Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2022 Bonus
Listen: Seizing the Opportunity for Digital Transformation
00:13
Rhea Kelly: Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast! I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
Back in November, Campus Technology hosted a virtual summit about innovation in IT: all of the ways higher education technology leaders have embraced agility and flexibility in challenging times. For this bonus episode of the podcast, I wanted to share a highlight from the event: a panel discussion on digital transformation and how the pandemic has accelerated digital efforts on campus. Our panelists were: Marina Aminy, dean of Online Education and Learning Resources at Saddleback College; Michael Berman, chief information officer at California State University; Shawna Dark, chief academic technology officer and executive director for Research, Teaching, and Learning at the University of California, Berkeley; and Jessica Phillips, interim director of Learning Programs and Digital Flagship at The Ohio State University. They talked about their digital transformation priorities, the need for a student-centric approach, issues of equity and access, pedagogical challenges, and more. Here's our conversation.
So first, I'm going to ask each panelist introduce themselves and say a little bit about their role. Marina, should we start with you?
01:44
Marina Aminy: Yes, absolutely. Hi, everyone. My name is Marina Aminy, as Rhea said, and I work at Saddleback College. It's one of about 114 public community colleges in the state of California. We're a pretty large operation. We have about 25,000 students here at Saddleback College, and I oversee online education. We're one of the largest online programs for community colleges in the entire state. I also oversee other areas that are sort of in the midst of digital transformation, like the library, like our tutoring center, instructional support, the student help desk, so all of the really, we find the areas that have been, I would say, most impacted by the pandemic, and moving forward will likely be the most transformative in terms of how they support students.
02:26
Kelly: Thanks. Michael, how about you?
02:30
Michael Berman: Good morning, everyone. This is Michael Berman. I'm CIO for the California State University, working from the Office of the Chancellor in Long Beach, California. And of course, we're close partners with our community colleges and the UCs in California and the power system that we have in the state of California. In my role, I work with our 23 campuses across California, which represent or serve about 486,000 students at the moment. Nearly half the state's bachelor's degrees are awarded by the CSU, and last year we conferred almost 130,000 bachelor's degrees and some graduate degrees. We have nearly 4 million living alumni and one in 10 employees in California is a CSU graduate. So with the scale that we have, it gives us tremendous opportunity to explore using digital tools to be more effective and to improve the student experience and improve the rate of student success. And I'm really very proud to be here with you and look forward to the conversation with these distinguished colleagues.
03:35
Kelly: Thanks so much. Jessica?
03:38
Jessica Phillips: Hi, so excited to be here. I'm Jessica Phillips. I'm the interim director of Digital Flagship and Learning Programs in the Office of Distance Ed and e-Learning at The Ohio State University. And my work really focuses on leading a team to address access and equity to technology for students. And so a big part of our work is to distribute technology devices to students as they come into the university as new students. And, or, this year, we've hit just right around 50,000 students with technology in hand as they come in, along with that technology training and digital literacy training to use that technology in meaningful ways. We also focus on workforce education in the form of providing opportunities for students and the public to learn how to code. In particular, coding that wouldn't be, otherwise have been an opportunity for students because it's not part of their major area of study. And then we also provide spaces to help students with ideation and design thinking in the form of two design labs that we have available for students. And we also use those spaces and work with students to help create apps that address student challenges. So I'm really excited to be here with everybody today.