Breaking Down Data Silos to Create a Comprehensive View of the Student

• 09/22/22

CT: So that's an example of the insights that a student can make through access to all this interconnected data. How about an example on the institutional side, whether it's a college leader or faculty member?

Milton: There are so many opportunities here for optimization. Think about a curriculum designer: What courses do I plan for a few years from now, having profitability information at my fingertips? We have a solution formerly known as Academic Economics that gives insight into profitability of a program, ultimately down to a student level. That's important information to have if I'm trying to optimize for the future from a financial perspective. If I'm an instructor in the classroom, wouldn't it be nice if I had available to me on my Blackboard Learn Ultra LMS your GPA, and did you complete your last assignment, and other factors for your engagement level? Maybe you're not comprehending, so I might switch from video to an audio format. There are a lot of things that can be done, especially if there's a dashboard that pops up that shows red, green, yellow, so I can make quick decisions on individuals. That's an example of an Intelligent Experience to make me, as a professor or a faculty member, more effective in terms of the content that I'm delivering.

CT: And what if the red, green, yellow dashboard is hanging over a person's head in the metaverse or visible through AR goggles?

Milton: It's interesting that you mention that, because that was one of the reasons why we ultimately made the decision to divest our Collaborate business. That opened us up to be able to support the metaverse — strengthening our integrations with Teams and Google and Facebook and you name it, in addition to Class who acquired our Collaborate solutions. There's a lot of innovation that's occurring in that world, so for us as a company to be able to innovate in that area, frankly, we need to integrate to it. And leverage the innovation that's occurring with the billions of dollars of R&D spend between Microsoft and Facebook and Google and Zoom. So that was part of the strategic thinking as to why we needed to divest that business and ensure that our LMS and our other solutions will take advantage of that innovation.

CT: Speaking of innovation, what are some opportunities that you see for innovation in higher education technology going forward?

Milton: I think the biggest challenge facing higher education in the United States is around retention and completion. You've probably seen the stats. I won't dwell on them, but the average student who starts a four-year baccalaureate degree in the United States — in six years, only 60% of that cohort gets their four-year degree. In six years! We set the goal at six years to make it an even bigger number. It's worse when you get to four years or community colleges; maybe 33% of community college students finish an associate degree within three years. In most other industries, that would be considered abject failure. So education technology companies have a lot of work to do to improve that. We think Intelligent Experiences is one way to do that, so that we can treat individuals as individuals, rather than cohorts of people. Everybody has their own experiences, their own strengths and weaknesses, and their own desire in terms of the outcome that they're seeking. How do you do mass personalization if you aren't able to capture and learn more about Jim Milton through his involvement with the institution? We believe that's where the ultimate innovation is going to come in.