EDUCAUSE 2021: Wrap up & Key Takeaways
EDUCAUSE hosted their annual conference last week in Philadelphia. The event aims to showcase the best thinking in higher education IT, while connecting educational professionals and technology providers.
One of our Robots & Pencils Senior Account Managers, Nina Rivera tuned into the three-day event. She shared, “I enjoyed the focus on technology and the overall student. It’s important for institutions to not only focus on the academics but also the mental health of the student. That will ensure a better experience.”
About EDUCAUSE
EDUCAUSE does more than just host annual conferences. They’re a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance higher education through the use of information technology. EDUCAUSE has a network of over 100,000 members and is a very community-focused group. They also have built a huge library of valuable resources for higher ed professionals.
Thoughts on EDUCAUSE Going Hybrid
This year, EDUCAUSE was a hybrid event. There were sessions and networking opportunities both in-person and online. Nina weighed in on what she thought of attending the conference virtually. “They did a great job with laying out the schedule and allowing you to add those sessions to your personal calendar.”
In terms of comparing virtual to in-person, Nina said, “It was definitely different than being an in-person session. I did appreciate that there were opportunities to speak with other community members either through a brain date or a Meet and Greet. There were some great sessions offered to online participants.”
Our Favorite Presentation
“Students first!” has become a rallying cry at colleges and universities around the world, with subtle and dramatic implications across campus. Putting students in the center requires leaders to be intentional and committed, and EDUCAUSE President John O’Brien brought together a panel of remarkable leaders to discuss student-centered leadership.
This panel was called Student-Centered Leadership: Engaging Students by Design. It was our favorite presentation at the event, sharing promising and proven strategies for leaders, aspiring leaders, and other campus professionals.
The speakers included:
- John O’Brian of EDUCAUSE
- Judy Miner of Foothill-DeAnza Community College District
- Pam Eddinger of Bunker Hill Community College
- Jess Stringer of University of California, Berkeley
The speakers discussed the ways in which each of their institutions is putting students first. This includes leveraging technology and remote options to ensure that the students (regardless of location) have opportunities to learn, participate in school activities, and advance their education. These institutions also recognize the importance of outside factors on student success and have been working to address some of the issues that students face. Current issues are primarily:
- COVID has had a huge impact on student experience
- 41% of students report having depression and 31% anxiety
- Broken processes with the educational experience
- Struggles to balance family, work and school
- Financial difficulties
Below are some of the methods these schools have implemented.
Foothill-DeAnza Community College: This college has created a better pathway to student engagement by allowing students within each campus to join a “village” based on their major. (For example, villages include Artistic Expression, Language and Communication, and Health and LIfe Science, among others.)
Within each village, the individual student can see roadmaps towards success. Each village also offers online learning communities that address academic engagement, student services and social support. These strategies were informed by student voices and quantitative data and have led to increased engagement and a wonderful environment where students can explore and grow.
Bunker Hill: Especially since Bunker Hill is a community college, everything that their students experience within their lives impacts student success. They strongly believe that there is a need to deal with the WHOLE student.
Specifically, Bunker Hill emphasized that we don’t just have one pandemic. We also have a pandemic of racism. There has been disinvestment in minority communities for some time and everything collapsed during COVID. As a result, Bunker Hill made mental health a focus for their students, the majority of whom come from minority communities and low income households. Bunker Hill created a mental health commission, made of a mix of students, staff and faculty. The campus just received formal recommendations from this group for a three-year plan that focuses on mental health.
Additionally, because many students have experienced trauma, Bunker Hill students often struggle to focus on school and experience higher dropout rates. Staff and faculty wanted to be more informed about trauma in teaching and learning,as many were not well prepared to interact with students who have been traumatized. To help Bunker Hill classrooms become places of healing, the institution found a professional service that could help equip staff and faculty to teach and support students with trauma.
UC Berkeley: UC Berkeley came up with a Student Technology Council. This is a group of students that are helping to advise IT within the organization. They ensured that the students on the council are diverse to capture the best representation of their campus.
Trends Observed
The main trend to know is that everyone is exploring how educational institutions can best keep students engaged.
Many schools are looking for technology to address the need to better engage students. For example, there were several online conversations about AI, virtual reality (including comparing different use cases), and other STEM related technologies like 3D printing. At one point, there was even a conversation about online gaming and where that lives on campus (some campuses consider it a club and others an actual sport).
Predictions for 2022
In 2022, we expect to see much more focus on student success (mentally and academically). To support this focus, many institutions will be investing in better data modeling and researching various methods and products to improve their data.
Next year’s EDUCAUSE conference will be held in Chicago in October and we are already looking forward to attending and seeing if our prediction for 2022 comes to fruition!
Noteworthy Tweets
Aside from the networking and thought leadership presentations at EDUCAUSE, the event inspired a lot of interaction on Twitter. Check out a few of the tweets to see the takeaways attendees had from the conference.
https://twitter.com/amichaelberman/status/1454091514246746114/photo/1
https://twitter.com/JohnOBrienEDU/status/1453741011394568192
https://twitter.com/jessikaruga/status/1453746050922164234
https://twitter.com/WaytNoMore/status/1453384827437191174
Did you attend or tune into EDUCAUSE? We’d love to hear what you thought about it in the comments below!
To learn about how Robots & Pencils can help institutions better support and engage students, check out our edtech services and case studies or get in touch with our experts today.
