 Let me welcome everybody. Let me welcome you to the Future Trends Forum. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forum's host I'm the creator of the forum as well as a chief cat herder And I'm very glad to see you all here today for talking about a very very important subject We are right now looking at experimenting a little bit with the forum So over the next two months, we're going to try a couple of new offerings So one is to have a podcast recording available So basically the video recording just without the video simply including the audio track So we may be doing that and if you're interested, please contact me We're also thinking about having a couple of news panels where a selected guests get to reflect on news the past couple of weeks At the top of that we're thinking of building up a tutorial So sessions that are involved more in teaching a particular topic in a deep dive So all of those are possible thanks to your contributions and thanks to your feedback So that's the background now for our guests We want to introduce unison and we're going to ask unison's chief academic officer to say more about that We've had unison as a guest several times here It's a powerful innovative and unique inter-campus project for collaboration in academia with a focus on technology I want to introduce Jill bubang who was their chief academic officer and along with her I'd like to introduce Michael London Michael is the CEO examity, which is a Company providing very interesting testing of services that is just partnered with the unison what that means Who they are how they're working together is going to be the subject of our conversation But first let me just bring up Jill bubang who can tell us more about Unison and what it's up to hello Jill. Hi Brian. It's great to see you. Thanks so much for Having Michael and I on the future transform today. Oh, it's great to have you here first question is where are you today? I am at home in Connecticut. I Actually, the last three days was in Chicago with about 70 of unison's teaching and learning community members So and I see some of them online today, so it's good to see some folks again today Excellent excellent. Well, that's that's actually a start of a question that I wanted to ask Which is for a lot of folks unison is kind of a mysterious thing They're not quite sure what it is and for me, that's always a good sign It means you're doing something new and interesting I describe you as a multi-campus collaborative working on trying to help a group of universities Do some collaborative solutions around technology? How can you flesh that out make that more precise? Sure Brian yet? That's part of it and We're actually redoing our website, so maybe you can help me with some of the language because I like that a lot You're welcome happy to So we do we are multi-campus Collaboration we have 13 institutions in the unison consortium Which was formed just over five years ago? I like to say that we have four focus areas, which are data services digital content Community and the partnerships we have Throughout the digital education ecosystem. I think the most Powerful of those well depending on how you look at it and me just coming from being with all of our members yesterday I think the consortium was really formed around this sense of community And being able to do things smarter stronger faster together For why I run separately if we can tackle a problem running together so this idea of collaboration and being able to Innovate in the digital learning ecosystem and doing that together So what works best for all of us? How can we make an impact in this ecosystem together? Yeah, so a couple and just so those of you that aren't familiar with unison when I mentioned data services Unison one of our real cornerstones and vision for the founders was to Create the world's largest learning laboratory And that's going to be done using our unison data platform or if you see we were featured in the Chronicle of higher-red and a few other different Campus technology different pieces over the past few months talking about this UDP And that's a unique data platform that integrates SIS data LMS data, and then our partners such as examities data And that will allow us to do large-scale research projects Hopefully increasing, you know student success efforts at scale. That's so extraordinary I mean nothing like how many how many universities are participating in the UDP right now? Well, we have the 13 institutions two of which are new so Rutgers is a new member as of April and Miami University of Ohio is a new member as of July So those two have not fully completed the ingestion of their data our original 11 founding members Almost all have completed the ingestion of data onto the platform That integrates really it we're starting to do our first research projects. That's under my Realm of responsibilities, so I'm really excited to do that. So we have a cross institutional research project kicking off now With five of our institutions that includes 42 instructors, so that should be pretty scalable and have some interesting results. Hopefully I You know probably late spring 42 instructors meaning what a few thousand students. I At least that I actually asked that question yesterday, and I don't have I don't have the best answer But you know we're ranging from some classes I think that you know one was in the hundreds and others are smaller, but I would expect at least 2,000 Wow This is really and this is just the beginning of the amount of research you can do Yeah, and the other the other area I mentioned was the digital content products. We have our own Digital content platform called engage so e-book reader access to course where also use press work press books to kind of do the the magical mix tape of content for instructors and All of the data from that platform flows into the UDP So we're also starting to do one of our members Jane Russell out of University of Iowa's Starting research study this fall that focuses on student reading So obviously some of the findings from that and using the the this digital content platform we're hoping to Do that will be for institutions But quite a few sections this fall and then hoping to Replicate that in the spring with many more sections So that's um, I don't want to take up too much of the time But that that platform I don't think