookstore into a showcase based loosely on the idea of an apple store.

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201427

2 0 1 4 C T i n n o v AT o r S i n d E P T H

thinking about how to let technology do what technology

is good at,” said harper. “We have to understand our mis-

sion and the kind of university we are — fundamentally

place-based. But where does technology fit into that? it

isn’t some extraneous magic element. it is a tool. Figuring

out how it fits into our institutional mission has been the

most important element of our digital initiative.”

Answering that question means involving many types of

stakeholders in the visioning process, harper added. “it was

not just presenting a committee with a set of decisions that

have to be made, but involving people across a wide part of

the campus at different levels — faculty, deans, administra-

tors and staff. Another important aspect is communication.

You generate excitement by telling the story well.”

to keep enthusiasm for the initiative going strong, the

university converted its bookstore into a One University

showcase based loosely on the idea of an Apple store.

“We wanted to draw students into this space with things

that are new, fun and exciting that they can interact with,”

hathaway explained. those elements include Google Liq-

uid Galaxy, an immersive Google Earth experience (built

by delcom), and MakerBot 3d printing. “We also are using

it as a space to call attention to the breadth of the digital

initiative,” he added. Various displays in the store show-

case demos of the Janux classes as well as digital books.

in addition, Camp pixel created several One University

broader learning community. Janux is not a MOOC,

stressed Kyle harper, university provost; it is focused on

courses for credit for OU students. “But there are reasons

it is valuable to have open content, so anybody can access

most of the course material,” he added. For instance, a

course on the chemistry of beer went viral and got lots of

real-world, practical input from craft brewers.

OpenStax, an open educational resource textbook

partner. A sociology textbook used on campus has saved

students more than $150 in the course. “We like the way

they produce engaging digital textbook materials curated by

faculty,” hathaway said. “We are trying to stay as strongly

linked with them as we can, and will look to use their mate-

rial in other disciplines as they become available.”

iPad programs in the College of Education, College of

Journalism & Mass Communication, College of international

studies and College of Law, along with an OU app designed

by Okapi studio. the university partnered with Apple on

itunes U strategic planning as well as professional develop-

ment to help faculty and staff create iBooks. hathaway called

the relationship with Apple “foundational to our digital initia-

tive.” in fact, the term “digital initiative” came from Apple’s

lexicon. “they bring in dynamic people who have been a

strong value-add. itunes U was our earliest foray into online

learning, but iBooks are becoming even more important.”

“the fundamental ingredient in all of these projects is

animated videos, and Route 92 Consulting helped guide

the planning in many of the One University projects.

While these elements help generate buzz, the initiative has

potential to address some of the challenges facing higher

education in a concrete way, hathaway noted, particularly

associated with lowering costs for students. For example,

perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit involves having faculty pro-

mote the adoption of low-cost digital learning materials or

creating their own. “We have experienced quite a lot of suc-

cess there,” hathaway said. “As we started the digital initia-

tive, the annual cost for students for textbooks was estimated

at $1,200 per year; that cost has been lowered by $528 per

student per year. the digital initiative has played a big role in

that. When you calculate that across our whole student body,

it is an enormous savings for our students.”

hathaway sees the next phase of the digital initiative tap-

ping into smarter uses of data the university already has to

help make students’ lives easier. “Why can’t we analyze

data we have to make recommendations about classes the

way netflix does about movies? We have so much infor-

mation about students and about scholarships, why can’t

we push that information to them? those are the kinds of

things that are not very common in higher education that i

am excited about working on.”

David Raths is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

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david raths

dnA on demand in the cloud

at the University of California, San Francisco, he and

other researchers would combine many different genetic

parts, trying to engineer a genetic system to have a particu-

lar desired behavior. “there were so many possible combi-

nations that we could have put together and yet we only had

the time and resources to think of a few and see if they

worked,” he explained. “so a lot of the research was trial

and error in that regard. But today using physical models

we can actually calculate the thermodynamic properties of

these different genetic parts and we can make predictions

about how they will work together when put together. it is

like AutoCAd for biology.”

in 2009 he observed that his field of synthetic biology

needed improved computer-aided design software for

researchers to do their work more efficiently. in response,

salis, who said he has been programming since he was 12

years old, created and launched the dnA Compiler Web

portal in early 2010.

in developing the dnA Compiler, he recognized that a

streamlined user interface was important. “the calculations

are complicated, but nobody will use it unless the interface

Category: it infrastructure and systems

Institution: penn state University

project: dnA Compiler

project lead: howard salis, assistant professor of

biological and chemical engineering

tech vendor/partner: Amazon Web services

HoWArd sALis’ twitter bio sums up his work

well: “creating synthetic microbes from the bottom-up.”

