Campus Technology Insider Podcast July 2022
Listen: Putting Community Engagement at the Center of Online Learning
00:08
Rhea Kelly: Hello, and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
What would a learning management system centered on culture and community look like? The United Negro College Fund hopes to answer that question with HBCUv, a new learning platform that aims to reshape the future of online education for historically Black colleges and universities. The organization has partnered with consultancy Deloitte Digital on the project, with the goal of providing best-in-class remote learning, community engagement and career pathways to students seeking an HBCU education. In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Ed Smith-Lewis, VP of strategic partnerships and institutional programs at UNCF, and Nathan Young, head of strategy for Ethos at Deloitte Digital, about bringing the HBCU experience to an online environment, the defining characteristics of HBCUv and the equity-centered design process behind their work. Here's our chat.
Ed and Nathan, welcome to the podcast.
01:21
Nathan Young: Thank you for having us.
01:23
Kelly: So UNCF and Deloitte Digital recently announced plans to create a new online platform for community learning, designed for historically Black colleges and universities, called HBCUv. Could you talk a little bit about the ideas behind the project and how it began?
01:42
Ed Smith-Lewis: Awesome, I'll jump in. And thank you for having us. We're really excited to be here and to get the opportunity to share with the world what we're doing with HBCUv. HBCUv was first conceived in 2019 BC, before the, before COVID, when UNCF was invited by a third-party partner to really understand how we could support HBCUs as they attempted to enter the online space. The short story is HBCUs, over the course of their history, have been historically under-resourced institutions, and because of their high-touch environment sort of stayed away from deep engagement in the online space. When we left that meeting, which we were very excited about the capabilities of technology, we didn't leave excited to support one institution. Instead, thinking about how we could support a consortium of institutions, understanding that HBCUs individually are strong, but much stronger together. So we came back to our, to our offices, and we wrote what amounted to a 25-page proposal that really got everyone excited, but also nervous. After all, UNCF is known as a scholarship organization, not a technology provider. And so we really sat on that proposal for a few months. And then in mid-March, the world decided that we needed to stay home, and higher education was disrupted like it's never been disrupted before. And for the first time in a long time, nearly every person — faculty, staff and student — signed into their LMS. And that proposal we had written became a hot commodity, as the field and with the heightened racial consciousness of the time said, how can we help ensure learning continues, even through the disruption. And so through some engagement and multiple different RFP processes, we landed on partnering with Deloitte and Deloitte Digital to help us make that HBCUv a reality. And so the work, ultimately, is to build an online learning ecosystem for HBCUs by HBCUs, one that really takes what makes HBCUs special — that historic significance, that high-touch environment, that critical lens it places on learning — and to try to provide that to many more students throughout the world, ultimately.
04:05
Kelly: Man, if you ever needed a sign from the universe that it was time to get moving on that project, I mean, wow.