a lot of people have heard about it and our institutions that are using it as of the end of the summer had saved over 15 million dollars for students 15 million We have we have unique contracts with a lot of the publishers My colleague I think is on here Brad Zercher He does all the magic behind engage and and all the publisher contracts And that's a service for our members We don't make any money on that platform or anything and then all of our institutions are you know passing that savings on directly to students well, we had We had Brad Wheeler one of the founders of unison as a guest last year and he mentioned that something like this was in the works It's hypothetical, but now you're here to update us and say yeah, this definitely works. It has saved students 15 million dollars Yeah, and Brad was on just a year ago when we were just about to launch the Unison data platform and now almost all of our institutions are on that so we're really We're full steam ahead Brian It's fantastic. It's great to be able to keep to catch up with you and And and to learn about this now that I've got you on stage and settled. Let me just add Michael London as well Michael you need to unmute yourself How are you good? Good? I didn't get to ask you Michael. Where are you today? I am in our corporate headquarters in Newton, Massachusetts Fantastic so between the two of you New England is deeply represented. That's right Well, if it helps I just For the past 20 years when my family lived in Vermont and we just moved this February So we like like 2.5 of us represent the new England right where you moved to We moved to the DC area. Oh very nice. Yeah, almost New England. No Although although Georgetown which is where I try to look like doing with it, right? Oh Let me ask Michael. Um, so as we're introducing you as a CEO of examity, let me just ask to introduce you to everybody What what does the next year look like for you personally? What are you going to be working on from the next? You know 2019 2020? Well, a lot of things, you know in particular, you know about four months ago. We had a very large fundraise specifically from a group called Great Hill Partners and We raised 90 million dollars, which is a lot in ed tech one of the largest One of the most well-funded groups within the space right now That said, you know, there's a lot of things that we want to do, you know, we want to focus a lot on our growth So we are going to be working with more and more campuses throughout the world and online schools as well, of course In in you know, in addition We're working hard on our development efforts. So, you know, it's our belief that you know, the the student experiences of utmost importance especially when you're talking about security in the way that we are so it's really finding a proper balance between Between making sure someone doesn't cheat and also making someone feel right about their testing experience with us We're working on technology in particular that will further enhance our ability to do that in an appropriate way Well, just as a quick like elevator pitch answer examity you guys are all about Test security and test proctoring the kind of thing. That's exactly right. I mean, we really focus on a few main things One is we want to make sure a person is who he says he is when he's taking a test To we want to in a lot of cases protect the content of that test and then thirdly We want to make sure that the individual takes the test in accordance with the rules set by the Instructor and or test provider so that can mean basically doesn't cheat. I Mean, that's that's vital and thank you for answering the question Thank you friends everybody who is who is here who is new to the future transform should know that from here on out I'm the emcee. I have a whole bunch of questions I'd like to ask but this is not a standard interview program The idea is for you to be able to ask questions So if you'd like to ask questions more about how does examities that successfully protect student security or an exam If you'd like to ask more from Jill about I'm still trying to figure this out How do you actually save students money and how do these campuses belong? Basic questions like that. Please Feel free just look at the very bottom of the screen that white stripper on along it Press you with a raised hand at a question mark and we're good to go now. This is the future transform We're interested in the future of education and technology and so we're interested in looking at the present to see how they tell What the tells us about the future so you know to begin with one question I have to ask the two of you together is what's the what's the connection between units in an examity? Why why is units in partnering with this at scale? Surely, this is the kind of thing where examinee you can work with individual campuses And why bring Rutgers and University of Miami, Ohio and so forth all together Let me try You know, you know for us there were a couple things, you know first There was the you know the fact that unison was committed to doing unique things with data and analytics that we had not seen before and we were Intrigued and wanted to be part of it and and that was of particular importance to us and Second, it just so happened that a number of our clients Potential clients and friends were unison members and therefore it just felt right and made a lot of sense Very good. Thank you Jill say more about this chief academic officer move on Yeah, so another area that I work on is with our partners and I know some of you online not only for unison, but for my work at OLC So I've seen a lot of exhibit polls in my time And it always seemed like there was a way for me that we could do kind of partnerships better that there were ways that it was not just an institution Using a company's product that there had to be better ways to do things. So being able to do Kind of oversee the the partnerships that unison has enabled me to do that and look at it differently So when we look at we're very we only have six partners We have 20 publisher partners, but six ed tech partners So when looking at those partners, it's a fairly long process and looking at what our institutions are using What they might need across campus not only in a pocket of campus Then having the conversations around really one of our first priorities is data because