As assistant professor of biological and chemical engi-

neering and synthetic biology at Penn State University,

salis develops physical models that predict how dnA is

interpreted inside an organism. specifically, the models pre-

dict the rates at which that dnA will cause the organism to

produce the corresponding amount of protein. “We can use

these models to rationally engineer organisms to carry out

new activities including the production of biofuels, plastics

and drugs,” he said.

several years ago, when salis was a postdoctoral fellow

is friendly, so we basically took a very complicated model

and put a simple input/output relationship on top of it on a

clearly designed Web site,” salis said. if you are a biologist,

you don’t need to know how the model works, he noted. You

penn state researcher howard salis created a simple tool for a complex process — dnA sequencing — and turned it into a highly scalable, on-demand system that serves scientists all over the world.

behind the dNa Compiler web portal’s simple user interface, a powerful tool provides complicated calculations for genetic research.

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puting resources, those systems are not connected to the

internet. “they are very finicky about people connecting to

their computers from outside the network, which is under-

standable,” salis said.

the solution? salis moved the dnA Compiler to the cloud

using Amazon Web services.

the portal now combines AWs Elastic Compute Cloud’s

Autoscaling groups for compute resources with simple

Queue service to decouple application components so

they can be run independently, as well as simple storage

service for storage. this design has eliminated the need for

researchers to wait in line for their jobs to be run — and it

has made calculation times faster as well.

“We now have a nice on-demand computing system,

where users from around the world can submit their jobs,”

salis explained. “Compute nodes dynamically turn on in

response to those jobs; they run them and then they turn

themselves off.”

salis said there are certainly other cloud service providers

to consider, but noted that Amazon has the largest compute

cloud available. “something like 40 percent of internet traf-

fic is netflix, and it runs on Amazon AWs. i have my research

lab, and people use my Web site; if Amazon were to have a

server malfunction, they are not going to care about me. But

they are going to care about netflix. so it will get fixed

really quickly. that is what you are signing up for: always-on

can copy and paste in your dnA sequences and get predic-

tions back. You can also tell the algorithm what you would

like to accomplish in terms of how much protein it should

express, and then the algorithm will design for you a com-

pletely new dnA sequence that will achieve that outcome.

Within six months of salis making the dnA Compiler

available, researchers from Japan, China, the U.K., France,

Finland and sweden began using it. salis created a Google

Analytics map of usage. “Basically all the people who do

synthetic biology research or metabolic engineering

research at the institutions well known for those areas of

research are using it,” he said.

But the portal’s popularity meant long queues on the serv-

er located in salis’ office. the server could run 16 simulta-

neous jobs and even then,

there were 80 to 90 jobs in

the queue. With the amount of

data involved, jobs could take

a significant amount of time

and slow research. For exam-

ple, more than 100 compute

hours are required to predict

the E. coli genome’s protein

production rates.

Although penn state has its

own high-performance com-

access, almost scalable to infinity and low cost because of

the economies of scale. Also, Amazon had already fully

developed their platform by the time i started to use it, so i

didn’t have to learn how to use it while they were still devel-

oping it — which was not the case for other providers.”

More than 2,000 biotechnology researchers designing

over 30,000 synthetic dnA sequences have used the dnA

profiler over the past two years. the vision for this project

is the global optimization of every nucleotide within a

genome to perform a specific and useful task.

According to salis, a crucial point is that cloud solutions

such as AWs allow you to develop highly scalable on-

demand resources that are connected to the Web. “so if

there are some applications or interfaces that someone

would like to develop that have to be connected very broad-

ly to the internet, it is much better to use a computing cloud

environment than a dedicated hardware environment.”

For a person running a research lab, if there is a problem

that requires some intensive computing but you only need

to solve it once, you may not want to deal with the hassle of

buying or using institutional computational resources. “But

if you have access to the compute cloud,” salis explained,

“you can solve that problem in a short period of time using

the exact same software you would normally use.”

David Raths is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. project lead howard salis

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Virginia Commonwealth University’s

new ALt Lab is working to redefine the

notion of centers for teaching, learning

and instructional technology and reshape

the way the university supports excel-

lence in teaching and learning. CT spoke

with Gardner Campbell, vice provost for

learning innovation and student success,

to find out more.

CT: What was behind your interest

in forming a new kind of center for

teaching and learning at VCU?

Campbell: the question that i’ve been

interested in addressing in my work over

the past few years is: What does a center

that supports excellence in teaching and

learning look like in the 21st century?

Over time, we’ve seen most institutions

come up with some kind of faculty de-

velopment center that’s aimed primarily

at improving instruction in a face-to-face

environment.... And we’ve also seen a

number of institutions, especially since

the Web took hold, really work on this

idea of teaching and learning effectively

with technology. (in my very first experi-

ence with this at the University of Mary

Washington [VA], the phrase for this

was instructional technology.)

