 From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine, it's a show all about education. That's whether it's university, K through 12, community college, post-military service. Amazon is very, very committed to education market. It's part of the public sector group underneath Three Sir Carlson. This is the second year of the conference. We're excited to be back and, you know, really some interesting conversations about how does education move forward? Because it doesn't necessarily have the best reputation for being the most progressive industry out there. So we're excited to have our next guest all the way from London. She's Dr. Amanda Broderick, the Vice Chancellor and President of the University of East London. Welcome. Thank you very much, thank you. Very nice to meet you. Absolutely. So first off, before we get into it, just kind of your impressions of this event and kind of what Amazon is doing. Teresa did the keynote today, which is not insignificant. She's a super busy lady. And, you know, kind of what does this ecosystem, these resources, this kind of focus do for you as an educator? The main reason that we're working with AWS in such a significant way is actually because of our genuine values alignment. Institutionally, those core priorities are really where we want to go as an organization. And for me, this conference, this summit has been an opportunity to share best practice, to innovate, to truly explore the opportunity to disrupt for ultimately the end goal, which is about the education, the development of our next generation and the support of talent development for the future. But unfortunately, a lot of times it feels like institutions put the institution first. And we're seeing a lot of conversations here in the US about these ridiculously crazy large endowments that sit in piles of money. And, you know, is the investment getting back to the students? Are we keeping our eye on the ball that it's the students that need the investment, not all the other stuff, all the other distractions that get involved in higher education? I suppose that is where the University of East London is fundamentally different. The core to our mission is driving social mobility. And as such, we have to be absolutely clear what those learner outcomes are, and they are about being able to access and accelerate in their careers and indeed in their lifelong learning to enable them to progress in portfolio careers. Right. So it's interesting they had the three topics for the shows, is tomorrow's workforce, which we've talked a lot about the education, the role of ML, which I think is interesting that it got its own bullet, just because machine learning is so pervasive in software and doing lots of things. And the one that struck me is, you know, the effort to have higher predictability on the success of the student and to really make sure that, you know, you're catching problems early, if there is a problem, you know, you're actually using a lot of science to better improve the odds of that student's success. A lot of conversation here about that topic. Absolutely. And that machine learning approach is one of the key dimensions in our relationship with AWS. And this is not just about the student outcomes around continuation, engagement, progression, student success, but actually for the University of East London, it's also been about the identification of students at risk. So we fundamentally believe that health gain is a precondition of learning gain, particularly important for an institution like ours that is so socially inclusive. And therefore what we're doing, we're actually one of 10 institutions that have been funded by the government and working in partnership with AWS as a pilot to share best practice across the UK as a whole, is to identify the proxies for, for example, mental health issues, to be able to signpost and traffic light, the signposting to areas of support, and to be able to direct prevention, intervention, and postvention strategies to those students at risk. And that project is actually a key area of our partnership development with AWS. And how long has that been going on? It's, you know, we talked a little bit about it before we turned the cameras on, and it just seems so foundational to me that without, you know, putting in that infrastructure for these kids, regardless of their age, you know, their probability of success on top of that, without a good foundation is so much less. So, you know, when did this become a priority? How are you prioritizing it? What are some of the really key measures that you're using to make sure that you're, you know, making progress against this goal? Absolutely. So the university has made good progress in terms of the fundamental issues of identifying where the correlations and the causations are between both physical and mental health and wellbeing and outcomes. What we haven't been able to do at this point is the scalability of this issue. And that's really where this pilot project, which has literally been announced in the last couple of weeks, that we're working very closely with AWS in order to convert that core foundational research and development into scalable solutions. Not just for my own university, but actually for the sector as a whole. Right. So we talked about academic institutions maybe not necessarily having the best reputation for innovation, especially kind of old-storied ones with, you know, old IV plants growing up old brick walls. Is this a new kind of realization of the importance of this? Is this coming from maybe some of the more vocational kind of schools or is it coming from the top? Do they realize that now there's more to this than just making sure people study and you know what they're doing when they turn in their test and get their paper in on time? It's both a top down and bottom up approach. It's fundamental to the University of East London's new 10-year strategy, Vision 2028. Health gain is that precondition of learning gain. It's fundamental to the realization of our learner's success. But also it's come from a groundswell of the research and development outcomes over a number of years. So it's absolutely been the priority for the institution from September 2018 and we've been able to accelerate this over the last few months. So important, such important work. Flipping the point a little bit on something a little lighter, a little bit more fun is really innovation on the engagement with the students around things like mobile. We've had a lot of conversations here about integrating Alexa and voice and competing with online and competing with other institutions and being a little bit more proactive in engaging with the customer as your students. I wonder if you can share some thoughts as to how that has evolved over time. Again, you've been in the business for a while and really starting to kind of cater and be innovative on kind of that front end versus the back end to be more engaging and help students learn in different ways where they are, little micro segments. It's a very different kind of approach. It absolutely is and one of our four major facilitating transformation projects is called our digital first project and that is across all of our activities of an institution. In terms of business transformation, our particular priority is prospect engagement and how we actually convert potential learners in more effective ways. Secondly, enhancing deeper learning and how we then produce better learner outcomes. Thirdly, how we develop access to new ways of educational provision, 24 seven global access. And fourthly, how do we connect with employers in partnership to make sure that we get those challenges around pre-selection recruitment strategies and we're enabled to get the students or learners into a career's post graduation? Right. And then what's the kind of feedback from the teachers and the professors? You know, they have so much on their plate, right? They've got their core academic research that they're doing, they're teaching their students, they've got a passion around that area. They get all kinds of, I always tell people, it's like driving in a car in the snow at night with your headlights on, right? Just like all types of new regs that are coming in and requirements and law and this, that and the other. Now we're coming in with this whole four point digital transformation. Are they excited? Is it, are they overwhelmed? Are they like, finally we're getting to do something different? I mean, what's kind of the take within the academics specifically in your school? I think the answer to that is all of the above. All of the above. And I think it really reflects the classic adoption curve. So you do have the innovators, you have the early adopters and then you also have the laggards at the other end. And often, actually, the most traditional academics that have been doing things for many, many years are very set in the ways. If you expose them to new opportunities, new experiences, and actually provide them with the tools to innovate, they could be some of the best advocates for the transformation. And we've certainly found that to be the case. Good. Well, Amanda, thanks for taking a few minutes of your time. It sounds like they're going to start the dancing you're behind us soon. So I think we'll have to leave it there, but I look forward to seeing you sometime in London. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Amanda Broderick, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine in Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.