if if our if prospective partners aren't willing to To coordinate their data efforts with us in the way that we need their data on the udp Then we we won't partner with them some other areas. We're working on right now Actually just finalized yesterday or in the areas of accessibility. So we'll be adding some accessibility standards for future partners We're looking at different Privacy and security measures. So these are all things that our members at these meetings or in Monthly meetings that we have talk about the need that they need from the partner perspective And then I kind of bridge those needs with the prospective partners when we're when we're looking to partner with and You know that part of it sounds like oh, well, they're just going to sign on to give their data, but we have a fairly lengthy data sharing agreement We also Are closely tied with ims global and ask our partners to work on caliper and different on proper ability standards So all two Examities foreign there our second partner to the lti 1.3 certified. So i'm really proud of that Our our all of our institutions are thrilled That means a lot to our it folks. So that's just a kind of hallmark of a good partner to be working on these things together And then down the road it you know once we have the their data ingested It's being able to say oh could we do a research project together? How can we work together to do these things? so I guess coming back to my original Statement like there's not a good guy bad guy in this the at tech University partnership. I think it's figuring out how to How to find pathways to work together that makes sense that can impact the overall higher ed landscape so I hope we're kind of forming a new model and When looking at different companies to expand our partnerships with Michael and the examity team I'd known them for a while But they were just so willing to be innovative and think through how we can do things differently together And I really respected that so it's been it's been fun to work with them over the past few months Well, that says a lot and that goes beyond Exam proctoring that goes into research and in security in general. Thank you I have I have more questions, but we've right away. We have a question from One participant. Let me just show you how this works. We have Nate angel Coming to us from the Moodle moot in Philadelphia. Greetings from Philly Hi, Nate Hey, guys. Hey, actually, this was a question for you, Jill Um, I'm curious of this already. It's a little distracting here But when unison is delivering all this publisher content to students Um, are the students experiencing it in a common reading environment or reader? Is that something that unison provides? Yeah, that's the the engaged platform is the the common environment. That's correct And me I keep I know I keep seeing your I think it's your name circling around in unison So I'm hoping we have a conversation soon because I feel like I need to learn more about hypothesis Well, that would be yeah, we've been That's part of why I ask because um if we can layer The the collaborative annotation with that common reading experience. I think it'd be really powerful Well, I'm glad my colleague Brad is on on here too because we'll have a follow-up conversation and see what we can do Sure. Yeah, we I feel like a handmaiden. This is great Keep bringing us the other man Well, uh, Nate you you're in a conference. Um, and I think I'm probably gonna crush your or you're gonna crush the wi-fi for it So, um, thank you for asking a question Friends if you're if you're new to the form if you're new to the shindig technology This is how easy it is just to bring some up here to ask a video question And even if his wi-fi is struggling he was able to get the question out and uh, jill was able to answer him right away Thank you, Nate. Um, Nate was also, uh, he also works with a hypothesis a collaborative discussion software That's web-based and we had a great session with them, which we'll post up to youtube pretty soon now More questions and more comments. Uh, and thank you by the way jill for for answering that If you need to ask so again, just either quick click the raised hand button or the question mark and up you'll come Let me follow up with this just uh, just thinking about this looking ahead What are some of the other Collaborative directions that you're thinking about? Uh, either the two of you together For the examity unison relationship or what are the kind of collaborative projects and uh services? Are you thinking about for unison as whole? Yes, that's a that's a great question. Um, so we We look at bringing on a maximum of three to five new members a year because it's it's a fairly intensive project and we're very Involved with all of our members from the data platform digital content and just the entire community and working with them In terms of partners, we're looking at possibly collaborating with two to three partners a year. So This year we're kind of already messed out on that because it's the same thing It's working on them with the ims global standards with the data with all of these things to ensure that We can then have things run smoothly through our systems and their systems And then when those researchers want to be again using um, some of the data that it's available to them um in terms of future collaborations We're actually i've had so many great conversations with other leaders in the learning analytics landscape A good colleague of mine karen vignari is at aplu. So we're trying to do some work together um some folks at edgipause All really honestly brine so many different organizations that we all know and higher ed and thinking of ways In which we can make a greater impact together um And some of those it's thinking about if if we have knowledge and are Quickly becoming a leader in learning analytics. How can we spread that knowledge? How can we share it with beyond our membership? Um, and do that, you know collectively on a higher higher education stage Well, that makes a lot of sense Friends I have I want to follow up with one question on this but as I ask You know we're turning war towards data analytics and learning student data What questions do you have about this particular topic? Uh, so my first question I ask you about that is There's a lot of controversy about about student data. I mean we're in