But over time, it was clear that all this

wasn’t just about instruction — it was

about learning. it wasn’t just about teach-

ing — it was about learning. it wasn’t just

about faculty — it was about learning.

And all of those things were intertwined.

the key question becomes: how do you

put together a set of programs, a set of

talented people on a team with a com-

mitment to help the university both locally

and in higher education generally, to be

able to make the shift into a paradigm

of connected learning?

We wanted to form something devoted

to ideals of learner-centered pedago-

gies that are digitally empowered. We

wanted to create the kind of place where

we would see a commitment to what we

think of as the four pillars of our center’s

work with learning innovation and student

success: faculty development, student

engagement, communities of practice

and technology-enhanced active learning.

We were fortunate at VCU that we nev-

er quite split into teaching and learning

with technology on one side, and purely

pedagogical faculty development on the

other side. there was always an attempt

to find a unity between both of those.

the Center for teaching Excellence got

started here in 2000, so there’s a long

tradition of that kind of work here.

CT: Now that your new center is be-

coming a reality, what, specifically, is

the ALT Lab?

Campbell: the more i thought about it

and got started working with the new

team members i brought into the envi-

ronment, and having talked to my col-

leagues across the university and at

other institutions of higher education,

it seemed to me that the time was right

for us to send a new signal here at VCU

and perhaps for the conversation across

higher education as a whole, that this

new approach to teaching and learning

and digital engagement really did need a

reinventing teaching and Learning centers for the 21st centuryWhat does a center to support teaching and learning excellence look like today? Gardner Campbell, Virginia Commonwealth University’s vice provost for learning innovation and student success, tells CT about his institution’s newly opened ALT Lab. By Mary Grush

c-level View

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c-level View

CAMPUS TECHnoLogY | november 201431

new kind of identity.

the team’s idea was that we would

embrace the identity of “alt” — alterna-

tives, things that were alternatives to the

mainstream. We are always restless and

experimenting, putting the emphasis on

innovation — not just iterating on current

practices, but really trying to be bold and

experimental.

As we thought about “alt,” the idea

emerged, also from our team, that it was

great to be thought of not as a center, but

as a lab. that word conveyed experimen-

tation, discovery and invention that would

be shared by many participants. Out of

that the name was born: the ALt Lab.

ALt stands for three words — academ-

ic learning transformation. All of these

words are important to us: Academic because this is about par-

ticular kinds of learning in particular kinds

of learning contexts. We want to cast a

wide net, but we want to work within cer-

tain kinds of structured environments a

university provides, enhancing learning as

efficiently and effectively as possible. Learning because it’s also about

transforming what schoolwork is, what

schoolwork can mean. i think it’s pretty

well known that academics can be con-

servative in what they define as learning

or what they define as professional ac-

tivity. We are trying hard to push against

that and just say, there’s a whole spec-

trum of formal and informal learning we

want to consider — not only learning

within a particular course, but also learn-

ing that happens across courses as well;

learning that presents a possibility for in-

tegrative thinking on the part of the stu-

dent that might actually be out in front of

the curriculum and could pull innovation

with it. Transformation because we em-

brace not simply development (though

that’s important), but the idea that you

can’t cross a chasm in two small steps —

it really is time for some bold ideas, and

to try new things. We love the word “pi-

lot” here in the ALt Lab. We love the pos-

sibility of structuring formal opportunities

for faculty and students, but also to have

the “agora,” the time twice a week for an

open meeting where the design team and

our faculty colleagues come with ideas,

hopes and ambitions for things we were

never able to do before (in classes).

CT: Could you point to exemplary labs

with similar characteristics or motiva-

tions at other higher education institu-

tions (even if their mission is not spe-

cific to learning transformation)?

Campbell: Well, the ALt lab owes some

spiritual connection, if you will, to the

Media Lab at Mit, which was famously

constituted as “the department of none

of the above.” people who couldn’t find

their disciplinary homes in a conventional

departmental structure joined the lab. Of

course, these included people who were

very highly regarded — people who were

committed not simply to polishing up

what we already have, but to coming up

with truly new ideas. You don’t get dis-

tracted by whatever the “latest thing” is;

rather you think in a deeper way and ana-

lyze things at a conceptual level.

that’s where we are at the ALt Lab: We

want to bring in the spirit of the Media

Lab, to be at a place where we can iden-

tify the best and the freshest ideas about

teaching and learning — and support and

encourage them, and maybe initiate some

of them. We want to be partners with

people across the university community

— faculty, students and staff — as well

as empower our faculty colleagues to do

the best work that they can both in the

classroom and online. We hope the ALt

Lab will at the very least be an example of

a brave attempt to reinvent teaching and

learning centers for the 21st century.