the middle of An era when there's a lot of controversy about user data as whole And I'm wondering what how can you assuage criticisms and anxieties about? Ownership of data about security of data about privacy about misuse of data um, for example last week we there was a furious twitter conversation because There was a big call for campuses to use student data more And one criticism was that universities and colleges shouldn't do that Because to make use of student data is to monetize student data unfairly For example, how how do you respond to these challenges? So I don't know that I have the uh, the golden answer for you brian. I think that this is a big conversation um In higher ed that's reflected in our consortium. Um in terms of data and security We have an assurance officer who works with all of our sissos on our campuses um That's his main focus and so they're they're meeting quite frequently and coming up with different policies procedures going through how we protect student data um in terms of um Trying to think of some other points that you have made in terms of kind of the ethical uses of student data I I go to our campuses quite frequently and it's interesting to see How all campuses have a little bit of a different spin on kind of learning principles how data can be used What are the effects behind it? We actually have a small group now a small working group Some of them I've been working on this for a couple years But we're now bringing it to the forefront at unison to work on how we can have a collective um ethical statement around um student data learning analytics and also kind of some guiding principles for learning analytics on campuses So we're we're just beginning that work. I would say to put something out publicly around that Um, and I think that's those are some of the conversations that I've been having with those other organizations as well How can we be looking at this together so that they You know, we kind of cover we blanket the landscape with common language Um, I say more to come on that I will kind of a one caveat. I I had the pleasure of interviewing The student body president for ohio state this summer at an uh Edgy Ventures conference and I asked her about student data use and I said, you know, what's the concern? There's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of talk in higher ed and she she she laughed actually and she said My generation has had their student data our data used forever Like we grew up with facebook like we don't even think about it now Obviously, she's not representative of all students, but um, it was a different spin and thinking about how students You know, is it the student perception the parent perception? Our perception of what's happening with student data. Um, I may you know, it may sound a little naive I like to think like from the research perspective. Are we using? Um, you know, first of all has you know, what's the data when you go through a research side? You're going through the irb process, but then are you doing are you doing something with this data? That is secure that has gone through privacy measures and is it to do better for students overall? Is it to better help students success efforts? So I think that's you know, one way to look at that hopefully You know if if if we can do something using student data that has a great impact across all of our schools And higher ed and I feel like it's a greater good At that kind of scale that would really really have impact and some of your institutions are so powerful Um, michael, do you want do you want to chime in and add a little bit more about where you think that's coming? Or do you think that's going? Sure, you know, I think jill spoke very well around our partnership and where that's moving With the data, you know, some of the things that we're doing, you know at examity That are a little bit different right now is we're using student data as a way to Make the student experience even better in what we're doing So as an example, we're giving clients access to You know, how long does it take to launch a particular application or test? How, you know, how satisfied was the student with the experience that he or she had associated with that test? You know, was there a wait time? So in our case sometimes there's actually live individuals that are proctoring a test Well, if a student has to wait for those individuals, that's usually a negative So we're actually tracking those and helping people see how that translates into better satisfaction Of a of a student learner test taker and how that applies to the particular program So we're trying to look at data a little bit differently as we progress We don't want to be just the group that makes sure people don't cheat on tests We think there's a lot here and so, you know, that's you know, we're doing probably the easy stuff Where unison is looking to take this far further And I think the combination will be particularly helpful to the you know, to the higher ed community Well inter-campus Collaboration is one of the hardest hardest things you can do in academia I mean that makes that makes things like 3d printing and copyrights seem like a walk in the park in comparison There's one reason I really admire what unison is doing Speaking of people I admire I want to bring up. We have another question that's just come up This is a really very very good one. This is from uh, tom hams in texas from the houston area longtime friend of the program and Just a great person. Welcome tom So, uh, the question I have for you is, you know, you talked about learning analytics and I've you know, I've done a fair amount of You know research around that Um, and I'm curious what kind of data you're collecting. What are the metrics that you're using to to look at learning analytics I mean, we just heard michael mentioned a few about uh, I would consider those to be more of a support analytics or or Logistical analytics more to make the services work better and that's important too But uh, gel you mentioned, uh, actual learning analytics. What are you looking at? What are you collecting? Sure, tom so on this on the data platform we collect, um Well, we have a We have sis data and so we have a subcommittee or task force of unison member schools who have selected We're actually on the 2.0 version of that now But which data points out of the sif to collect that can merge in with all the lms data All of our schools currently are on canvas. So we also have the canvas schema of terms to pull out of there Um, and that those kind of collide with some other Others to create our data dictionary, which is also in 2.0 And I'd be happy to share that with you So you could actually see the terms that are available in the data dictionary that really merge All of those together now when we bring in the other if we're trying to look at sorry, I talked to my hands a lot That's right, you got video you might as well use it So that kind of takes, you know, half or two or Let's say half of the the profile of a student learner we can learn a lot there But what we see is through these Partnerships, that's where we can really start to form the entire 360 view of the learner So pulling in data from from examity pulling in data from We also partner with uh turn it in top hat So a lot of our different partners by bringing in their data that can provide a much more rich Set of data to be using So you're looking at tool use you're looking at uh, you know frequency of interaction that sort of thing Yeah, so I can give you many classes is the research study that's kicking off now and They are it's um, Ben moats out of indiana's leading the the study and he's looking at response time faculty response time to Discussion board questions. So there's a growing body of literature that actually A slower response time is is better than an immediate response time. So that's the current that's that many classes Yeah, that's kind of kind of intuitive. Yeah, when when I interact with my students on on comments and things like that I recognize that if I go jumping in there, I'm going to Bias the conversation very much in my direction right follow the pie piper Instead of discussing on their own and so I I want to be the last one commenting not the first Yeah, so that I hope and I tell them that too Don't expect me to jump in I'm going to make a comment at the end But I'm not going to make one at the beginning because you guys need to talk about this for a while I'm fascinated by this Quickly come. Yeah, what would the time period be roughly? I mean are you talking about like a day or an hour or or what? Well, I mean most of the time when my students are commenting I I run a the class is on a public blog and they they talk to each other they comment on each other's stuff And uh, they have a week to to interact on that and then at the end of the week I come in and I say Well, these are the things I saw And then we talk about that in class as well as a follow-up But uh, I don't I don't want to get in there and say well this blog was the greatest things in slice bread or something like that Because then all the students will chime in and go. Oh, yeah, this blog is the greatest things to slice bread And that's not what I want. You're all different. I'm not I'm not So let me build on that Jill so you're what you're saying is that unison is seeing this research done elsewhere And then you're seeing this bodied out Improven in the data that you're collecting so we I'm trying it So our member Our member schools have researchers Whoever they may be they could be faculty. They could be top academic researchers They could want to do efficacy research our instructional designer at a campus whatever that may be It's not limited to, you know, the the top top level of academia research Um, this happens to be one of those studies So we have a faculty researcher at indiana and this was what he wanted to look at using our data platform So we help in in terms of providing the data from the platform Um, I help on the front end in terms of looking at irv looking at the application that type of thing And then on the back end with the results and it kind of takes the village on our end between our Technology team our chief technology officer our security folks said keep things running smoothly in the interim um, so I can say unison is looking at that But we're kind of the host of this I guess the host of the study through the udp That makes sense. We we just had a quick clarifying question that came back from Nate We said oh here and we just put this on the screen so everyone can see this Um, he said would activity data from an educational tool go first to a university using it and then to unison or vice versa Uh, it depends, Nate um so That's a longer question In for the udp for our schools and most if you're a partner it goes directly to the udp because many of our schools are using As their data warehouse, uh, you could have it flowing both ways if that's the way they wanted it So I guess the best example for canvas. We are there can't we are our institution's canvas data store So it flows directly to us and then they can get all of their activity. I mean we trace we have millions of Logs of canvas data um, so I hope that then you know our other we Unison works directly with our partner. So for example examity to To pull the data down to coalesce there and then coalesce it with others depending on when it wants to be used And we don't do that There's a process there. It's not like the researcher at indiana said I want to use these five schools and the dig is on the udp So there's all the permissions are in place for data sharing But all of our school the schools have to still agree to participate The partner saw us to agree to participate. So there's a process there as well This is tricky. So you're not even though unison facilitates some Templates like your common data dictionary. Yeah, you really have a kind of different engagement on each different campus Just to sort of piggyback on what nate was asking about I mean, do you guys have the capacity to do actual textual analysis of Of written assignments. I mean some of the most interesting learning analytics work I've seen has been to look at you know to do actual english Analysis of essays and things like that. Not just grammatically, but to get a gauge of The level at which they're writing and thinking I think wistly and it was about It's got to be five seven eight nine. You know about this project. You remember that brian? That that they were doing there some of that work that they were doing there was really interesting I don't know where that went ultimately Yeah, go ahead. Yeah to Again to try to briefly answer your question We are not