CT: Is there a particular, more general

research area you wish to see includ-

ed in the ALT lab’s work?

Campbell: We are very interested in

thinking about the values of the open

Web, in which an interest-driven, peer-

supported, inquiry-based kind of learn-

ing — connected learning — really does

situate our students here at VCU for a

lifetime of learning that matters.

“we are always restless and experimental, putting the emphasis on innovation — not just iterating on current practices, but really

trying to be bold and experimental.”

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chAiRMAn Of the bOARD Jeffrey S. Klein

COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY INDEX

Arizona State University .........................5, 24Audencia Nantes School of Mgmt (France) 9Boise State University (ID) ...........................7Brandman University (CA) ......................... 24California State University ............................7Capella University (online) ............................2Chapman University (CA) .......................... 24Chattanooga State Community College (TN) .........................................................17–18Claremont McKenna College (CA) .............4Colgate University (NY) .............................. 11Dominican University (IL) ..............................2Elmhurst College (IL) .....................................2Georgia Institute of Technology ...................3Hamilton College (NY) ............................... 11Hilbert College (NY) ......................................9Hobart and William Smith Colleges (NY) .... .................................................................. 11, 13Indiana University at Bloomington ...............9Indiana University of Pennsylvania ........... 14Lone Star College System (TX) ...................2Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts ......2Michigan State University .......................... 14MIT .................................................................. 31Montclair State University (NJ) ....................2North Carolina Community College System 3North Carolina State University ...................2NYU Stern School of Business ...................2Penn State University ..........................28–29Pima Community College (AZ) ....................7Plymouth University (UK) ..............................3Rochester Institute of Technology (NY) .....3Skidmore College (NY) .............................. 11Southern Illinois University ............................4St. John Fisher College (NY) ........................2St. Lawrence University (NY) .............11–12State University of New York .........2, 11–13Stony Brook University (NY)....................8–9SUNY Buffalo State .................................... 12Texas Tech University .....................................9Trinity Christian College (IL) .........................2Union College (NY) ..................................... 11University of Arizona ..................................5–7University of California, Irvine .................... 21University of California, San Diego .............9University of California, San Francisco ... 28University of Colorado Boulder ...................9

University of Florida ........................................5University of Georgia .....................................2University of Mary Washington (VA) ........ 30University of New Haven (CT) ......................9University of Oklahoma ........................26–27University of Tennessee at Chattanooga ...2University of Victoria (Canada) ....................2University of Wisconsin-La Crosse .............3Virginia Commonwealth University ....30–31Wiley College (TX) .........................................2Yale University (CT) ................................ 8–10

COMPANY INDEX

Alphanumeric Systems ..................................3Amazon ..............................................8, 28–29Apple ..................................................8, 26–27Area9 .............................................................. 21Automatic Sync Technologies ................... 12Blackboard .............................................12–13Boundless .............................................. 20, 23Camp Pixel .............................................26–27Canon ...............................................................4Casio .................................................................4Cengage Learning ................................21–24Data Warehousing Institute, The .................4Delcom Group .......................................26–27Dell ....................................................................4Dropbox ......................................................... 12Ellucian .............................................................3Ensemble Video ....................................11–13Facebook ...................................................8, 10Flat World Knowledge .........................23–24Fujitsu ................................................................3GitHub ........................................................... 23Google ................................... 2, 4, 26–27, 29Ingram Content Group ..................................3Knewton ..................................................24–25Macmillan ...................................................... 24MakerBot ................................................26–27McGraw-Hill Education .............................. 21Microsoft ..........................................................4Netflix ...................................................... 27, 29NextThought ................................................. 26Oculus VR ................................................ 8–10Okapi Studio .........................................26–27Onvia .................................................................3Oracle ...............................................................3Pearson .................................... 18, 20–21, 24

Route 92 Consulting............................26–27Simba Information ........................................ 20Sonic Foundry .................................................3Sony ...........................................................8, 10Stratasys .....................................................3–4Technical and Management Resources .....3Twitter............................................................. 28Vital Source Technologies ............. 3, 20, 25VMware .............................................................4Vrvana ............................................................ 10Wiley .............................................................. 24YouTube ......................................................... 11YouVisit ........................................................8–9

ADVERTISER INDEX

Campus Technology 2015 ..................... 16campustechnology.com/summer15

Campus Technology Newsletters ...... 13campustechnology.com/newsletters

Campus Technology Subscriptions.. 22campustechnology.com/subscribe

GovConnection ........................................... 10govconnection.com

Sony Electronics, Inc. ................................. 6sony.com/laser

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