currently doing textual analysis what I would say with that that would be something That we we would likely have to build Something on top of the udp to enable that so if someone one of our institutions came to us and wanted to do that I think we'd probably do outreach to other institutions and say hey This is something that's valuable to everyone at this time and place Do we want to put our our staff resources into it and look at doing that? Or if we had a grant or something like that and and then we would you know build that functionality into udp We would do that And that's some in some cases that's happening. We have some of our just a quick example The university of michigan Um has something called myla my learning analytics and it's a student facing learning analytics dashboard So we've actually had a hackathon a few months ago and worked on that and worked on Making it functional on the udp and now a bunch of our schools are piloting that that uh dashboard for with students So crossing the qualitative qualitative boundaries Is something that's always been in my mind a big struggle with learning analytics and and how do you get there? you know We're really feeling blindly on some of this stuff to sort of get a sense of what's going on behind you I appreciate your question tom which shows some more light on that. Thank you. Thanks Um, so friends, you see that there are always easy ways to participate Uh through video and through text, but the trickiest thing is we're going to run out of time We have about 15 minutes left So I'll make sure that you each get a chance to ask the questions you've got So if you're thinking more about the examities role in data and security If you're looking to more of what unison could do if you're curious about data If you're wondering about how this impacts your campus say if you're a unit as a member or if you're interested about collaborating The floor is open. We'd be glad to hear from you So while you're thinking about that and while that's all going, uh, I've got another question to ask to uh to help Continue to roll things up In terms of uh, how you share all of your results Is this done through is there kind of a formal unison Communication strategy or are there units that representatives in each campus or do campuses like say Rutgers or michigan? Do they learn about this just from open presentations and that kind of thing or do you have More events like the one you just came back from in chicago where you have people meeting face to face for particular function That's a great question brian another area that I was kind of brought in to organize. So we um For the most part all of our institutions have Kind of I like to say unison ambassadors and they're the main points of contact We're stretching that a little bit as we grow out our initiatives. So for example Um, we just I just formed a research advisory committee and that's bringing some different folks in from the campuses that Have a great perspective on research activities and helping us build the center But aren't as much the boots on the ground folks So We have the teaching and learning community that I was with the last couple of days We meet monthly and then we have two face-to-face meetings in the spring and the fall And there are just over a hundred people in that group and that's open anyone. That's a member can join Depending on what their institution Sets up as the strategy there And then we also have a learning analytics community of practice, which is just under a hundred folks. There's some crossover And they meet monthly now within the teaching and learning community We have seven different subcommittees that are focusing on efforts that our community has identified as places where they could Work smarter stronger faster together So those areas are Accessibility affordable content libraries teaching and learning tools What else do we have we have marketing and communication we have Analytics so we have app development so once it surfaces up the Overall teaching and learning community kind of thinks through is do we have enough bandwidth to have another subcommittee? And to kind of make a difference with those subcommittees to push initiatives forward So you have You're kind of hosting facilitating a series of virtual communities. Yeah, and those communities So then our we had five I guess five of our Witnesses and staff at the the beings here in chicago And we each are representatives to those committees to try to help them Prioritize the work that unison can help them do and be a conduit to the larger community Which gets back to your question. We're often times Sending things out to the community at wide asking them to communicate upwards downwards sideways so it's not completely Fleshed out the best communication strategies, and I think we're trying to work that out now Well, I would love to uh, I'd love to hear about that. Um, and You know, I would love to help if if I could in some way Um, I mean, this is this is a very 21st century thing. You're creating a kind of hybrid virtual organization Across multiple time zones with very different universities. Uh, I'm glad they've got you at the helm for it Thanks, ryan Um, well, let me ask you another question Another question. I mean, this is the part of the program where we like to point more towards the future Um, and if I could ask you both to imagine What this is going to look like in say five or 10 years? I for example, um, michael, do you think that we'll see a greater role for ai in exam proctoring and security? And uh, gel. Do you think uh, we'll see unison facilitate intercampus classes and intercampus courses? Right So presently we are using ai To do a few a few different things one would be to match an individual to his or her id Um, and that's something that is working well It does it with uh, your perfect certainty and it's only getting better if that's possible So that's exceptional for us. You know in addition, um, you know, it's our belief that Ai can make sure that an individual who cheated a particular way on a test Will that cheating incident will Never happen again because the ai will capture just that and then in future that will not be able to happen And we're doing that already With some level of success But it seems as though that's going to become a more critical piece of what we're doing So, uh, the way someone was flagged. I mean, I'll give you an extreme example You know mom hiding under the desk Whispering answers to her son. Well, guess what that's not going to happen again because one that was so extreme and so obvious That the ai caught it and that'll never happen on the other hand There are things that ai for us at least Are not yet able to do so therefore we need to continue to Enhance that capability and make it so that we can have a foolproof system With ai, you know on the forefront And so the the data that's being gathered Through unison as well as other projects can really help you shape that kind of code to better anticipate things Definitely so Well, that's that's a good way of looking this looking forward Jill hold on for a second. I'm giving you plenty of time to form a fantastic answer Um, uh, michael, there's there's been a lot to go back to the question of uh, push back or the tech clash. There's been Uh, a lot of criticism of stories like Some chinese classes, uh, university classes which have detailed monitoring of student reactions to the class experience Not to not in exams, but during lecture and during discussion Um, where do you see such anxiety about about monitoring about data valence? Where do you see that hitting the? Proctoring world or or is or is exam taking such a special situation that it'll it'll continue as it is For us we need to make sure that we're always achieving the proper balance So on one hand we want to We want to monitor as you say in the way that the the university wants us to monitor on the other hand You know we could probably monitor even in a stronger way, but the student would be put off So I think it's our responsibility to to help the university see that the balance is important although most of them already do and then it's to Do what is within reason? To ensure that there's fairness associated with test taking and that's something that we continuously work on When I mentioned before some of the things that we're doing with data, you know That's really what we're trying to figure out to some extent if if we you know for school Oh, this is you know if a school feels that something is going really well But the students are up in arms about what we're doing. I'm not really sure that we're accomplishing much We need to we need to think of it as a service also Not just the technology and if we're able to do that well, you know our business And the number of schools and students that use us will continue to grow exponentially Well, good luck. That's a good balance to strike. Um, thank you and balance may be the theme for the next few years Jill, what do you think? I mean first if you want if you want to build on what michael just said but also You know, what could you doesn't become what should we be looking for? Um, well, I mean to answer your question about I guess the The the core sharing or something like that. I feel like there's been conversations about that for a while There's been some in unison, but I've also heard them in Like the lay call the labor liberal arts college Organization at the smaller scale. So again trying to combine resources For the greater good of the community I think that that could be an You know a possibility for unison yesterday I let a workshop one kind of brainstorming about research and the other group was just talking about and brainstorming about projects on campus that They're working on that could be shared within unison. So to to kind of get to your point It might not be sharing classes, but it can be sharing everything from I think one of the ideas where three of our campuses are Looking heavily at Um, kind of the the range of how a student gets to one course and then how to do another course So meaning if they're in a 200 level course If it has, you know for prerequisites They may not make it to that class or and And what's the trail on the other end? So they didn't know that they were all working on similar projects And now have that kind of connection to maybe move that along faster and share it with the rest of the consortium So I guess some of that work is is unique in higher ed I don't know but being at unison just for a year. I see this kind of collaboration on a weekly basis We have An online community forum where people post and I see my emails coming through about questions all over campus Doesn't have to do with teaching and learning content and it's really It's really fascinating to watch these types of collaborations. So I don't know Brian the future is like open I listen to all these people come together and talk about ideas. It's just so exciting It's really exciting to see what what we could be doing in the next few years It really is it really is. I mean, you've you've really built a platform and you're leading a platform upon which All of these participating institutions can really try out a whole bunch of different things Yeah, and I'm well Friends we have time for about one or two more questions So again, if you'd like to press us on any of these points, we've ranged quite a bit We've talked about everything from the ethics of data And student analytics to questions of inter-campus teaching and collaboration um, I have I have one kind of general question to ask and uh, Michael Let me this is aimed at Jill first, but I want to hear your take on it right afterwards too Because I think this might um, I think you'll have a good perspective on this What have you learned about how to make inter-campus collaboration work? I mean, what's what are the what are the practical takeaways that folks can can really draw on? Oh, by the way, as you think about that, I appreciate the shout-out to lay called the liberal arts group that was Liz Evans was here just a few And uh, and they do they do fantastic work. So I appreciate the the shout-out. In fact, uh, lisa's still here. So good Hi, Liz. That's so funny. I didn't really she was on Oh, this is awesome. This is awesome. So what what what are you learning? What what works? Well, that's like my secret recipe brian. I don't know I don't know if I can give up the secret sauce You can just tell us about the taste Yeah, um, you know, it's funny. Uh, I guess just two days ago at the end of the session some of my uh Some of my peers at the institution said said jill you're like the peacemaker among all of us So I don't know if that's the answer, but um, I think it's just I think all of I think if every we take a step back and everyone wants to work together and do what's best For their institutions and being able to kind of coordinate that and Put people together and naturally allow them to network And then organize maybe that's a little bit of the steps that I kind of take and a lot of it's listening Um, I have a lot of emails a lot of conversations with people every day And then I kind of take that back and make sense to see how we can push forward together in collaboration So I don't know if any of it's I'm sure it's all been written about before by people before me, but um That's a little bit what's worked for me here and then at olc before that And it's messy. It's not always fun and we make a lot of mistakes So there's a lot of that in the innovation field, right? If you're not Failing you're not probably innovating. So I think it's the same with collaboration. We fail and and we try a different path Well, I appreciate that um, that that is a good sort of hints about how to do this correctly And we we we may have some more Michael. Did you want to add to that? from your perspective and So, you know, when we're thinking about, you know, inter-campus collaboration Obviously, there's the good the good work that we're starting to do with unison But you know, we are also thinking about, you know, where are the needs similar from campus to campus? And you know, and how can we, you know, focus in to give Uh people the majority of what they need that is common But in addition, how can we then look at the innovative aspects of each individual campus? And utilize that in such a way so that we can also Give them an appreciation for what we're doing. Um, so it's not super easy So it's good that Jill has a secret sauce because we don't have a secret sauce on the other hand You know, it's something that we're always working toward and that You know, it helps us to be better as an organization. You know, it's really about listening responding And you know, not obviously customizing for each and every campus because that would be very difficult for a company like ours But to be able to do the proper tailoring to make sure people's needs are properly met That takes a lot of I wonder about scaling for that. That sounds very challenging Hang on. We've got one last question that just came in From someone who was named and thought that she needed to chime in So we have the excellent Liz Evans. Liz, you need to unmute yourself No, we're not getting any sound. Um, that's okay. I can just quickly ask your question then because you because you're right in She says, uh, you know, I put this up on the stage. So or up on the screen so everyone can see it Thanks for the call shout out Are there examples yet of ways that learning analytics gathered for your platform and collaboration have impacted? institutional decision making at unison schools Or is it too early for that too early for that next year? We'll come back That's a fantastic future question. Um, and uh, and jill, thank you for the clear answer straight away. Listen, let me thank both of you Michael and jill. It's been terrific. Just getting a glimpse of where your unusual ambitious and visionary project is headed Thank you so much both of you. Let me just quickly ask. Uh, what's the best way to keep up with your your work together? um twitter I would say I mean we're redoing our website now. We have a blog. So I'm I'm envisioning there'll be something there Um, I think both of us will be at edge of cause but I I laughed when I said twitter But that's kind of where I I document everything that's going on Um That works that works and that's just uh unisoned, uh ed right? Uh, yeah unisoned.org and well the tweet. Yeah, the twitter accounts unisoned Um, it just comes from at jill view them up Okay, we'll do that. Thank you. And how about you michael? Well, you know, you know for us, you know, we are you know early on with the with the partnership It's something that we're working hard to be able to do very well together You know one thing I think that jill is Underselling for us is that you know, she was instrumental in getting us to offer something to all universe all unison members So there's an automated authentication that all unison members can have as part of this partnership And that's at no cost and and one of the things I think is great about that Is that is an important piece of test security and the fact that through unison everybody has access to that Um, it's pretty great. It's one of a kind and that's a good start because at least now You know everybody whether they have the money to spend or choose to spend the money Can have some access to test integrity because of the membership agreement that's in place Hmm I'm glad to hear it and uh once again, I'm Thank you both. Um, we're we're gonna keep tracking you. We're gonna keep an eye on where you go We're gonna we're not going to proctor your exam, but we're definitely going to follow your progress Thank you both so much. Thank you Now don't worry everybody We have just a quick couple notes about where we're headed over the next couple of weeks So first of all seven days from now here We'll be joining our conversation on a very different topic if you're curious about teaching with gaming And with world building will have trend hargan raider from rit who'll be showing us his award winning and fascinating work He has a new book out in the subject. This is a lot of fun If you're curious about teaching with imaginary worlds, this is groundbreaking and delightful stuff Now along the same way if you want to check back into our archives head to tinyurl.com FTF archive and you could see our previous discussions about unison about teaching in general and teaching with games and creativity Now if you want to keep talking about all these great ideas If you want to find out more about where these are headed check out our social media profiles We have we're active on twitter. I've been tweeting during this session We have groups on linkedin and facebook as well as a group on slack So just join us and ask questions in the meantime. Thank you so much for coming We really participate really appreciate all of your participation And i'll stick around here for the next five minutes if you guys just want to chat Otherwise, we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye