Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) announced four winning proposals for a new accessibility-focused seed grant research program funded by Microsoft.  

The ALOE Institute will develop new AI theories and techniques for enhancing the quality of online education for lifelong learning and workforce development. According to some projections, about 100 million American workers will need to be reskilled or upskilled over the next decade. With the increase of AI and automation, said Co-Principal Investigator and Georgia Tech lead Professor Ashok Goel, many jobs will be redefined.

“There will be some loss of jobs, but mostly we will see individuals needing to learn a new skill to get a new job or to advance their career,” said Goel, a professor of computer science and human-centered computing in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing (IC) and the chief scientist with the Center for 21^st Century Universities (C21U). “So, how do you help 100 million workers reskill or upskill in 10 years? Because AI is in part responsible for this need, it is our belief it should also be responsible for finding a solution.”

That is the goal of this project, which will be led by principal investigator Myk Garn, assistant vice chancellor for New Models of Learning at the University System of Georgia and senior advisor to the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA).

“Online education for adults has enormous implications for tomorrow’s workforce,” Garn said. “Yet, serious questions remain about the quality of online learning and how best to teach adults online. Artificial intelligence offers a powerful technology for dramatically improving the quality of online learning and adult education.”

To do that successfully, the education must be personalized and scaled to unprecedented levels. Educating 100 million people in online environments will, of course, require far more time and energy than in-person educators can offer their students. That is where AI comes into play.

Researchers will build new AI techniques that can adequately and efficiently train other AI agents to interact with humans in a classroom setting, similar to the virtual teaching assistant Jill Watson that Goel has used in his online computer science classes for the past five years. This will help satisfy the scalability requirement.

“That’s the fundamental advancement in AI,” Goel said. “A human can train an AI agent in just a few hours how to teach other AI agents on how to interact with humans on various subjects.”

To satisfy the need for personalized AI, researchers will train machines to have a mutual theory of mind with their human counterparts. In other words, there will be a greater understanding by both machine and human of the others’ needs, knowledge, and expectations.

“Our vision is to develop AI agents that achieve a mutual understanding of learning expectations, outcomes, and methods between students and teachers,” said Alex Endert, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s College of Computing who will help the team analyze and understand data from the project. “Along with my students, I look forward to developing visual analytic interfaces that serve that purpose to foster trust and interpretability of AI for this domain.”

Ultimately, the hope is that education becomes more available, affordable, achievable, and, thereby, equitable. Such an expansive project, understandably, requires the expertise of many kinds from many people. In addition to Endert and Goel, who will be executive director of the ALOE Institute, there will be a host of faculty at Georgia Tech will participate.

Senior Georgia Tech members of the ALOE team include Stephen Harmon (Industrial Design and C21U), Michael Hoffmann (Public Policy), David Joyner (Online Master of Science in Computer Science), Ruth Kanfer (Psychology), Brian Magerko (Language, Media, and Culture), Keith McGreggor (IC and VentureLab), Chaohua Ou (Center for Teaching and Learning), and Spencer Rugaber (Computer Science).

Other partners in the ALOE Institute include Arizona State University, Drexel University, Georgia State University, Harvard University, the Technical College System of Georgia, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, IMS Global, Boeing, IBM, and Wiley.

Georgia Tech is a key partner in two additional institutes in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institute of Food and Agricultures, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate, and the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Georgia Tech will lead the AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4Opt) and the AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsiveness Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), the latter of which is led by College of Computing Associate Professor Sonia Chernova to support aging-related issues.

Today, Georgia Tech received two National Science Foundation (NSF) Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes awards, totaling $40 million. A third award for $20 million was granted to the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), with Georgia Tech serving as one of the leading academic institutions.

“It is essential that we bring together our best minds to ensure that AI delivers on its promise to create a more prosperous, sustainable, safe, and fair future for everyone,” said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. “These NSF awards recognize Georgia Tech’s vast expertise in machine learning and AI and will help us further develop our resources and amplify our impact in these crucial fields.”

Chaouki T. Abdallah, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech, concurred, citing major efforts under development to help create a more robust and inclusive future of AI, both on campus and beyond.

“We are incredibly grateful to the NSF for their investment and excited for the opportunities made possible because of this research,” he said. “At Tech, our mission is to advance technology and improve the human condition, catalyzing research that matters. We invested in a unified approach to interdisciplinary research aligned with industry relevance and societal impact, and these awards demonstrate a clear return on that strategy.”

Collectively, NSF made a $220 million investment in 11 new NSF-led Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes.

“I am delighted to announce the establishment of new NSF National AI Research Institutes as we look to expand into all 50 states,” said National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These Institutes are hubs for academia, industry, and government to accelerate discovery and innovation in AI. Inspiring talent and ideas everywhere in this important area will lead to new capabilities that improve our lives, from medicine to entertainment to transportation and cybersecurity, and position us in the vanguard of competitiveness and prosperity.”

Led by NSF, and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Intel, and Accenture, the National AI Research Institutes will act as connections in a broader nationwide network to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors, and science and engineering fields — from food system security to next-generation edge networks. In addition to Georgia Tech and GRA, the University of California San Diego, Duke University, Iowa State University, North Carolina State University, The Ohio State University, and University of Washington are the lead universities included in the 11 AI Institutes.

The AI Institutes at Georgia Tech

The three newly established Institutes will address societal challenges, including home care for aging adults; energy, logistics, and supply chains; sustainability; the widening gap in job opportunities; and changing needs in workforce development.

NSF AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING) will seek to create a vibrant discipline focused on personalized, collaborative AI systems that will improve quality of care for the aging. The systems will learn individual models of human behavior and how they change over time and use that knowledge to better collaborate and communicate in caregiving environments. Led by Sonia Chernova, associate professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech, the AI systems will help a growing population of older adults sustain independence, improve quality of life, and increase effectiveness of care coordination across the care network.

“The AI-CARING Institute builds on our existing strengths in AI and in technology for aging. It will create not only novel solutions, but a new generation of researchers focused on the interaction between the two,” said Charles Isbell, dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing. “Our aim is to build cutting-edge technologies that improve the lives of everyone, and I can’t think of a better example than AI-CARING.”

NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4Opt) will revolutionize decision-making on a large scale – fusing AI and mathematical optimization into intelligent systems that will achieve breakthroughs that neither field can achieve independently. Additionally, it will create pathways from high school to undergraduate and graduate education and workforce development training for AI in engineering that will empower a generation of underrepresented students and teachers to join the AI revolution. Led by Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, AI4Opt will tackle use cases in energy, resilience and sustainability, supply chains, and circuit design and control.

“AI4Opt, with its focus on AI and optimization, will create new pathways for novel tools that allow better engineering applications to benefit society,” said Raheem Beyah, dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair. “This will allow engineers to build higher quality materials, more efficient renewable resources, new computing systems, and more, while also reinforcing the field as a career path for diverse students. The new institute complements the College’s commitment to the integration of AI in engineering disciplines.”

NSF AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (ALOE) will lead the country and the world in the development of novel AI theories and techniques for enhancing the quality of adult online education, making this mode of learning comparable to that of in-person education in STEM disciplines. Together with partners in the technical college systems and educational technology sector, ALOE will advance online learning using virtual assistants to make education more available, affordable, achievable, and ultimately more equitable. This Institute is led by the GRA, with support from Georgia Tech and the University System of Georgia (USG). Ashok Goel, professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, will serve as executive director.  

“Online education for adults has enormous implications for tomorrow’s workforce,” said Myk Garn, a GRA senior advisor, assistant vice chancellor for New Models of Learning at the USG, and ALOE’s principal investigator. “Yet, serious questions remain about the quality of online learning and how best to teach adults online. Artificial intelligence offers a powerful technology for dramatically improving the quality of online learning and adult education.”

The Future of AI at Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech is poised to strategically reimagine the future of AI. Currently, 66% of Georgia Tech undergraduate computer science students have an academic concentration in Intelligence, focusing on the top-to-bottom computational models of intelligence. The College of Computing’s recently launched Ph.D. program in machine learning pulls from faculty in all six colleges across the Institute, and many new courses are being developed that teach AI as a tool for science and engineering. Georgia Tech is exploring the potential creation of a school or college of AI within the next five years, further building on its expansive AI and machine learning footprint. The NSF AI Institutes awards will enable all AI-related academic programs to scale and further differentiate Georgia Tech as a leader in AI education.   

Additionally, the awards will expand and complement ongoing AI research efforts at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). In the last fiscal year, GTRI received millions of dollars in research awards from the Department of Defense and other sponsors for AI-affiliated research, and currently, many GTRI researchers are focused on AI-affiliated projects.

“As part of Georgia Tech, GTRI will greatly benefit from the advances in AI that will be achieved as a result of these NSF-funded Institutes, helping us further excel in our aim to deliver leading-edge AI research that benefits national security,” said Mark Whorton, GTRI’s chief technology officer. “GTRI is one of the nation’s leading institutes of applied research for national security specifically because of our deep engagement and close affiliation with the academic units of Georgia Tech. AI is a tool we use in conducting larger research objectives, and we believe strongly that these AI Institutes will enable GTRI to put more research into practice.”

“Georgia Tech has for decades now been pursuing new AI technologies, and now leads the way in AI that is responsible to the needs of the humans who use it,” Isbell said. “We have also worked hard to expand access to AI, especially for underrepresented groups. These Institutes will build on that history, expanding both our ability to create new technologies and to train the next generation of innovators. I look forward to watching them grow and develop.”

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

About the National Science Foundation

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments, and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2021 budget of $8.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities, and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

About the Georgia Research Alliance


The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) helps Georgia’s university scientists do more research and start more companies. By expanding research and entrepreneurship capacity at public and private universities, GRA grows the Georgia economy by driving more investment in the state, developing a high-tech workforce, and strengthening Georgia’s reputation for innovation. For 30 years, GRA has worked in partnership with the University System of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Economic Development to create the companies and jobs of Georgia’s future. Visit GRA.org for more information.

Contact: Georgia Parmelee | georgia.parmelee@gatech.edu | 404.281.7818

The Phase I Convergence Accelerator cohort was announced in 2019 and included the Competency Catalyst team as one of 43 projects to receive Phase I funding. The Phase II cohort includes just nine teams of the original 43 and will provide Competency Catalyst with up to $5 million in funding for prototype development and pilot projects. During the two years of Phase II funding, the Competency Catalyst team, which includes Eduworks, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U), USG, and the Credential Engine, will develop prototypes of digital tools to support critical workforce reskilling in the United States.

“The unpredictability of the job market over the past year has prompted many people to consider their current career trajectory and skills,” said Ashok Goel, co-PI and chief scientist for C21U. “It is critical that we leverage technology to develop better tools to sync up employers and educators so that job seekers have clear paths to reskilling. This type of tool is exactly what we hope to develop through the Competency Catalyst project.”

Over the next two years, Competency Catalyst will create two digital resources to support reskilling – a Skillsync application and a C2 platform. The Skillsync application enables companies to succinctly express reskilling needs for their workforce. This information is then distilled to colleges and universities so that they can design accelerated educational programs with the needed skills as specific learning outcomes. The Skillsync application is built on the C2 platform, which is designed to better describe and align job requirements and opportunities for reskilling in specific knowledge, skill, and ability (KSA) terminology. Georgia Tech’s Jill Watson AI-based educational assistant, the Credential Engine’s open data infrastructure, and Eduworks’ digital competency extraction tools and open-source Competency and Skills System (CaSS) will provide the framework for these two innovative new tools.

“The pairing of C2 and Skillsync will empower direct, real-time communication between companies and education providers through an AI-powered digital tool,” said Matt Lisle, director of digital learning technologies for C21U and member of the Competency Catalyst development team. “We believe that this will have an immediate and positive impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of reskilling America’s workforce.”

This Convergence Accelerator Phase II Grant is overseen by the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program in the Office of Integrative Activities and is associated with the Convergence Accelerator topic area of AI and Future Jobs, and National Talent Ecosystem.

You can read more about the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Grant program and find the list of grant recipients in their September 2020 announcement, “Accelerating research to impact society at scale”.

The Bridging the Health Care Skill Gap project, led by Eduworks and USG and created in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U), the Credential Engine, DXtera Institute, the Open Syllabus Project, and academic experts from institutions such as the University of Georgia and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is a project that seeks to address the COVID-19 crisis by providing end users with the ability to compare their own skills with those required for available health care roles and credentials and, in some cases, find ways to fill gaps. The project’s collaborative team of industry and academic experts will utilize RAPID grant funding to develop and deploy web-based tools that individuals and employers can use to explore healthcare-related competency frameworks, self-identify skill gaps, and find credentials and training. 

“Our goal is to encourage people with many of the right skills to become credentialed health care providers and fill in-demand health care roles,” said Robby Robson, the principal investigator from Eduworks. “These skills might come from previous experiences, such as military service or a volunteer job, and we want to give learners an easy way to explore their potential and gain the training and qualifications they need.”

Georgia Tech’s 2018 report, “Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education,” points to continued innovation in credentialing as a critical path forward for higher education, as universities must provide future learners with relevant educational experiences designed to meet learners’ needs at specific moments in their career or life. Similarly, employers need tools that enable them to coordinate with universities to provide ready access to courses and credential programs that enable critical workforce development in moments of great change. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is experiencing such a moment of great change and there is an immediate need for education and credentialing opportunities that will support a new pipeline of qualified healthcare workers and providers. 

“If we can build a tool that allows health care workers to easily discover the skills they need in order to fill in-demand roles, we can play a small but meaningful role during the COVID-19 crisis,” said Matt Lisle, director of digital learning technologies for the Center for 21st Century Universities. “Not only that, but these tools will provide a useful framework as we prepare for the potential of future pandemics or medical crises.” 

This RAPID Grant is overseen by the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program in the Office of Integrative Activities and is associated with the Convergence Accelerator Track B: Future of Work and the Human-Technology Frontier.

You can read more about the National Science Foundation’s RAPID Response Grant program and response to COVID-19 in its April 2020 announcement, “National Science Foundation awards rapid response grants to support coronavirus (COVID-19) research.”

DeMillo, who is the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair of Computer Science and Professor of Management, has served as C21U’s founding director since its launch in 2010 as Tech’s living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education.

Chairing the Institute’s Educational Innovation Council, DeMillo served as a leading voice for innovation including blended learning, massive open online courses, the groundbreaking Online Master of Science in Computer Science program, and digital credentials, among others. He served as co-chair of the Institute’s Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE), culminating in the 2018 release of the widely lauded report Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education. The CNE won the Annual Achievement Award of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology in 2019.

“Rich has been a true champion of educational innovation at Georgia Tech for years and leaves an indelible mark on the Institute,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “His vision and leadership have helped shepherd and shape some of Tech’s most groundbreaking innovations.”

DeMillo was named as a Fellow of the Lumina Foundation “for creating C21U, a unique institution.” His first book, Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities, helped spark a national conversation about innovation in Higher Education. DeMillo’s second book, Revolution in Higher Education: How a Small Band of Innovators Will Make College Accessible and Affordable, was named as a best education book of 2016 by the Association of American Publishers.

DeMillo has a long history with Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in information and computer science from Georgia Tech in 1972. He then taught as a member of the faculty from 1976 to 1987, before departing for roles in business, academia, and government, including the National Science Foundation and HP. He returned to Georgia Tech in 2002 and served as the John P. Imlay Dean of Computing in the College of Computing until 2009. Under his tenure as dean, the College achieved top-10 ranking status and launched the Threads Curriculum, which drew international acclaim for its dynamic, new approach to undergraduate education.

“After 18 years of university administration — first as director of Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), then dean, then founder and executive director of C21U — I’ve decided that it’s time to get back to teaching and research as a professor,” said DeMillo. “I will spend a substantial amount of my remaining years at Georgia Tech finishing long-delayed writing and research projects in computer science and cybersecurity. The opportunity to help lead educational innovation at my alma mater has been one of the highlights of my career.”

Effective immediately, Steve Harmon, who serves as C21U’s director of educational innovation and associate dean of research at Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE) has been appointed deputy director of C21U, and will assist with operational objectives through the end of June.

A plan for the future leadership of C21U will be determined in the coming months.

With contributors from 12 universities across the globe, the Digital Credentials Consortium’s new white paper, Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future, outlines a trusted, distributed, and shared infrastructure that provides viable standards for issuing, storing, displaying, and verifying digital academic credentials. While the Consortium’s research focuses on verified digital academic credentials in higher education, the group also turns a critical lens to interoperability standards for post-secondary, lifelong learning, and non-formal education providers, which extends to credentials for the workplace.

Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) serves as the Institute’s Digital Credentials Consortium liaison and key collaborating unit. The new report features C21U’s Matt Lisle, director of digital learning technologies, and Stuart Freeman, applications developer, as key contributing authors.

“C21U and the Commission on Creating the Next in Education have experimented with blockchain-based credentials for the past year and we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborate with world-class researchers and technologists to build something that is interoperable across institutional boundaries,” said Freeman. “Georgia Tech is excited to be part of the Digital Credentials Consortium and to contribute to a report that seeks to define crucial standards for the future of digital credentials.”

In Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future, the authors reiterate the group’s commitment to open source and open standards. The report outlines additional credential standards that the Consortium sees as critical to the development of verifiable digital credentials, including:

• Flexible ways to express the identities of issuers and learners that tie into existing university services
• Stronger privacy-by-design and privacy-by-default with attention to regional legal frameworks
• More reliable revocation mechanisms and credential lifecycle management
• Direct learner agency over one's lifelong learning record
• Higher level of consistency between the machine-readable data of the credential, the human-readable visual representation, and the necessary output formats—paper or digital

“We’ve set our sights on the design and governance of a technology infrastructure for academic credentials – transforming credentials into tokens of social and human capital that can create new opportunities for participation in education and industry,” said Philipp Schmidt, advisor to the Vice President of Open Learning at MIT. “Our report marks the first step in the process.”

About the Digital Credentials Consortium

The Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC) was founded in 2018 by leading universities with expertise in the design of verifiable digital academic credentials. Driven by a mission to create a trusted, distributed, and shared infrastructure that becomes the standard for issuing, storing, displaying, and verifying digital academic credentials, the DCC’s goal is to contribute to an education landscape that increases learner agency and promotes more equitable learning and career pathways. While the Consortium is primarily concerned with use-cases in higher education, their work is also part of a broader effort to bridge post-secondary and lifelong learning, connecting traditional institutions of higher education, non-formal education providers, as well as the workplace, through interoperable standards. Learn more at digitalcredentials.mit.edu. 

Founding Members, Digital Credentials Consortium

Delft University of Technology

Georgia Institute of Technology

Harvard University

Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

McMaster University

Tecnológico De Monterrey

Technical University of Munich

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Irvine

University of Milano-Bicocca

University of Toronto

About the Center for 21st Century Universities

The Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is Georgia Tech's living laboratory for fundamental change in education. As learners of all ages encounter rapidly changing workforce demands and seek to learn in new ways, Georgia Tech is committed to leading the initiatives that will define the next generation of educational practices and technologies.

C21U functions as a research arm of the Office of the Provost and works in tandem with campus administrators and faculty to identify, develop, and test new educational platforms and methodologies. Now home to the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) Program Office, C21U fosters projects that will redefine the entire pipeline of learning. This effort requires close collaboration with and integration of K-12 education as a key part of our commitment to lifetime education. Innovation in this area is led by the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC).

Learn more at c21u.gatech.edu or connect with us on Twitter @c21u. If you would like to find out more about the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) or become involved in the Commission’s work, please email ed-innovation@gatech.edu.

Jill Watson – Georgia Tech’s AI designed explicitly for this purpose – turned four years old this January, with the AI’s birthday coinciding with the announcement of the 10 semifinalists for IBM’s AI XPrize competition. Georgia Tech’s emPrize team, led by Professor of Interactive Computing Ashok Goel and utilizing Jill Watson as the key technology, was named as one of the semifinalists.

The competition started in 2016, the year of Jill’s arrival in a graduate computer science course at Georgia Tech, and has “sought to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies and spark creative, innovative, and audacious demonstrations of the technology that are truly scalable to solve societal grand challenges.” After nearly four calendar years, XPrize will name a winner in April.

As part of the GT emPrize team’s work, the Jill Watson TA not only answers student questions about course requirements but can answer questions about another AI named VERA, or the Virtual Ecological Research Assistant.

Jill helps users learn how to use VERA, a system which enables students in GT’s Intro to Biology course (and online science seekers) to create their own ecological models from a web browser. Unlike the Jill Watson TA, which is currently used only by GT students, VERA is open to anyone with an internet connection.

Another part of emPrize is the Jill Social Agent, whose lead designer, Ida Camacho, is a recent alumna of Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Computer Science program (OMSCS) and understands the pressures and uncertainties of online learning.

The Jill Social Agent in essence gives students just starting online courses a chance at “speed friending”. If online students feel they have more peer support and connections from the start, this might translate into success in the course. Hear from Camacho on the Tech Unbound podcast with GVU Center as she reveals some of her AI’s design and the educational experience that informed her work on emPrize.

Learn more at http://emprize.gatech.edu/ or explore a timeline of Jill's evolution. 

Excel at Georgia Tech was founded in 2014 by Professor Terry Blum, Tedd Munchak Chair in Entrepreneurship and faculty director for the Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ILE) in the Scheller College of Business. The four-year program is designed as an inclusive postsecondary educational (IPSE) program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Excel students are integrated into many aspects of the undergraduate student experience, and with the support of same-aged peer mentors, they strengthen their independent academic, social, fitness, and cooking skills. Upon completion of the program, students receive two separate certificates: Academic Enrichment, Social Fluency, and Career Exploration; and Social Growth, Leadership, and Career Development. Since inception, the program has been organizationally housed within the ILE, with curriculum and certification support provided by Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE).

The organizational move follows the recommendations of a small institutionalization task force convened by Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Rafael L. Bras in Spring 2019. The task force, chaired by Steven Girardot, associate vice provost for Undergraduate Education, spent several months assessing program objectives and meeting with campus stakeholders including faculty and staff from GTPE, the Scheller College of Business, Student Life and Campus Services, Enrollment Management, Undergraduate Education, CEISMC, and the College of Sciences, as well as members of the Excel Student Advisory Board.

“The task force affirmed that the Excel program is well-established and thriving,” said Bras. “The program is exceptional and has become a part of Georgia Tech’s fabric as an institution. This move to a centralized unit will allow us to best ensure its long-term security, sustainability, and success.”

Excel is one of nine IPSE programs in Georgia and represents one of more than 270 similar programs at colleges and universities across the United States. The first cohort of Excel students began in Fall 2015. As of the last academic term, 38 students were enrolled. In May 2019, seven students received certificates, representing the program’s inaugural graduates. Notably, the program has achieved 100% placement of graduates into employment opportunities, compared to an average of approximately 60% by other programs.

As CEISMC, under the leadership of Executive Director Lizanne DeStefano, takes programmatic and curricular elements of the program, GTPE will continue to contribute to the program’s business operations. While newly aligned organizational operations within CEISMC will commence immediately under a transition plan, a physical move will take place at a later date.

“The Scheller College of Business has been a wonderful home for Excel for the past five years,” said Ken Surdin, director of Excel. “The faculty, staff, and students of the College have been true champions of the program and its students. But the organizational move to CEISMC does present a great opportunity for the future of the program as we look forward.”

“AECT's Annual Achievement Award is presented to an individual or group whose efforts resulted in a significant contribution to the advancement of educational communications and technology,” stipulates the AECT website. “The achievement is defined as high profile usually connected to a public event or announcement. It can be an enhanced or new program or service, a creative or large-scale application of educational technology, a significant publication or production, major changes in planning and practice, and other accomplishments that have occurred usually no more than two years in advance of the award presentation at annual convention.”

The Commission’s 2018 report, “Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education,” was named as the winner of the AECT award due to its potential to reshape not only the immediate future of Georgia Tech, but to reimagine the successful research university of the future. Produced by the Office of the Provost in conjunction with a cross-unit leadership and faculty group convened for this specific task, the final report of the Commission was the result of a multi-year investigation into the powerful forces that are reshaping higher education, an assessment of the Institute’s current methodologies and approaches, and a benchmarking of best practices in higher education, including issues of delivery and accessibility. This extensive process was co-chaired by the College of Engineering’s Bonnie Ferri and the Center for 21st Century Universities’ (C21U) Rich DeMillo, who now oversees the CNE Program Office within C21U. 

The award was accepted in Las Vegas, Nevada at the 2019 AECT Convention by the Center for 21st Century Universities’ Steve Harmon, on behalf of the Commission. 

If you would like to find out more about the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) or become involved in the Commission’s work, please email ed-innovation@gatech.edu. 

Together, the Georgia Institute of Technology, American Council on Education (ACE), and Huron surveyed nearly 500 leaders at four-year, nonprofit colleges and universities to better understand how they are preparing for the inevitable change and disruption.

The collective research, shared in a report titled "The Transformation-Ready Higher Education Institution: How Leaders Can Prepare for and Promote Change," revealed that very few higher education leaders are highly confident that their institutions are prepared to respond to these changing market forces. Additionally, leaders are challenged by public perceptions of the value of higher education and increased competition for students both domestically and internationally.

“Higher education leaders have our work cut out for us," remarks Dr. Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Institute of Technology. "This joint research underscores the opportunity and available tools we have to evolve our institutions and reinforce their essential role in our communities."

Nelson Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education, and Richard DeMillo, executive director of the Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, were among the key contributors behind the report. As part of the Educational Innovation Ecosystem at Georgia Tech, their units help to lead and guide the educational innovation mission for the institute.

Report Highlights:

• Few higher education leaders are highly confident that their institutions are adequately prepared for changing market forces.
• Leaders have more confidence about the future at institutions with longer planning horizons and integrated performance management structures.
• A majority of institutions are planning three to five years out with less than 20% planning 10 years or beyond.
• Four transformation-readiness imperatives:
  • Empowering and promoting a shared leadership model
  • Planning differently for the immediate- and long-term
  • Pursuing data-driven performance management
  • Creating student-first engines to meet new demand

Building a Strong Future

There is no universal solution for how institutions can successfully evolve the higher education business model. The report suggests creating a culture of shared leadership that considers multiple perspectives rather than a single person or governing body. This model can help institutions prepare and be nimble enough to respond to these changes.

Most leaders recognize changes are needed to respond to the competitive landscape and acknowledge these investments should align with the evolving student population, with the majority of respondents indicating they are rapidly overhauling their academic programs, investing in technological improvements, and expanding online offerings.

“The fastest growing population in higher education is adult learners, now comprising nearly half of the total learner population. Working professionals have vastly different needs than those of the traditional student,” said Baker. “That shift coupled with the fact that technology allows us to provide educational opportunities on a global scale makes it imperative that we plan more strategically and prioritize agility in order to meet the needs of learners today and in the future.”

Yet only 14% of the leaders planning technology investments have strategic technology management integrated across their institutions—suggesting a potential gap between intentions and leadership’s capacity to realize the value of these investments.

“Many institutions subscribe to planning models that were built for a different time and a different competitive market,” said Peter Stokes, managing director in Huron’s education business. “To become truly transformation-ready, institutions’ short- and long-term planning efforts should link directly to the needs of increasingly empowered, discerning audiences for whom higher education is not simply a next step after high school.”

Georgia Tech's Role in Transformation Readiness

Leaders that consider a long-term, yet adaptive, strategic planning approach can better anticipate these market trends and make the necessary changes to thrive now and in the future. Yet only 16% of the survey respondents are looking 10 years or beyond in terms of strategic planning.

In April 2018, Georgia Tech’s Office of the Provost released Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education, a report that explores the future of higher education. Using the year 2040 as a long-term vantage point, Deliberate Innovation makes recommendations on alternative educational models to reduce costs, improve the effectiveness of current methodologies, and increase opportunities to serve the needs of the next generation of learners.

"At a research university like Georgia Tech, people think very hard about how to structure their research programs to anticipate future needs, but they spend relatively little time thinking about how to innovate on the academic front," said DeMillo. "We want to create an immersive culture where all of the incentives and all the rewards flow to individual institutional leaders and faculty members who are consciously rethinking how to deliver education."

In addition to the survey, several participants were interviewed to offer their perspectives on innovation and its impact on the higher education industry. Portions of those interviews are included in the report, which can be viewed on the Huron website.

Competency Catalyst is a database that helps working professionals identify emerging technological areas that are in demand. Armed with this knowledge, workers can enhance their education and training to better meet the needs of the marketplace.

“It is essential that today’s workforce be able to compare their skills to those needed by employers so that they can identify gaps in their skills or experience and find opportunities to learn, train and/or reskill,” said Steve Harmon, associate director of C21U and associate dean of research for Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE). “A project like Competency Catalyst creates tangible pathways and access to data so that both employers and workers can better understand their needs in an ever-changing, technology-driven labor market.”

Competency Catalyst leverages a network of over 200 academic institutions, corporate partners, educational institutions, and standards bodies, as well as investments in infrastructure, open data, standards, and technology to create a national-scale repository of in-demand competencies and skills. This repository will have appropriate access controls but will be open to the workforce for exploration.

Competency Catalyst will have far-reaching implications for the labor market and higher education. The tools developed will create a “digital thread” connecting educational programs to job market demands, enabling students and educators to adjust their programs to current and future needs in real time and allowing local employers to align their needs with national demands and to influence the supply side of the talent pipeline.

This project will utilize National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to…

1. support the Competency Catalyst repository with artificial intelligence (AI)I-based tools for extracting competency frameworks from job postings, credentials, and other sources;
2. create an AI-based “Rosetta Stone” that aligns these frameworks with each other and with educational and training experiences; and
3. develop applications that help educators, trainers, and students target current and predicted skills and competencies.

Harmon and Myk Garn, assistant vice chancellor for new learning models for the USG Board of Regents, will lead the development and implementation of Competency Catalyst, alongside a skilled team of higher education and industry experts.

The Competency Catalyst team includes:

• Matthew Gee, co-founder and CEO of BrightHive and senior researcher at the University of Chicago
• Jeffrey Grann, credential solutions lead for Credential Engine
• Joseph Karaganis, director of OpenSyllabus and vice president at The American Assembly at Columbia University
• Elaine Kelsey, senior software engineer for research at Eduworks
• Jeanne Kitchens, associate director at the Southern Illinois University Center for Workforce Development
• Laura Levy, research scientist II for Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology and the Interactive Media Technology Center
• Matt Lisle, director of digital learning technologies for Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities
• Beth Mynatt, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology and distinguished professor in the College of Computing
• Tom Plagge, co-founder and head of platform for BrightHive
• Fritz Ray, director of engineering at Eduworks
• Robby Robson, president and founder of Eduworks
• Stuart Sutton, associate professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s Information School

"As we seek to chart the future of the human-technology frontier in a world of rapidly changing industry needs, AI tools, and university educational programs, projects like Competency Catalyst are a critical piece of the puzzle," said Mynatt. “The Institute for People and Technology is excited to collaborate with USG, the Center for 21^st Century Universities, and all of the exceptional contributors who will help bring this groundbreaking program to life.”

Created in 1931, the University System of Georgia (USG) is composed of the state’s 26 higher education institutions, public library service and archives. Governed by the 19-member Board of Regents, the USG is a recognized national leader in affordability, degree attainment, and organizational efficiency.

If you would like to find out more about Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) and become involved in innovative, education-oriented projects like Competency Catalyst, please visit our website or email ed-innovation@gatech.edu.

The publisher describes this cross-disciplinary volume as, “A guide to both theory and practice of blended learning offering rigorous research, case studies, and methods for the assessment of educational effectiveness.”

The editorial team for the volume is comprised of the College of Computing’s Ashok Goel, the School of Literature, Media, and Communication’s Amanda Madden, the Strada Institute for the Future of Work's Rob Kadel, and Georgia State University’s Lauren Margulieux. Blended Learning in Practice: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers explores the work of more than two dozen contributors and represents a range of approaches and models of blended learning from faculty in nearly every school across the Institute.

On April 11, C21U hosted a panel discussion and launch celebration for the editors and contributors of the volume. Goel, Kadel, and Margulieux, as well as contributors Joe Bankoff and David Joyner appeared on a panel to share their experiences with blended learning best practices, origins of the book, as well as “behind the scenes” details of the three-and-a-half year production and revision process.

“The origins of the book really lie in discussions within C21U,” said Goel. “This came about soon after the founding of C21U when various faculty would say, ‘We know about blended learning and we want to do it in our classes, but we don’t have the resources to do it right or we don’t know quite how to do it.’”

The editors perceived a need for comprehensive research and guidance for practitioners of blended learning but also for researchers interested in studying the efficacy and methodology of the practice. Blended Learning in Practice: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers provides guidelines and case studies that include the use of Assassin’s Creed II in a first-year composition course, a blended global issues and leadership laboratory, a knowledge-based AI course blended with a MOOC, and more.

“As we went through the process of compiling and writing this volume, we ended up with 14 chapters from faculty across several colleges at Georgia Tech that tell very rich and detailed stories,” said Kadel. “We’re incredibly grateful for those submissions from faculty. It’s not just a computer science, physical science, or communications blended learning book. It’s a real triumph for us that we can demonstrate not only to the Georgia Tech community but to the broader community that Georgia Tech is able to bring together a number of differing perspectives on a way of teaching and show that there is real cohesion.”

You can watch a recording of the editor and contributor discussion on the C21U Youtube channel. Visit the MIT Press website for more information about Blended Learning in Practice: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers.

If you are interested in becoming involved with blended learning or blended learning research at Georgia Tech, you can reach out to the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) for more information via ed-innovation@gatech.edu.

Contributors to Blended Learning in Practice: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers:
Joe Bankoff, Paula Braun, Mark Braunstein, Marion L. Brittain, Timothy G. Buchman, Rebecca E. Burnett, Aldo A. Ferri, Bonnie Ferri, Andy Frazee, Mohammed M. Ghassemi, Ashok K. Goel, Alyson B. Goodman, Joyelle Harris, Cheryl Hiddleson, David Joyner, Robert S. Kadel, Kenneth J. Knoespel, Joe Le Doux, Amanda G. Madden, Lauren Margulieux, Olga Menagarishvili, Shamim Nemati, Vjollca Sadiraj, Donald Webster

Effective immediately, the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC) will become a unit within the Center for 21^st Century Universities (C21U). Following a detailed assessment, including interviews with key stakeholders and a K-12 summit event in fall 2017, the organizational adjustment moves CEISMC out of its current structure within the College of Sciences.

“For many years, CEISMC has been leading Georgia Tech’s outreach to K-12 schools across the state and has a successful track record of enhancing the education in STEAM areas by developing innovative curricula, training teachers, and rallying the interest of students and parents,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Chair. “The Georgia Tech Commitment to a Lifetime Education described in the report by Georgia Tech’s Commission on Creating the Next in Education calls for closer collaboration and integration of K-12 as part of a future of lifelong education. Discussions and studies indicated that this strategic goal will be better served with CEISMC responding centrally and closely integrated within our education innovation ecosystem.”

The CEISMC mission is to serve as a connection point between Georgia Tech and the K-12 community through education research, outreach and teacher professional development, including management of the Georgia Tech K-12 Connection, an online portal of activities within various schools and units across campus that also supports requests for help from available for teachers, school administrators and district superintendents. Annually, CEISMC programs impact more than 39,000 students, 1,720 teachers, 74 school districts and 200 schools.

C21U functions as the research branch of the Office of the Provost at Georgia Tech, serving as a “living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education.” Now home to the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) Program Office, the C21U portfolio is expanding to include projects and support the research of teams working to redefine the entire pipeline of learning through development of next generation educational practices and technologies.

This expanded role reflects the vision set forth in the CNE report, further aligns both C21U and CEISMC with the future-oriented vision of the Institute’s Strategic Plan, and reflects the broad objectives outlined in the system-wide Comprehensive Administrative Review (CAR). While the missions of CEISMC and C21U will remain distinct in the new structure, the organizational consolidation allows for greater efficiency around general operations support, and enables CEISMC to be more visible and accessible to all colleges, schools, and external partners.

“CEISMC has a rich legacy of impactful partnerships with the public, private, and corporate sectors,” said Lizanne DeStefano, executive director of CEISMC. “Greater coordination of our K-12 efforts as a campus means that Georgia Tech can have on an even greater influence on the how students are supported on their journey to a future in STEM.”  

DeStefano’s role as executive director of CEISMC will remain unchanged, but the move will result in a reporting line change from Interim Dean David Collard of the College of Sciences to Rich DeMillo, executive director of C21U and the CNE Program Office.

“CEISMC’s long-standing mission to prepare the next generation of STEM learners is one of the major tenets of the ‘Georgia Tech Commitment,’” said DeMillo. “CEISMC was a core contributor to the CNE report, where the bold idea of the Commitment was first conceived. Together with C21U and the CNE Program office, we can take deliberate steps towards making the Commitment a reality.”

“The Strategic Plan Advisory Group has monitored progress in implementation of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Plan since 2010. At the moment, our foremost and most important strategic initiative is articulated by the report of the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE): Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education,” said Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Rafael L. Bras. “As an internal advisory component of the CNE program office, this new version of SPAG will continue its role in monitoring and guiding us in this important effort.”

The change will allow for optimized coordination and execution of strategic initiatives identified in the 2018 CNE report. Prior to the launch of CNE initiatives, SPAG was responsible for campus alignment with the Strategic Plan. Beginning in Spring 2019, the Strategic Plan advisory process, as guided by SPAG, will pivot to consult on the CNE Program Office’s efforts to seek out faculty, staff, and student engagement in Institute-wide projects and initiatives that will define Georgia Tech as a leading research institution, propelled by “progress and service.”

“Campus engagement is a critical factor in the success of strategic initiatives at Georgia Tech,” said David Frost, chair of SPAG and a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “In the years since SPAG was established, our organization has played a critical role in engaging the Georgia Tech community in institutionalizing this plan. Going forward, we are excited about seeing that same enthusiasm and level of engagement accomplished by the CNE Program Office as it works to partner with faculty, staff, and students to advance an innovative education vision for the Institute”.

Since the publication of the CNE report, Institute leadership’s focus has shifted to implementation of many of the ideas and projects outlined in the report. The creation and growth of the CNE Program Office will advance initiatives in focus areas such as flexible learning experiences, new tools for modern advising practices, and early achievement.

“We need to foster a campus culture that encourages educational innovation and provides pathways to pilot such ideas,” said Rich DeMillo, executive director of C21U and the CNE Program Office. “The CNE report describes a new approach for taking deliberate, targeted actions at the organizational, team, and individual levels to create a culture of innovation. SPAG’s guidance will become a critical arm of this deliberate approach."

The Georgia Institute of Technology's report, “Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education,” follows the work of the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE), an Institute-wide effort of more than 50 faculty, staff, and students. The Commission outlines recommendations on alternative educational models that reduce costs, improve the effectiveness of current methodologies, and increase opportunities and accessibility to serve the needs of the next generation and beyond. If you would like to find out more about the Commission, read the full report, or become involved, please email ed-innovation@gatech.edu.

This summit brought academic and industry leaders from across the globe together in the hope of laying the foundation for the next generation of learning ecosystems. Topics such as data analytics, learning design, artificial intelligence, growth and future business models for higher education, and the changing role of university faculty were addressed by keynote speakers and discussed in breakout groups. SALE Summit speakers included:

• Chris Dede of Harvard University

• Karen Vignare of the Association for Public and Land-grant Universities

• Stephanie Norby and Brian Mandell of the Smithsonian Science Education Center

• Gisele LaRose of WebStudy Foundation

• Cary Brown of IMS Global

• Provost Rafael Bras of Georgia Tech

• Rob Kadel, Rich DeMillo, and Lindsay Kelly of C21U, Georgia Tech

• Yakut Gazi and Nelson Baker of GTPE, Georgia Tech

• Ashok Goel of the College of Computing, Georgia Tech

Participants were challenged to consider many of the most taxing issues facing higher education today and to work together to begin the planning stages for a new roadmap for education. This roadmap will look to the future of education in the next five to ten years and will outline ways that educators, industry leaders, government officials, and technologists can redesign the future of learning and education.

In his plenary presentation, Nelson Baker, dean of professional education at Georgia Tech, said, “Education is more than a collection of courses. What else might be missing from that collection?”

Summit attendees explored innovative pedagogical and technology-driven educational solutions such as Ashok Goel's work with automated, intelligent tutoring systems and the Smithsonian’s Science for Global Goals curriculum, presented by Stephanie Norby and Brian Mandell. Social and economic issues surrounding curriculum design were also discussed. Recognizing that low-income and minority students often fall behind in introductory courses, risking their chances of completing a degree, Karen Vignare, of the Association for Public and Land-grant Universities, gave an eye-opening plenary on using adaptive courseware to assist these students.

“How do we achieve 1x1 tutoring at scale and bring down the cost, so that we can still bring education to the students of the future who really need it?” asked Rob Kadel in his plenary remarks.

This question and many others will be addressed in a white paper produced as an outcome of the SALE Summit.

If you would like to learn more about the SALE Summit, you can explore the summit page on the C21U website. To find out more about how can you get involved in the work of C21U or GTPE, please visit c21u.gatech.edu or pe.gatech.edu.

This summit was funded by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) - grant #1824854.

The effort is part of Georgia Tech's plans to make its online degrees and professional education certificates more appealing to the nontraditional students of tomorrow, who the institution predicts will expect "flexible learning experiences." Read the full story via Inside Higher Ed.

To meet students’ needs colleges must look at how and where they operate, as well as who they serve and who is left out. 

These were just a few of the topics discussed Thursday during a media roundtable discussion Georgia Tech organized in New York City with peers in higher education, corporate leaders and foundations looking into this issue.

“Today’s demands on public higher education institutions are very different from those dating back many decades, when the basic model of these institutions was formed,” said Cole Clark, managing director, Deloitte Services LP, who leads client and community outreach and relationships for its higher education practice. “Higher education is now firmly planted in a new era, and requires a new master plan: how it is organized and funded, its mission, and whom it serves.”

“The rapid pace of change in higher education, due in large part to shifting learner demographics, mandates a new educational model for public universities,” said Rich DeMillo, executive director, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. “This report outlines critical examples of ways that public universities might revitalize their approach and meet the demands of learners with a wide variety of needs.”

The report describes five approaches that could serve as models for public higher education, including:

The Entrepreneurial University: A state university system differentiates its offerings at the institution level while coordinating at the system level to align educational investments with student — and state economic — needs. Individual institutions would specialize in areas such as undergraduate education, vocational training, or research, while degree programs and curricula would be centrally influenced through the definition of clear goals by the state and system.

Example: Western Governors University (WGU) is a nonprofit university established to expand access to quality higher education to adult students with some college and no degree. WGU is the nation’s first accredited competency-based education (CBE) university, providing CBE online and at scale.

The Sharing University: Campuses would link student and administrative services to realize efficiencies of scale and/or capitalize on the expertise of institutions. Repetitive activities would be either automated or outsourced to a single institution within the system, enabling the other campuses to focus resources on more strategic activities. Examples of shared activities: career services, international recruitment, academic advising, legal affairs, and information security.

Example: The University System of Georgia has started the OneUSG initiative to develop and put in place streamlined policies, procedures and technologies.

The Experiential University: Institutions would integrate work experiences into the curriculum, with students toggling between long stretches in the classroom and the work world related to their area of study. Employers would have a chance to evaluate students for potential fit before committing to hiring them for a full-time position. Work experiences would be closely tied to the state’s economic development priorities and its emerging job market.

Examples: University of Cincinnati and Georgia Tech are operating a cooperative model, in which students are working one-third to almost half of the time a student spends in school.

The “Subscription” University: This platform focuses on continual learning throughout a student’s lifetime. Under this model, students would start higher education earlier by taking dual-enrollment or early college courses while still in the K–12 system. Thereafter, they could access university courses throughout their lives to gain and update their knowledge and skills as needed, paying lower tuition fees up front and then an annual subscription fee during their lifetime.

Example: Idaho’s State Board of Education makes policy for K-20 public education, continually working toward an education system without barriers within the governance or committee structure.

The Partnership University: The annual budgeting cycle would be extended across several years, making it easier for institutions to plan and make strategic investments. It would guarantee a certain level of funding from the state over multiple years in exchange for agreements from colleges for tuition limits, cost savings, increased collaboration and consolidation, and private fundraising. Businesses and other employers would also provide insights on curriculum, financial assistance for equipment, and other essential resources. 

Example: Maryland’s Effectiveness and Efficiency Initiative saved $94 million at its 11-campus system and froze tuition for three years.

“Adopting elements of one or more of these models would require input and collaboration across a diverse set of stakeholders as well as strong leadership,” said Jeffrey J. Selingo, a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21^st Century Universities and one of the authors of the report. “Developing a master plan that is forward looking and self-aware of a system’s challenges is a big lift but can be done and is needed to position our public higher education institutions for the future.”

In the research for the report, several common elements were identified to enable change at the system level, including:

• Effective leadership:  Strong and visionary leadership from the state governor, state legislators, university system leadership, boards, and institutional leaders will be required to drive change. An effective leader will help to design the blueprint for the state’s higher educational system and animate the university community to help build and embrace the vision.
• A new focus for the university system office: The university system office would need to transition their focus from reporting and compliance to helping to define and measure success by establishing common data structures across the system, providing tools to monitor progress and support decisions, and conducting active communication between the central office and institutions. This additional level of responsibility will demand a concomitant level of authority and funding allocation.
• An institutional culture that puts students at the center: When the needs of the student are at the forefront, decisions about where to invest and focus can be made more clearly, supporting areas that meet student demand. This line of thinking can help to direct investments needed to hire faculty, expand degree/credential offerings, and invest in new technology.
• New financial models and incentives: As universities innovate, evolve, and collaborate more frequently within and across a system, the operational changes can affect the current funding model. Analysis would need to be done to rethink how to allocate revenues and costs across the system, and create clear incentives to develop new programs designed to meet the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s economic realities.
• Clear and frequent communication: Change in higher education is fraught with peril. Many change initiatives fail to take hold due to lack of stakeholder and leadership buy-in. Frequent and clear communication – painting a picture of the change imperative but also the vision of the improved future state – is a prerequisite to successfully implementing the difficult change outlined in the report.

The report also includes an analysis of 565 state institutions’ publicly available strategic plans using text analytics with top focus areas, including: research, enrollment, facilities/building and programs and offerings. Additionally, a brief history of the current public higher education models and an overview of current challenges facing institutions are also included.

Full report is available here.

This collaboration will remain in effect for the next five years and will open the door to the sharing of data, teaching and assessment resources, as well as the exchange of personnel between Georgia Tech and Tokyo Tech.

“We are excited to work with our colleagues at Tokyo Tech’s CITL to further our work in reimagining higher education,” said Steve Harmon, director of education innovation for C21U and associate dean of research in Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE). “We believe that it is important to bring a global perspective to bear when looking at the forces shaping colleges and universities today and in the future, and in determining how to respond to them. The innovative work going on at both Georgia and Tokyo Tech provides a real opportunity to go beyond what we are each capable of individually, and to enable real progress in creating the technological university for the 21st century.”

Just as C21U provides a “living laboratory” for educational technology research, design and implementation at Georgia Tech, CITL provides Tokyo Tech learners with transformative education by leveraging technology to “continuously improve the quality of education methods and capabilities” at one of Japan’s top-tier engineering and science universities. This fitting partnerships will provide both Georgia Tech and Tokyo Tech with the opportunity to collaborate on timely projects in the areas of educational learning environment and course development, new methodology for learner data analysis and quality assurance, and other innovative online learning research projects.

“The Center for 21st Century Universities is taking a leading role in envisioning the future of higher education in the world,” said Jun-ichi Imura, director of CITL. “We are thrilled to establish this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and to collaborate with C21U as we work together to promote innovations in STEM higher education.”

You can learn more about Tokyo Tech’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), on their website. Find out more about C21U’s role in education innovation research and global ed tech collaborations such as these by visiting the C21U website.

The app, Speak English Professionally, is now available for download through both the Apple App Store and Google Play. The app is available for free and users are provided with a wide variety of self-paced and individualized learning modules on speaking English in a business setting. Videos and quizzes are designed to assist users with social and interviewing skills based on scenarios they may encounter in business settings primarily conducted in English.

“Today’s learners often use apps to supplement traditional courses in order to continue their education while leading busy, on-the-go lives,” said Matt Lisle, the director of educational technology for C21U. “By providing this type of instruction for free and through an app, Georgia Tech continues to lead in accessible, world-class educational instruction designed for current and future learners.”

The Language Institute and C21U partnered with e-learning production company Onlea to produce the app. The course materials are based on Georgia Tech’s preexisting Coursera specialization courses that are focused on speaking English professionally.

Since 1958, the Language Institute has offered high-quality English language training for students preparing for academic work in the United States and other individuals who hope to improve their language skills for social reasons. As a unit of Georgia Tech Professional Education, the Language Institute also serves professionals looking for career improvement through better language skills. While many lessons still take place in a physical classroom, resources like language learning MOOCs and apps allow the Language Institute to effectively reach a greater number of learners.

“We work hard to provide the best language learning experience in all our programs, and we hope this is reflected in each of our video lessons and online activities,” said Suzi Lee, an instructor and instructional designer for the Language Institute. “This app was developed to provide easy-to-follow speaking strategies and pronunciation practice opportunities so that learners can have access to meaningful language support and improve their overall professional communication.”

To try the app out for yourself, you can visit the Apple App Store or Google Play and download Speak English Professionally for free. The app requires iOS 9.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

You can learn more about the Georgia Tech Language Institute’s work and learning opportunities by visiting the GTLI website. Find out about C21U’s role in educational innovation at Georgia Tech by visiting the C21U website.

The CNE report, Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education, is the result of the work of more than 50 faculty, staff, and students to envision the future Georgia Tech learning environment and the changing nature of students and the workplace. Work will begin on fulfilling many report recommendations for pilot programs and projects in the 2018-2019 academic year. The CNE Program Office will serve as the driver and primary resource for these efforts.

Exploratory work has already begun on a number of projects including the Academic Master Plan, Georgia Tech atrium, an Advising for a New Era task force, graduate certificates, and a blockchain credential project.

“We know that higher education must be responsive to the changing needs of learners of all ages and the demands of employers,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “The CNE realization process will bring forth bold, on-demand, and real-time delivery methods, new products, and new interaction points to meet those needs earlier in life and continue long after graduation.”

CNE projects and programs may be conducted by any academic or administrative unit. Leadership for such efforts includes schools, colleges, vice-provost offices, and Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE). C21U will provide support for all of these initiatives. Rich DeMillo, executive director of C21U, will serve as executive director of the CNE Program Office.

“The university of the future will not necessarily be confined to a physical campus where one spends a few years, earns a degree, and leaves,” said DeMillo. “If fully-realized, the Georgia Tech Commitment will allow students to start, stop, and start again as personal and professional needs change. We have ideas about how to use technology-enhanced advances in learning science to make that future a reality for the next generation of Georgia Tech learners. It will be up to the Georgia Tech community to put that commitment into action."

Interested in getting involved with a CNE initiative? Contact ed-innovation@gatech.edu.

Read the full CNE Report on the Office of the Provost website.

The School of Interactive Computing Ph.D. student grew up in California, where she attended an exclusive high school populated, more or less, by students of privilege who had the time and resources to engage with educators, devote themselves to their studies, and ultimately come out of high school with the skills necessary for academic success.

But Gonzales wasn’t like most of her classmates. It took a lot of effort on both her and her mom’s part to make her time in high school a success.

Each day, Gonzales woke up at 4:30 a.m. so that her mom could take her to school in time to make it to work early in the morning. She made it to the high school about an hour and a half early every day and then, after school, went straight to her job at a t-shirt printing shop. There, Gonzales worked evenings to earn money to help supplement her family’s income, a practice she continued when she attended the University of California, Irvine. She paid her own student loans and sent money home to help her family make ends meet.

School, she said, was like an obstacle.

“As much as I loved it, it was limiting,” she said. “I didn’t have a computer. It became a restriction. There was no way for me to catch up because I was already so far behind on access.”

Gonzales’ story can be told by millions of other Americans. For most, that’s where the story ends – an educational deficit never closed because of a lack of access and resources. For her, though, that experience has served as inspiration for her research into the benefits and pitfalls of online educational environments. Gonzales believes that online learning has potential to reach students who, like herself, had limited access to one of the fundamental components of education: time. Online learning has opened up opportunities for students to learn asynchronously from one another, allowing them to participate in courses as their schedules allow for it.

Degrees like the Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, which has made enormous breakthroughs and turned online learning on its head, aim to broaden access to these types of students. Many in Gonzales’ position are unable to achieve similar results in traditional education. In theory, by making quality education available online, online learning could provide the same opportunity to those underserved communities.

But what are the properties of a flourishing online classroom? Why do they work? Who do they work for? And, ultimately, how can the academic community design environments that provide access to quality higher education for all?

Marissa, meet Jill

Gonzales came to Georgia Tech in 2016 to pursue her Ph.D. after graduating from Irvine with a degree in informatics, concentrating on human-computer interaction.

When she arrived, she approached Professor Ashok Goel, who had just achieved international attention for Jill Watson, an artificially intelligent teaching assistant that answered students’ questions in the online section of his Knowledge-Based AI class.

“I literally just took (Goel) aside and said, ‘Look, I’m interested in your work,’” Gonzales said. “‘I really like this concept going with the virtual TA, and I’d like to help.’”

Initially, she saw the opportunity as one to evaluate the system. How did it affect the students? Was it helping them become more engaged or helping overall grades? As she began to dig in to the project, though, she realized that there was an opportunity and a need for more.

“When we learn, there’s a lot of factors that affect how we learn or affect our feeling about learning, about the classroom, the teacher, the material,” Gonzales explained. “How much do we value the experience and how much does that value impact our overall performance? Do we feel like we’re getting something out of it? Are we learning to use specific strategies for academic improvement and reflecting on our performance?

“These are all things that go on in residential classrooms. What about online classrooms, where the sense of a learning community is perhaps obscured, and where students aren’t just working with the teaching staff, but with intelligent agents?”

Understanding Design Implications for Online Systems

As she dug, Gonzales concluded that she needed to evaluate more than just how AIs could ease the load on teaching staff, making them more available to provide additional in-depth assistance to students online. Instead, she needed to take a more holistic view about the students’ online experience.

Since she began, Gonzales has performed evaluations after each semester for both the residential and online sections of the Knowledge-Based AI class in which Jill Watson and other AIs are used.

The goal is to gain a more complete understanding of the online educational experience and how the design and implementation of these AI assistants, among other design decisions in online learning environments, can help or hurt the process of offering quality education online. Online learning, Gonzales said, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. As OMSCS has shown, a quality education can be achieved beyond just a residential program. But it is important that researchers get in front of potential future challenges as online opportunities become more common.

“We have to get in front of it and understand what works and what doesn’t work before the demand becomes too great to keep up,” she said. “Ultimately, online learning should broaden access to more populations, but it’s important that we design and implement programs that provide a complete educational experience.”

In her two years at Georgia Tech, Gonzales has been awarded the Goizueta Foundation Fellowship, which is designed to help attract and promote doctoral students of Hispanic/Latino origin, and the Intel Diversity Fellowship from the Georgia Tech Focus Program.

She aims to pick her dissertation topic in the next few months and is on track to complete her degree in 2021.

The Learning House, Inc. is a company that seeks to, “helps people improve their lives through education.” “Higher education is rapidly changing and I hope to use this opportunity to continue to drive thought leadership and change in this area,” said DeMillo.  

Read the full PRweb announcement, here.

Ten years ago, computer science (CS) education trend lines were very different. Just a few years removed from the bursting of the dot.com bubble, university CS enrollments had just about hit rock bottom. In Fall 2001, the College enrolled some 1,557 computer science majors; six years later, that number had dropped by more than half to 723.

All this despite the fact that throughout the first decade of the new millennium, computers, computational technology and media, and data analysis continued to play an ever-increasing role in global society. Perhaps part of the problem was how CS was taught?

“Across the country, top computing colleges and departments and national computing organizations have recognized that undergraduate computer science curricula have become  ossified, too inflexible to meet the needs of students or the requirements for individual  competitiveness,” read the report, Creating Symphonic Thinking Computer Science Graduates for an Increasingly Competitive Global Environment, co-written in 2006 by then-College of Computing Dean Rich DeMillo and Distinguished Professor Merrick Furst.

Forging a new direction  

“These curricula have become very good at producing a single kind of graduate – inflexible, inadaptable graduates, far from the symphonic-thinking graduates that will be leaders in the future of computing… The breadth of computing and computer science has not been successfully tapped in the design of curricula.”

Enter Threads. When it debuted in Fall 2007, this new approach to an undergraduate CS curriculum was something of a curiosity—and a risk. Georgia Tech has always prided itself on its academic rigor, and CS was no different. Some faculty worried that Threads would be perceived as “dumbing down” traditional CS instruction. In that first semester, just four students took advantage of the new curriculum. So the jury was out: Would Threads help resurrect undergraduate computing enrollments and usher in a new era of computing education?

Oh yes.

For a start, enrollments have not just rebounded but exploded. Fall 2007 marked the low point of CS enrollments, which began to climb steadily and today are higher than ever. In Fall 2017, some 2,110 students are majoring in computer science, and that doesn’t include a few hundred more majors in the B.S. Computational Media (CM) program, as well as the rapidly growing number of students minoring in computing. Speaking of CM, in 2011 the College of Computing and Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts moved the joint program to a “threaded” curriculum.

And, in a very telling move, within a few years of Threads’ introduction, other top computing programs launched new undergraduate curricula that looked uncannily similar to what was going on at Georgia Tech.

Over the curriculum’s first 10 years, individual threads have varied in popularity. Information Internetworks has proven the most popular thread by a significant margin. In fact, about half of all CS graduates since Threads’ inception have selected it as one of their two threads.

With the advent of machine learning and AI-powered technology, the Intelligence thread has steadily risen in demand over the decade, selected by about a third of CS grads. And as the worlds of entertainment and technology have continued to converge, Media took its place as the third most popular thread at just over 30 percent.

Curricular evolution for changing student interests

In all, some 2,114 Georgia Tech students have received their B.S. CS degrees via Threads, and even that number will jump sharply in the next few years with overall enrollments growing so large.

“Threads has shown not just the value but the genuine need for curricular evolution in the face of changing student interests and industry priorities,” said Katie Raczynski, director of undergraduate advising in the College. “It also set the tone, I think, for an openness among College of Computing faculty to further innovations and improvements in our undergraduate curriculum that would not be so easy to do at other universities.”

Indeed, since Threads launched, the College of Computing has continued to provide leadership for the world in computing education.

In 2013 it announced the online M.S. in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, which has since grown to nearly 6,000 students. In 2016 it announced a first-of-its-kind online Intro to Computing course that has been used both for on-campus instruction and by free MOOC learners around the world. It’s continued to produce scholarly evidence for and best practices in CS educational innovations through the work of researchers Mark Guzdial, Barb Ericson, and Betsy DiSalvo.

Shaking things up

Though Fast Company specifically cited OMSCS as the reason for naming the College as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2017, it could easily be viewed as an honor earned by an overall body of work.

“With Threads, we showed that innovation in education can have a tremendous impact on student engagement and that we shouldn’t be afraid to examine longstanding pedagogical practices or shake them up once in a while,” said Executive Associate Dean Charles Isbell, who worked with DeMillo and Furst to design and implement Threads.

“Would our enrollments have rebounded without Threads? Probably. But we grabbed an opportunity to both move our undergraduate curriculum into the 21^st century and establish a precedent that Georgia Tech is not afraid to take a risk in the name of education. That, in itself, was a gamble worth taking.”

The C21U Anniversary Celebration was a day-long event, filled with discussion of past successes and future goals for higher education at Georgia Tech. Provost Rafael L. Bras kicked off the day with opening remarks about C21U’s role at the university and the immense industry impact of the center. Bras challenged attendees to consider the nature of change in higher education.

“Many say that higher education is a slow changing enterprise,” said Bras. “But I have always objected. I do think that higher education has always adapted to changing times, but now we must make those adjustments and evolutions much more quickly.”

Following was Rich DeMillo, executive director of C21U, who mapped the history and purpose of C21U, and provided an in-depth presentation on the five functions of the center -- research, outreach, think tank, redesign, and technology. DeMillo touched on C21U’s role as the research arm of the Office of the Provost, as well as its key contributions to the Educational Innovation Ecosystem and the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE). Ultimately, he explained that the intention of C21U is to be a starting point for forward-looking, educational ideas at Georgia Tech.

“Sometimes it takes a garage with its own rules, to develop ideas that will bring about institutional and systemic change,” said DeMillo.

As the day progressed, participants heard from several presenters and panels of distinguished guests. Jonathan Cole, John H. Mason Professor of the University at Columbia University, was the day’s keynote presenter, a role he reprised from the launch of C21U in 2011. Cole’s lecture, “How We Ought to Change Our Great Research Universities,” provided attendees with a glimpse into the history and societal, economic, and cultural impact of the American system of higher education and a taste of Cole’s thoughts on the current state of affairs, as well as the role of universities in the educational system of the future.

“Universities should provide a trained workforce, a better-informed citizenry, and transformational discoveries for better lives of everyone,” said Cole.

The day’s panel discussions and lectures included a deep-dive into the relationship between education and research with Jonathan Cole, Rich DeMillo, Dean Zvi Galil of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, and CEO David Levin of McGraw-Hill Education. This challenging topic was facilitated by Jeff Selingo, author and visiting scholar at both C21U and Arizona State University. A Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) panel followed with an exploration of the work of the commission and an engaging discussion of “what’s next” in higher education innovation at Georgia Tech. This panel was facilitated by CNE co-chair Bonnie Ferri of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Participants included Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Colin Potts, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Faculty Development Susan Cozzens, and Associate Dean of Georgia Tech’s School of Engineering, Larry Jacobs. A common theme in discussion throughout the day is the role and purpose of the university in a future filled with different students than those of the past.

“Do we have a clear idea of what kinds of students universities want to turn out? Do we know how to shape a class – what individuals are coming out?” said Cole.

Jeff Selingo shared the startling results of his recent research completed in partnership with C21U and Deloitte’s Center for Higher Education Excellence, “Pathways to the university presidency.” He stressed that the role of the university president is in flux and that institutions, like Georgia Tech, need to engage with these cultural forces in order to create the new type of leader needed for such roles.

“How can we create a pathway for new academic leaders – creative thinkers into the business of leadership at universities?” asked Selingo. “We must create more training programs and pathways, reform our search processes, and create better alignment within universities between our short-term goals and our long-term issues.”

Finally, the day ended with a glimpse into the future of tech-driven higher education solutions with presentations from the five winners of the OpenIDEO Higher Education Challenge. Sarah Saxton-Frump, Siya Green, Ekaterina Dovjenko, Ashwin Halgeri and Sergio Marrero pitched their ideas to attendees and painted a hopeful picture for the future of education in the United States. These innovative thinkers stressed that the issues currently plaguing universities can be fixed if university leadership, faculty, and students seek to understand the needs of today’s students and utilize technology to provide better accessibility and affordability for learners.

If you would like to get involved in the work of C21U or have further inquiries, please contact Brittany Aiello. If you would like to contribute to the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE), please contact Cara-Joy Wong.

According to IDEO, the OpenIDEO Challenge seeks to find solutions to “...reimagine how we prepare students — of all ages — for active civic engagement, real-world employment and career success in an ever transforming society.” It will provide faculty, staff and students with the opportunity to submit their ideas on how both Georgia Tech and the global higher education community can innovate and meet the challenges of tomorrow. On campus, Provost Rafael L. Bras and his Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) will lead the Challenge.

“The Challenge is an exciting complement to the CNE as it strives to develop bold ideas that will transform the educational experience of the next generation of Georgia Tech learners,” said Bras, who is also executive vice president for Academic Affairs and the K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “It’s a great way to harness the creative and innovative minds of our own Georgia Tech community as well as those of our partners, innovators in higher education and other stakeholders.”

OpenIDEO is a branch of IDEO that utilizes human-centered and collaborative design thinking to solve the world’s toughest problems.

The Challenge’s Research Phase is now underway. The global higher education community is called to share stories and reflections, emotions, perspectives and other personal contributions related to education after high school and throughout one’s lifetime. These contributions can be shared through the OpenIDEO Challenge Portal.

A solutions-driven Ideas Phase and then a Refinement Phase — in which Georgia Tech, other challenge sponsors, and an Advisory Panel will create a short list of submitted ideas for a final presentation during the Top Ideas Phase — will follow this phase. Once these ideas are finalized in February, Georgia Tech will host a summit to explore the concepts and find ways to turn collaborative ideas into real world solutions.

Other OpenIDEO Challenge sponsors include ASU GSV Summit, Level Education from Northeastern University, USA Funds and the U.S. Department of Education.

“American college students are more diverse than ever before. The ‘new normal’ student may be a 24-year-old returning veteran, a 36-year-old single mother, a part-time student juggling work and college, or a first-generation college student. While America has some of the best colleges and universities in the world, we need to better support these students and all students. To do so we simply must innovate. I’m excited to see the ideas that this challenge will spark,” said U.S. Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell.

The Atlanta chapter of OpenIDEO, which recently completed a project to bring human-centered design to students, maintains an active relationship with Georgia Tech students. Through the OpenIDEO Challenge, Georgia Tech hopes to stimulate the world’s best out-of-the-box design thinking about the future of global postsecondary education as it seeks to define the technological university of the 21st century. For more information about the Challenge, visit the provost’s CNE website or Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) website.

Hosts Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman, of the IHE editorial team, explored the impact technology has made on the higher ed community -- including flipped classrooms, massive open online courses (MOOCs), badging and learning analytics. Georgia Tech’s OMS CS was cited alongside MIT as an example of the way MOOC-inspired models have proven impactful in the evolving landscape of online learning.

Seminar materials featured, “Georgia Tech’s Next Steps,” a recent IHE story reflecting on the first two years of the OMS CS program and looking to the future of MOOC-inspired learning at Georgia Tech. Interviews with President Bud Peterson and College of Computing Senior Associate Dean and Professor Charles Isbell pointed to a world of possibilities for online learning for the university.

“I couldn’t be happier with where we are,” said Charles L. Isbell in an interview with IHE’s Carl Straumsheim. “When I say that the program is successful, I mean it by the financial measures -- we’ve got tons of students -- but to me the big success is we’ve been able to take a bunch of people who are already clearly qualified and the vast majority of whom would never have been able to get an advanced degree from a great place because they were not mobile. Now they can.”

Rich DeMillo, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U), weighed in on the impact of technology and the business of higher education in “MIT’s New Model,” a feature exploring stackable credentialing.

“My guess is that once learners find out that this is a better, more effective learning experience, they will come pouring in,” said DeMillo of MOOC-driven programs like Georgia Tech’s.

To find out more about the innovative OMS CS program, visit the degree website or explore the 2015 OMS CS Program Report.

Photo credit: Inside Higher Ed

Six of the nation’s top universities have come together to offer a new credentialing system that may become the standard in career-focused, skills-based training. Georgia Tech Professional Education, UCLA, University of California, Davis Extension, University of California Irvine Division of Continuing Education, University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education and University of Wisconsin-Extension today launched the University Learning Store

Matt Lisle is the new Director of Digital Learning Technologies for C21U. Lisle arrives at Georgia Tech from the University of Texas at Austin where he was a Digital Course Design Coordinator. He was also the Creative Director for Enspire Learning, a company that creates simulations, games and interactive learning experiences for higher education as well as industry. Lisle received his MEd in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia.

Rob Kadel is the Assistant Director for Research in Education Innovation for C21U. Kadel’s expansive educational research focuses on the efficacy of learning technologies in both K-12 and higher education. He has held faculty positions at Penn State University and Johns Hopkins University, and continues to teach online courses in sociology of education and more at the University of Colorado Denver. Kadel earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Emory University.

Yesyekia Nicole Cotton joins C21U as an Administrative Manager and brings more than 10 years of experience at Georgia Tech. Cotton has worked in many offices across the university, including the Office of the Dean of Students-Student Integrity, the Bursar’s Office and Administration and Finance. Cotton received her MBA in Business Administration-Management from American Intercontinental University. 

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The Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is Georgia Tech's living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. Disruptive innovations in higher education are evolving, and Georgia Tech is committed to leading the initiatives that will define the next generation of educational practices and technologies. As a research branch of the Office of the Provost, C21U works in tandem with campus administrators and faculty to identify, develop, and test new educational platforms and techniques.

If you have questions or would like to contact C21U faculty or staff for research or media purposes, please contact Brittany Aiello, Research Communications at baiello@cc.gatech.edu.

Offering courses under the brand GTx, Georgia Tech joins a consortium of edX partners that has instructed more than 6 million learners since its inception. Additional Georgia Tech courses will be announced later in 2016. GTx will also explore credit programs on edX and innovative ways of making traditional GT programs available to more learners.

“The student and classroom of the 21st century continue to evolve,” said Georgia Tech Provost Rafael L. Bras. “Higher education must prepare the learner not just for their first job after graduation, but also for their third or fourth. Our partnership with edX will allow Georgia Tech to reach traditional learners, as well as early and mid career professionals, in new and novel ways, creating lifelong learning opportunities befitting a successful and fulfilling career.”

The Institute offered its first MOOC in 2012. Since then, more than 1 million students have enrolled in Georgia Tech online courses. Today’s announcement marks the Institute’s continued expansion as a leader in online learning, with partnerships including three of the world’s most successful online platforms: edX, Coursera and Udacity.

“We are excited to launch GTx in partnership with edX. We believe that the faculty and student-centric tools provided by this platform will play a unique role in Georgia Tech’s MOOC portfolio,” said Richard DeMillo, the executive director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. “This partnership with edX furthers the strategic goals of Georgia Tech’s Education Innovation Council and will provide world-wide access to the university’s courses and programs.

“We are proud to welcome Georgia Tech as the latest edX Charter Member,” said Anant Agarwal, edX CEO and MIT Professor. “As a pioneer in online learning, Georgia Tech will bring its expertise and innovative online coursework and programs to the global edX learning community. Their first course on accessibility is something we are deeply committed to at edX, and we are honored to bring education on this important topic to millions of learners around the globe. ”

Researchers at Georgia Tech discovered that humans can categorize data using less than 1 percent of the original information, and validated an algorithm to explain human learning -- a method that also can be used for machine learning, data analysis and computer vision.

“How do we make sense of so much data around us, of so many different types, so quickly and robustly?” said Santosh Vempala, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of four researchers on the project. “At a fundamental level, how do humans begin to do that? It’s a computational problem.”

Researchers Rosa Arriaga, Maya Cakmak, David Rutter, and Vempala at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing studied human performance in “random projection” tests to understand how well humans learn an object. They presented test subjects with original, abstract images and then asked whether they could correctly identify that same image when randomly shown just a small portion of it.

“We hypothesized that random projection could be one way humans learn,” Arriaga explains, a senior research scientist and developmental psychologist. “The short story is, the prediction was right. Just 0.15 percent of the total data is enough for humans.”

Next, researchers tested a computational algorithm to allow machines (very simple neural networks) to complete the same tests. Machines performed as well as humans, which provides a new understanding of how humans learn. “We found evidence that, in fact, the human and the neural network behave very similarly,” Arriaga said.

The  researchers wanted to come up with a mathematical definition of what typical and atypical stimuli look like and, from that, predict which data would hardest for the human and the machine to learn. Humans and machines performed equally, demonstrating that indeed one can predict which data will be hardest to learn over time.

Results were recently published in the journal Neural Computation (MIT press). It is believed to be the first study of “random projection,” the core component of the researchers’ theory, with human subjects.

To test their theory, researchers created three families of abstract images — some originally as large as 500 x 500 pixels — and extracted very small, random samples from them, ranging in size from 6 to 20 pixels square. Humans and simple neural networks were shown the whole image for 10 seconds, then randomly shown 16 smaller sketches and asked to identify the original image. Using abstract images ensured that neither humans nor machines had any prior knowledge of what the objects were.

“We were surprised by how close the performance was between extremely simple neural networks and humans,” Vempala said. “The design of neural networks was inspired by how we think humans learn, but it’s a weak inspiration. To find that it matches human performance is quite a surprise.”

“This fascinating paper introduces a localized random projection that compresses images while still making it possible for humans and machines to distinguish broad categories,” said Sanjoy Dasgupta, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California San Diego and an expert on machine learning and random projection. “It is a creative combination of insights from geometry, neural computation, and machine learning.”

Although researchers cannot definitively claim that the human brain actually engages in random projection, the results support the notion that random projection is a plausible explanation, the authors conclude. In addition, it suggests a very useful technique for machine learning: large data is a formidable challenge today, and random projection is one way to make data manageable without losing essential content, at least for basic tasks such as categorization and decision making.

The algorithmic theory of learning based on random projection already has been cited more than 300 times and has become a commonly used technique in machine learning to handle large data of diverse types.

The complete research paper, “Visual Categorization with Random Projection,” can be found here and in the October edition of Neural Computation.

This work is partially funded by the National Science Foundation (CCF-0915903 and CCF-1217793). Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the funding organizations.

The online master’s in computer science (or OMS CS), a collaboration between Georgia Tech, Udacity and AT&T, is the first program from a top-ranked, accredited university to combine the instructional style of “massive open online courses” with a deeply discounted price (about $7,000 for most students). On Dec. 11, the first 20 students to complete their studies entirely through the OMS CS curriculum will receive their master’s degrees in a ceremony to be held at 7 p.m. in Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion.

“We are proud to welcome these newest graduates to the worldwide community of Georgia Tech alumni,” said Provost Rafael L. Bras. “The OMS CS program has proven that we can make an advanced degree from a school like Georgia Tech accessible to a much larger population of students, both in the United States and around the world. It has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.”

To date, the program has received more than 8,000 applications and has admitted about 55 percent of those applicants. In the Fall 2015 semester, 2,841 students enrolled in at least one course, and the overall student enrollment is expected to surge past 3,000 in Spring 2016.

Though they hail from parts far and wide, including countries outside the United States, nearly all of the first 20 OMS graduates have traveled to Atlanta to participate in Commencement. For most, the visit is the first time they have seen any of their fellow students in person.

“I enrolled in OMS CS because of Georgia Tech’s reputation and with the goals of continuing my own professional development, furthering my career, developing a global network of peers and working with world-class faculty—all of those things happened,” said graduate Nathaniel Payne, who was one of the program’s first 380 students in Spring 2014. “The program has been one of the best things I have experienced and has been literally life-changing.”

OMS CS has been in the spotlight since it was announced in May 2013. President Barack Obama has praised the program by name twice—first in August 2013 and then again while visiting Georgia Tech in March 2015—as the kind of innovation that is needed both to address the rising costs of higher education and as a strategy to provide much-needed skilled labor for STEM-related positions.

Through its signature philanthropic initiative, AT&T Aspire, AT&T has contributed $2 million to help launch OMS CS and has committed an additional $1.5 million to support course development and other startup costs. More than 300 AT&T employees have been admitted to OMS CS, and some of those are among the graduates set to receive their diplomas on Friday. AT&T Aspire drives innovation in education to help students succeed in school and beyond.

“We’ve turned to innovative programs like OMS CS to help our current and future employees adapt to the ever-changing world of technology,” said Scott Smith, AT&T senior vice president of Human Resources Operations. “These programs provide new and innovative ways to help our employees at all levels and across the globe develop the skills they need to succeed in their roles today and prepare for the jobs of tomorrow.”

Indeed, OMS has shown to be particularly effective in attracting U.S. students. Its citizenship demographics are nearly the inverse of those for Georgia Tech’s residential Master of Science in Computer Science degree, whose students are overwhelmingly international. By contrast, 79 percent of OMS CS students in Fall 2015 were U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

“Our first priority is to address the STEM shortage in America,” said Dean Zvi Galil of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. “What OMS has proven is that we can indeed greatly expand accessibility through affordability and technology. I’m very proud, not only of our first OMS graduates but of the dozens of Georgia Tech faculty, staff and students who have worked to make this program a success.”

“The dynamics of today’s workforce require new and more flexible options for advanced training and education,” said Sebastian Thrun, co-founder and CEO of Udacity. “When we began discussing the partnership with Georgia Tech several years ago, we knew it had incredible potential to reach new markets, and today's success is testimony to our earlier vision. We look forward to continuing our work with Georgia Tech.”

For more information about OMS CS, visit the program’s website at www.omscs.gatech.edu.

Revolution in Higher Education: How a Small Band of Innovators Will Make College Accessible and Affordable

Selingo’s books, College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students and MOOC U: Who is Getting the Most Out of Online Education and Why explore the value of college, online education, and the shifting dynamics of the American higher education system.

A professor of practice and special advisor at Arizona State University, he leads ASU’s Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership, in partnership with Georgetown University.

“There is a great need for better research to help guide higher education leaders about the forces bearing down on their institutions and the transformation happening in teaching and learning, and on their campuses,” Selingo said. “I’m thrilled to be working with Rich DeMillo and to be part of the effort at C21U to rethink the future of higher education.”

A contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post, Selingo’s writing has also been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate. Selingo travels and speaks at universities and conferences like SXSWEdu, to paint a picture of the modern university. He addresses such topics as learning experiences, campus evolution, and college affordability.

Selingo recently participated in a Georgia Tech panel discussion of Andrew Rossi’s documentary, The Ivory Tower. This event was hosted by C21U in honor of the College of Computing’s 25/50 Anniversary. During the upcoming C21U Annual Strategy Meeting, Selingo will be a featured guest speaker.

“Jeff is one of the most visible and effective advocates for change in American higher education today. He will play a strategic role in the center and help us form networks with other centers of innovation,” said Richard DeMillo, Director of the Center for 21^st Century Universities. “We are thrilled that he will be part of the C21U team.”

C21U will partner with Selingo and his ASU colleagues in research focused on the future of higher education and the new face of American universities. Find out more about Selingo and his work, here.

This year’s summit takes place in Panama, where Georgia Tech alumnus Juan Carlos Varela was elected president in 2014. 

Georgia Tech is serving as an event organizer for the Summit of the Americas’ first Forum of University Presidents, which will convene around 400 university leaders and other high-ranking officials from 35 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Presidents will discuss prosperity and university education, as well as cooperation challenges between countries. President G.P. “Bud” Peterson will moderate and lead a panel and breakout sessions on technology and innovation on Thursday, April 9. Recommendations from the session will be submitted to the Summit of the Americas.

Georgia Tech Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Rafael L. Bras will participate in a panel discussion on corporate social innovation, also on April 9, as part of the CEO Summit of the Americas. The group will discuss how to use entrepreneurship to drive economic development and translate ideas into jobs, opportunities, and more innovative and fair societies.

In addition to discussing technology and innovation, the university group will also focus on the topics of academic mobility and sustainable economic development. Conversations throughout the summit will also consider ways technology could be used to improve all realms of education — for postsecondary, nontraditional, and rural students.

“Georgia Tech has a strong history in the areas of entrepreneurship, economic development, and technology transfer as it relates to higher education,” Peterson said. “We are very excited to play a leadership role in the organization of an international conversation among university leaders, in order to develop recommendations and solutions on these important topics. It is a privilege to meet with President Varela and other leaders from the Americas to work together on addressing global challenges.”

For those interested in following along from campus, the forum will stream online. This year’s Summit will be the first time Cuba has attended since the event began in 1994.

Provost Rafael L. Bras hosted the event, “Technology and the Future of Online Higher Education,” at the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s headquarters in New York City.

There was universal agreement that technology maneuvered higher education to a new trajectory where teaching and learning are changing for the better. Panelists were optimistic about a new student-centered approach to higher education and agreed that massive open online courses (MOOCs) paved the way for that new path.

“What we’re talking about is bringing education to many more students,” Bras said.

Panelists included the leading online platform providers – Anant Agarwal, the CEO of edX; Vivek Goel, the chief academic strategist for Coursera; and Sebastian Thrun, the CEO of Udacity.

Other panelists included: Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education; Dewayne Matthews, vice president for Strategy Development at the Lumina Foundation; Jason Palmer, deputy director for Postsecondary Success for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Amin Saberi, CEO of NovoEd; Scott Smith, the senior vice president for Human Resources Operations at AT&T; and Nathan Urban, the interim provost at Carnegie Mellon University.

In addition to Bras, other Georgia Tech panelists were: Nelson Baker, dean of Professional Education; Rich DeMillo, director of the Center for 21^st Century Universities; and Zvi Galil, dean of the College of Computing.

Joining the panelists were several reporters, who asked questions and helped guide the conversation. The reporters were: Nichole Dobo, The Hechinger Report; Tim Goral, University Business; Devon Haynie, U.S. News & World Report; Natalie Kitroeff, Bloomberg Businessweek; Melissa Korn, The Wall Street Journal and Tamar Lewin, The New York Times.

Galil and others touted Georgia Tech’s online Master of Science degree in Computer Science, which launched in January and currently enrolls more than 1,268 students. The degree is a collaboration among Tech, AT&T and Udacity.

The program’s low tuition cost — $6,600, compared to $46,000 for out-of-state tuition for an on-campus degree — has made it accessible and affordable to many students.

One of the more engaging discussions focused on how to improve access for all students. The panelists noted there are tremendous opportunities to expose more students to college and help them succeed.

These opportunities have yet to be achieved, but they are achievable, Bras said.

“A lot of things we think we can not do with technology we can do and, in fact, are already doing,” Bras said. “We are on the right track. The future is bright.”

Many skills that are critical today did not exist 15 years ago. It’s often difficult for a working adult to go back to school and get a degree,” says Coursera Co-Founder and President Daphne Koller.  “We are working with our university partners to create a new, targeted unit of education that’s more than a single course and less than a full degree, which can help people rapidly acquire expertise in a new and relevant topic.”

Over the past nine months, we have seen a surge in worldwide demand with more than 1.5 million learners participating in Specializations. We’ve also seen the number of Verified Certificates (VCs) issued in 2014 double in volume due to Specializations. Over 60% of all learners earning a Verified Certificate share it on LinkedIn to boost their profile. 

"Faculty from our nationally ranked computer science, advertising, and business departments are pooling their expertise to create in-depth experiences that will give learners eminently marketable skills in cutting-edge fields, validated with a certification. The opportunity to share our insights and vision of these rapidly evolving areas with such a broad and committed audience is an exciting prospect for us." Deanna Raineri, Associate Dean, Illinois

Coursera has also seen a great response from universities, professors and companies looking to join forces and be at the forefront in creating new pathways to career success. To bridge the gap, Specializations offer a unique final project that allows learners to apply what they’ve learned to relevant, real-world scenarios. For example, the final project in the Data Science Specialization offered by Johns Hopkins University is in collaboration with the predictive text analytics company, SwiftKey. Learners have the opportunity to work with SwiftKey engineers to develop text prediction systems. Coursera has also partnered with Google to highlight the top 5 Android final projects in the Google Play store—a tangible way to immediately demonstrate your skillset in an impactful way.

"We see data science as a core competency, like reading or writing or math. What started as a meeting of the minds at JHU turned into a brand-new set of classes created specifically for Coursera. We've been astounded by the learner response, and by the quality of the work being produced. To be able to create something that caters to aspiring data scientists across disciplines who want to take the next step in their careers brings a whole new definition to being an educator who has an impact on the world.”

“We envision new credentials for the 21st century, and are working closely with our partner institutions, as well as private sector companies, to make this vision a reality,” explains CEO Rick Levin. So whether you aspire to be a Project Manager, a Cloud Computing expert, a Digital Marketer or want to master any field, build your skills fast with Specializations.

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In receiving the award, Lipton was cited for “inventing new computer science and mathematical techniques to tackle foundational and practical problems in a wide range of areas in graph algorithms, computation, communication, program testing, and DNA computing.”

The Knuth Prize is jointly presented by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF). The award will be presented at the Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) Conference in Philadelphia, PA, from Oct. 18 to 21, where Lipton will give the Knuth Prize Lecture.

Earlier this year, Lipton was elected to the 2014 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With the Knuth Prize, Lipton joins a short list of extraordinary computer scientists.

“The Knuth Prize means a great deal,” Lipton said. “It is very exciting to be recognized by your peers for work that spans over 40 years. I feel very special and thankful to have been selected.” 

Lance Fortnow, chair of the School of Computer Science, offered his praise:

"Dick's work has had a major impact in quite diverse areas across theoretical computer science and has heavily influenced many researchers including myself. I can think of no one more deserving of this award."

In presenting the award, the selection committee cited:

• Lipton’s development of the planar separator theorem. Working with Turing Award winner Robert Tarjan, Lipton created a “divide-and-conquer” approach to solving difficult network problems by breaking problems into two or more sub-problems of the same or related type.
• Lipton’s pioneering work in the design of algorithms that make random choices in order to solve computational programs. He showed that when working with complex algebraic problems, it was sufficient to check a program by running it against randomly chosen but related inputs and comparing the results for consistency.
• His development of a fundamental theorem in circuit complexity with Richard Karp, another Turing Award recipient. This demonstrated that NP-complete problems are unlikely to be solved by the best algorithms even with specialized hardware.
• His status as an early developer of communication complexity, the study of the number of bits of communication needed for agents to solve computational tasks, and in DNA computing, which uses the combination and replication of the vast numbers of DNA strands that fit in a test tube as a basis for parallel computation.

The Knuth Prize is named in honor and recognition of Turing Award winner Donald Knuth, professor emeritus at Stanford University. Knuth is well-known for his ongoing multivolume series, The Art of Computer Programming, which played a critical role in establishing and defining computer science as a rigorous, intellectual discipline.

Lipton earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He taught at Yale, the University of California in Berkeley and Princeton before joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 2000.

Lipton explores one of the most daunting puzzles in computation theory in his blog Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP and recently published his second book based on the blog, People, Problems, and Proofs: Essays from Gödel's Lost Letter, which he co-authored with Kenneth W. Regan of the University of Buffalo.

The digitally enabled classroom and production studio is jointly managed by C21U and Georgia Tech Professional Education on behalf of the Provost. The space offers the ultimate studio experience for faculty and instructors producing MOOC content and experimenting with innovative educational approaches.

The lab allows instructors to experiment with new forms of blended or flipped classrooms. It also allows for interaction with an external group, and is ideal for presentations, interviewing remote experts, and bridging global classrooms.

“This facility is intended as an experimental laboratory for pedagogical innovation,” said Rich DeMillo, director of C21U. “If there are things you want to try as a Georgia Tech faculty member, come to us with your ideas and let's talk. We're looking for innovative things that can't be done in other classrooms.”

“One obvious example is to use the space for flipped classrooms. It will enable instructors to watch what students do in such an environment and allow for the possibility to capture a lot of learning data and relate them to pedagogy,” he added.

The Klaus studio works in tandem with the main production complex for interactive instructional media at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center in Tech Square. While the studios are similarly outfitted with many shared features, each possesses its own unique menu of extra options.

The state of the art facility includes a highly connected classroom, control room, and broadcast quality studio, as well as a dedicated support team. At this time there is no cost for faculty to use the space.

Interested parties should email schedule@c21u.gatech.edu for more information on touring the space or to make a reservation for its use.

He was honored on campus by the many faculty and staff members he had worked with over the years.

Alan Warren, vice president of engineering of Google and vice-chair of the College of Computing’s Advisory Board, announced the College’s newest endowed chair last year, naming it for his parents, Charlotte and Roger Warren. Last week, the Board of Regents formally approved both the establishment of this chair and DeMillo as its first holder. Warren is also a Georgia Tech alumnus, having earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics in 1978.

At the time he offered the endowment, Warren said Georgia Tech holds a special place for his family, particularly since his parents met here when Roger Warren was earning a chemical engineering degree and Charlotte Warren was a nursing student at the former Crawford Long Hospital.

"After being at Georgia Tech, you want to be able to give back," Warren told Georgia Tech's Campaign Quarterly last August. "The question is, at what time, and how to go about doing that. There were a lot of pieces that went into this being the right time and the right thing to do."

Last week, the final piece fell into place with the approval of DeMillo as the first chair. DeMillo’s long career of scholarship and leadership in computing includes a six-year tenure as the Imlay Dean of Computing from 2002 to 2008, as well as his current role as director of the Center for 21st Century Universities. He was also recently named as one of the first fellows of the Lumina Foundation, a private foundation focused on education.

“I am thrilled and honored to be the first to hold the Charlotte B. and Richard C. Warren Chair,” DeMillo said. “Alan Warren has been an important guiding voice in the College and a source of wisdom and support for me when I was dean. So holding the chair that bears the names of his parents has special meaning for me personally.”

“I want to both congratulate Rich for this well-deserved honor and to Alan Warren for his generosity in endowing this chair,” said Zvi Galil, the current Imlay Dean of Computing. “It’s especially appropriate for Rich to be the first Warren Chair since he recruited Alan to our Advisory Board. I look forward to creating more endowed chairs so we can appropriately recognize our most accomplished senior faculty.”  

As one of four Lumina Fellows, DeMillo will help the foundation achieve some of the objectives outlined in its 2013 to 2016 Strategic Plan. Specifically, they will focus on the foundation’s Goal 2025: to increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality college degrees, certificates and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

“It's a great honor to be selected by Lumina for this important role,” DeMillo said. “Reaching Lumina's 2025 goal is a challenge for all of us in higher education, and it will take innovation on a large scale to be successful. I look at my role as painting futures for colleges and universities. The alternative is to be left behind as the rest of society figures out how to meet the challenge.”

As a former dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, DeMillo founded C21U in 2011 and continues to direct this “living laboratory” for fundamental change in higher education. Also as chair of the Provost’s Council for Educational Technology, DeMillo is responsible for educational technology innovation on the Georgia Tech campus. He is a frequent speaker on higher education and the author of Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities, published in 2011 by MIT Press.

DeMillo joins three other thought leaders as the first group of Lumina Fellows for an initial two-year appointment. Together the fellows will, through various forms of public communication, enrich the conversations about college attainment and provide recommendations for policy makers, higher education and business leaders and other important stakeholders to help the ability for the United States to dramatically increase college attainment levels.

The other fellows include:

• Bridget Terry Long, academic dean and the Xander Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Charles Kolb, president of the French-American Foundation.
• Margarita Benitez, interim director of the Emerging Leaders Group at the American Council of Education.

“Mobilizing a broad cross section of society is critical if we are to reach Goal 2025,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation. “The four Lumina Fellows represent a variety of talents and backgrounds, which will help us address the challenges in system redesign and in rethinking policy to dramatically increase education attainment in the United States—the only acceptable outcome if the country is to maintain a competitive workforce and a healthy democracy.”

Links:

Lumina Foundation Announcement

“We received several outstanding nomination portfolios this year, and each portfolio was thoroughly reviewed by a panel of faculty and administrators from across the University System,” wrote Houston Davis, executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer, in a letter announcing the award. “When the review committee met to discuss the nominations and finalize their recommendations, they voted unanimously to recommend this department as one of this year’s winners.

The College of Computing adopted the Threads curriculum in Fall 2006. In a traditional course of study, students can be forced into a one-size-fits-all experience with little room for specialization and application of their studies toward real-world situations. Through Threads, students experience a cohesive, coordinated set of contexts for understanding computing skills thereby spending their entire four years of study engrossed in real-world computing.

“Our faculty adopted Threads to more accurately and effectively reflect what our students will experience in the actual world of today,” said Charles Isbell, senior associate dean for the College. “We are humbled by the receipt of this prestigious award from the Board of Regents recognizing the leadership role the College has played and continues to play in computing education. Our students also share in this award, as they have been the ones to validate through their success the value of Threads in preparing them for computing careers.”

“The video lectures helped me to better understand the course material because I  could watch and pause each one whenever I needed to,” added Sorrentino, a third-year Biomedical Engineering student.

Sorrentino was one of 11 Georgia Tech students who made up an on-campus contingent of this summer’s Introductory Physics I massive open online course (MOOC). (There were a total of 17,000 students around the world enrolled in the course.) The on-campus students actually took the course through Tech and earned credit.

“This flipped classroom model allowed the Tech students to watch lectures and complete homework assignments online, which freed up class time to work on problems and do other activities together,” said Mike Schatz, the physics professor who led the MOOC.

For example, as part of the course, students were asked to complete five video labs where they recorded a moving object, analyzed it using software, and created a five-minute lab report to share with the class.

When on campus, students were able to do a dry run of their lab reports during the face-to-face time with Schatz, allowing for them to get feedback before uploading their final videos to YouTube.

“This exercise was valuable, because we were able to catch some wrong turns and help students improve along the way,” Schatz said.    

Sorrentino is quick to share that being part of the small cohort of on-campus students was a plus.

“There was good camaraderie among us,” she said. “Also, there was greater accountability. If you didn’t get your work done, it was easily noticed, which was a good incentive to keep up with the class.”   

Aside from the flipped model and the video labs, this course experimented with video white board illustrations as another way to teach the material. The illustrations cover everything from the differences between length and time measurements to friction.

“I thought they were great,” Sorrentino said. “I don’t know if it was because they were a novelty or if I am just a visual learner, but the video illustrations made it easier to understand the information being taught.”

The five- to 15-minute videos were primarily created by several undergraduate students, which allowed the students to become engaged in the teaching process, Schatz said.

From writing the script and creating the storyboard to editing the footage, each video took about eight to 10 hours to complete. The team is still producing videos, with the goal being to have a library of about 100.   

The MOOC will be offered again beginning Aug. 19, and will run for 16 weeks. Schatz’s approach to teaching the course will be similar but with a few changes.

One change will include more frequent testing. This summer, peer-evaluated lab reports, homework, and a final exam contributed to the students’ final grades. In the fall, there will be more frequent testing (weekly quizzes and a midterm) and less weight placed on the lab reports.

“Testing will be spread out, so students will know where they stand in the course, and we will be able to see if they’re grasping the material,” Schatz said.

Also, the number of on-campus students taking the course will increase to six sections of 30.
“We want to find out what it takes to successfully scale up the course to handle all the Tech students who may want to take the course,” Schatz said.

For more information, email Schatz.

Register for the walk by visiting www.MentorWalk.org.

All students, college-age and younger, participate for free. C2P will provide breakfast, lunch, and T-shirts to all participants. 

Major sponsors: Coca-Cola, Accenture, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Northside Hospital, SFC Energy, Gigabark Broadcast Solutions.

Walk Details

Georgia Institute of Technology • Saturday, September 14, 2013

Schedule

7:45–9:00 AM—Registration, Breakfast
9:00–10:15 AM—Walk
10:15–10:45 AM—Group Picture
11:00 AM–1:45 PM—Sessions
1:00–2:00 PM—Party on the Quad & Lunch

Check-in

Registration/check-in will begin at 7:45 AM. Please check-in at the registration tables when you first arrive. You will need to show your photo ID to receive your walk number. Once you have your number, you will be able to get breakfast and participate in activities that will be underway. There will be a group exercises and speakers to get you warmed up for the walk and the day—so don’t be late! The walk will start at 9:00 AM.

Sessions

Sessions for participants will begin at 11 AM. There will be separate sessions for high school and younger students and adults.Topics for students will range from college prep, job interview skills, financial literacy, and a day in the life of a college student. There will be sessions designed for parents and adults on a variety of topics in education. Teachers accompanying students will have the option to attend sessions with their students or attend adult sessions.

Party

Check out what we will have going on:

• Enjoy performances and artwork by students
• Student group tables
• Vendor and sponsor tables
• Book distribution to high school and younger students
• MW-Girl Scout Patch distribution
• Healthy living tips
• Sign up to become a mentor or mentee
• Lunch!
• T-shirt distribution to those with a walk number
• and more!

Story by Lyndsey Lewis
Photos by Zach Porter

There is a problem with the robots.

Professor Magnus Egerstedt eyes them with dismay. His robots, rotund little things that wouldn’t look out of place in a Roomba ad, are misbehaving. They’re crawling toward two silver cases in the middle of the floor, but just before reaching them, they’re supposed to sense the obstacles and skitter away.

The demonstration is the highlight of Egerstedt’s lecture; it is the center ring of this particular circus. A professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Egerstedt is teaching a class on robot control, and the point of the course tends to be lost if the robots in question are going rogue.

Toward the cases they go, but wait! They’re sliding this way and that way. They come to halting stops or turn dizzily, and some of them don’t recognize the cases at all and slam into their shiny edges. HAL 9000 these robots are not, but their predicament is looking dire.

It’s as if they’re drunk — and in a way, they are. The robots, all Khepera IIIs, have infra-red sensors that are sensitive to light, and they’re suffering beneath the harsh glare of studio lamps. This isn’t a typical classroom lecture — these robots are starring in a massive open online course, or MOOC.

Egerstedt is teaching in a familiar way, but the setting is different. There are no students present, and instead of a classroom or lecture hall, the lesson is being given in a studio with a jungle of lamps overhead. Every move Egerstedt makes is recorded for online broadcast, and his robots are not taking kindly to the extra light. Frustrated, Egerstedt calls out to Brian Wilson, the instructional media producer who is filming the lesson.

“Brian, can we do it again?” he asks.

“I’m just going to keep rolling,” Wilson replies.

“Yeah,” Egerstedt says. “Till it works.”

And it does work eventually, and when it does, the effect is sublime. Egerstedt turns triumphantly to his student assistant, Jean-Pierre de la Croix.

“Yeah!” he exclaims. “Robotics is so easy, man.”

A MOOC is a special type of online class. Available to anyone with an Internet connection, most MOOCs offer college-level material via pre-taped lectures, and course enrollments can swell to tens of thousands of students. The premise is simple: Bring higher education to the masses by cutting through academia’s red tape and, most tantalizingly, offering many courses (including Egerstedt’s) at the low, low cost of free.

Read the full article.

Ferri, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the “champion” of one of seven mini-innovation hubs studying questions regarding MOOCs. 

One method of structuring MOOCs for dual use that is proving to have merit is the “flipped classroom” model that takes a regular class, such as ECE 3710: Circuits and Electronics, and removes all of the lecture material and puts it on the MOOC, then use the classroom time for recitation, active learning, problem solving, and hands-on experiences.

“With in-class hands-on experiences, the students have their laptops and measurement devices, and they’re doing mini-experiments at their desks,” Ferri said. “They’re active. They’re engaged with each other, and they’re engaged with the instructor.” 

As part of her group’s research, Ferri recently attended a conference on online education and talked with a number of instructors who are using MOOCs in their classrooms.

“They were using MOOCs as extra resources for the class; it was not replacing the lecture because it was all optional,” she said.

Another method is to remove all of the lecture material and put it on the MOOC, then use the classroom time for recitation, active learning, problem solving and hands-on experiences.

“The consensus, from talking to a number of people, is if you’re going to do this — especially the second method — take all of the higher level learning and do that in class,” she said. “Make the most of the time with the professor. [Consider] what do you want the students to be able to do? Have them do the high-level work — synthesis work, evaluation, problem solving — in class. And have them do lower level things, like studying facts they need to memorize, online.” 

Ferri and her colleagues had some case studies on campus where instructors are replacing lectures in class with the MOOC. One case study was ECE 4555: Embedded and Hybrid Control, taught last spring by Professor Magnus Egerstedt in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The MOOC was on “Control of Mobile Robots,” and Egerstedt worked with a 4000-level class. 

“This is unusual because it’s a mathematical class taken by graduate students as well as seniors,” Ferri said. “It’s very high level and not your typical MOOC because of the level of depth, and it was rigorous.” 

In this case, all of the lecture material was online, allowing students to review the material in advance.

“It is a lot more efficient to get through the material in the online format,” Ferri said. “It takes less time to cover the material in this format than in class.  Students can go at their own pace; some will watch the videos at 1.5 times the speed while others will pause often and also re-watch videos.”

Egerstedt replaced the in-classroom time with quizzes on the lecture material (to make sure the students actually listened to the lectures) and with project time, a new element he added to the class. During project time he brought mobile robots into the class and did experiments with them.

Grading was one of the greatest challenges because of the difficulty in accounting for the student’s successful completion of the Coursera course. Another challenge is, now that the instructor has wiped the slate clean of lectures, how should the in-class time be used? What are the activities that make sense?

Egerstedt questioned the student workload because he believes with this approach he required more from the students than he normally does because of the projects and hands-on experiments.

Ferri also spoke with Professor Mike Schatz in the School of Physics, who did the same thing with Physics 2211: Introduction to Physics. Schatz agrees there is “perceived increase in student workload” because students think the MOOC format is more work than they normally would have for the class. Schatz added a communications component to the class in which students present a lab report.

One of the biggest challenges is assessment. Is this method working better than the traditional approach? How effective is this as an educational model?

Ferri and her mini innovation hub colleagues are working with the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) to come up with a plan for assessing MOOCs, so that instructors will not have to create an assessment plan on their own from the ground up.

“By using a pilot study, we can take this information and feed it back to improve the class,” Ferri said.

Georgia Tech’s Introductory Physics MOOC, which launched on May 20, is using video labs to simulate the experience students would typically have in the classroom. This topic has become the focus of one of seven mini innovation hubs that are researching questions related to MOOCs and online learning.  

“In some ways, the video labs provide students and instructors with a better experience than being in a traditional lab,” said Ed Greco, an instructor in the School of Physics and “champion” of the innovation hub that is examining the question of labs in MOOCs. “The videos single students out in a way that forces them to demonstrate their knowledge in a brief period of time, and it’s easier for instructors to hone in on who is getting the material and who isn’t.”  

There are 17,000 students enrolled in the MOOC, 11 of which are a part of a for-credit Georgia Tech version of the course where students have both online and on-campus experiences. (More details on the structure of this MOOC will be featured in a future Whistle article.)

All students are asked to complete five labs as part of the course, which will wrap up the last week of July. Each lab requires students to do the following:

• Record a moving object (using any device that will take video).
• Analyze the video using the free video analysis package, Tracker.
• Create models of motion using computer programs written in Python/VPython.
• Compare the observations to the models.
• Create a five-minute video lab report.
• Upload the video to YouTube.

Videos are then graded by fellow classmates based on a six-item rubric that includes questions such as “Does the author state the problem and show a result?” and “Is the video easy to follow?”

But, there have been a few challenges when it comes to the labs. For example, many of the students enrolled in the course live in countries that ban YouTube.

“Students living in places like Pakistan and China where they don’t have access to YouTube have been pretty frustrated with the lack of an alternative,” said Mike Schatz, the professor leading the MOOC. “So we’re going to have to think of a way to work around this with future versions of the course.”

Then there’s the issue of engagement. Schatz estimates that of the thousands of students enrolled, about 1,000 are actually regularly participating in some aspect of the course, whether it’s watching lectures, completing homework or quizzes, or participating in the online forum. But he estimates that only 300 to 400 are doing the labs.

Both Schatz and Greco agree that this is an issue that this hub will be considering as they tweak the course, which they hope to offer again in the fall.

“We’re still trying to figure out what we should expect of MOOC students when it comes to things like time spent on assignments and the money we should expect them to pay for a textbook,” Greco said. “Once we get a better handle on this, it will help us address the poor retention numbers that MOOCs typically have.”

To join the hub, email Greco. For more about the MOOC, email Schatz.

After months of preparation, we finally started our MOOC, “First-Year Composition 2.0,” at Georgia Tech. We are now through the first few weeks of the eight-week course, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Veteran MOOC instructors warned me that the early weeks would be bumpy. The actual experience has often left me panicked—and worried that the course would not be successful. This is not like a traditional course, in which you have a day or two to deal with issues that come up in class. MOOC students expect immediate responses, and that means nearly 24/7 monitoring of the course.

That’s why a group of faculty members from Georgia Tech is looking into the issues related to keeping students engaged and involved in massive open online courses (MOOC).

“We’re trying to figure out what can and cannot be replicated when you transition a course from an on-campus to an online learning environment,” said Al Ferri, associate chair for

Undergraduate Studies in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the project “champion.” “And we also want to know about subtle things that can help students successfully complete MOOCs.”

This project is one of seven being explored by a group of mini innovation hubs that are researching questions related to MOOCs and online learning. The hubs are part of an initiative led by the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and the Center for 21st Century Universities.   

“As luck would have it, when our hub was forming, ME was getting ready to run a special course called ‘The Buzz on Open Online Courses,’” Ferri said. “The students who signed up for the course each took two MOOCs of their choice and were the perfect subjects to help us learn more about our research topic.”

During spring of 2013, 13 students enrolled in a number of MOOCs — ranging from Aboriginal Worldviews and Education offered by the University of Toronto to Introduction to Finance offered by University of Michigan — and completed all assignments.

As part of their participation, the students gave final presentations about their experiences with the MOOCs. There were a number of  common themes that students shared:

• Students enjoyed the convenience and ability to “go at your own pace” that MOOCs provide.
• They found technical glitches were particularly frustrating when coupled with the lack of access to a professor.
• Students who had peer-evaluation activities associated with their MOOCs mentioned that they did not like it.
• Many students mentioned the importance of having a good instructor in their MOOCs. They commented on instructors’ “enthusiasm,” “expertise,” and “care for their students’ learning.”
• Many commented that they wanted/needed to see the professors’ heads in the inset box on the computer screen.
• The students said forums are an important part of the success of MOOCs, but they must be managed to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio. Assigning expert personnel to monitor the message boards is crucial in making effective use of this medium.
• Students indicated variety is important, even in a world of six-minute modules. They reacted very positively to mixing lectures with demos, interviews, outside videos, etc.
• The consensus among the students was that they liked the MOOCs as a way to gain exposure to a new subject area or to review a topic they had already studied, but they acknowledged that the rigor and depth of most of the courses were not up to the level found in their Tech face-to-face classes.

The hub is taking the information gained from the students and will continue their research in the months to come.

“The study that we did in the spring semester showed what sorts of things a MOOC developer could do to encourage students to stay engaged, and what mistakes can discourage or frustrate students,” Ferri said. “But we need to know much more about what drives a student to complete a MOOC, why the attrition rate is so high in MOOCs, and why completion and pass rates in face-to-face classes are so much higher in
comparison.”

For more information or to join this hub, contact Ferri at al.ferri@me.gatech.edu. For video and PowerPoint presentations from the May 8 showcase, click here.

The response? Seven groups of faculty, staff, and students, called “mini innovation hubs,” were formed. These groups have been busy defining their research questions and exploring how to address them. Members of six of the seven hubs presented their progress during a showcase a few weeks ago.

“The requirements for the mini innovation hubs were simple,” said Donna Llewellyn, director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and associate vice provost for Learning Excellence. “Each group exploring a research question needed a faculty champion and a group of people interested in exploring the topic. The organizers did not tell the groups what questions to ask.”

Llewellyn is leading the initiative with Mike McCracken, director of Online Course Development and Innovation for the Center for 21st Century Universities; Wendy Newstetter, senior academic professional in the College of Engineering; and Lauren Margulieux, graduate student assistant in the School of Psychology.

The seven hubs are considering the following topics and questions:  

• Dual Use: What are the special issues of using a MOOC to flip or blend a course? Champion — Bonnie Ferri, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Delivery Mechanisms: How can mixed- reality technologies be used to enhance MOOC learning and on-campus courses? Champion — Racel Williams, Architecture
• Physics Labs: How can a physical science lab experience be designed for students in a MOOC or other online learning environment? Champion — Ed Greco, Physics
• Library Support: How can the Library provide resources in a MOOC? Champions —  Lori Critz, Library; and Cari Lovins, Information Technology
• Motivation: What are the issues associated with keeping students engaged and involved in a MOOC? Champion —  Al Ferri, Mechanical Engineering
• Math Bridge: Can a MOOC environment help Tech to efficiently and effectively serve incoming students who need a bridge course to ensure success in their first math course? Champion — Shannon Dobranski, Center for Academic Success
• Multidisciplinary: How can an online environment be harnessed to offer a truly multi-disciplinary course addressing the challenging issues of today? Champion — Katja Weber, International Affairs

The May showcase was the first update from the hubs, and the research is continuing.

“This is not a closed process,” Llewellyn said. “These mini hubs don’t have fences around them. They are open to other people becoming involved.”

Anyone interested in working with a hub should contact the group’s champion.

The videotaped presentations from the showcase are available here.

All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master’s programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates. Enrollment is expected to expand gradually over the next three years.

“Georgia Tech’s vision is to define the technological research university of the 21^st century. We will explore technologies and instructional approaches that will improve our role as a leading provider of the best and most effective education in the state of Georgia, the nation and the world,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech has been involved in online education for more than 30 years, and in the past year has taken a national leadership role in massive open online courses. Offering a master’s degree in this format is the next step in expanding Georgia Tech’s online offerings.

 “We are thrilled to be able to join with Udacity and AT&T in taking this bold next step,” Bras said. “We are proud of the visionary role of Dean Zvi Galil in the creation of this degree offering from our nationally renowned College of Computing.”  

 “We are excited to team with Georgia Tech, whose College of Computing offers CS degrees of the very highest caliber. AT&T is a champion for innovation in education, and we are grateful for its vision in supporting this endeavor,” said Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun. “Udacity has been at the forefront of innovation in online pedagogy. We hope our work with Georgia Tech and AT&T will induce transformational change in higher education.”

The OMS CS could help address the nation’s growing shortage of qualified workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, one of the primary reasons AT&T decided to lend its financial support. The company also supports vastly expanding the accessibility and lowering the cost of quality education.

“Because of this collaboration, anyone with a broadband connection will have access to some of the finest computer science instruction in the world,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “We believe that high-quality and 100 percent online degrees can be on par with degrees received in traditional on-campus settings, and that this program could be a blueprint for helping the United States address the shortage of people with STEM degrees, as well as exponentially expand access to computer science education for students around the world.”

Said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have quickly become one of the most significant catalysts of innovation in higher education. As parents know all too well, America urgently needs new ideas about how to make higher education accessible and affordable. This new collaboration between Georgia Tech, AT&T and Udacity, and the application of the MOOC concept to advanced-degree programs, will further the national debate—pushing from conversations about technology to new models of instruction and new linkages between higher education and employers.”

While courses related to the OMS CS will be available free of charge on the Udacity site, only those students granted admission to Georgia Tech will receive credit. Degree-seeking students will pay tuition based either on individual courses or the entire degree program. Georgia Tech and Udacity also will develop a separate credential for those students who successfully complete courses but do not qualify for full graduate standing. 

“The OMS CS will set a new agenda for higher education—real, rigorous and marketable graduate education in computer science will now be available to tens, even hundreds of thousands of additional students around the world,” said Zvi Galil, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech. “Computing is the catalytic field of the 21^st century. Now we could potentially double the number of trained computing professionals worldwide in as little as a decade.”

Additional details on the Georgia Tech OMS CS can be found at www.omscs.gatech.edu

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the world's premier research universities. Ranked seventh among U.S. News & World Report's top public universities, the Institute enrolls 21,500 students within its six colleges. Georgia Tech is a national and international leader in scientific and technological research and education and is the nation's leading producer of engineers as well as a leading producer of female and minority engineering Ph.D. graduates. Holding more than 848 patents and receiving approximately $689 million in research and development expenditures, Georgia Tech ranks among the nation's top ten universities (without a medical school) in research expenditures. Visit www.gatech.edu for more information.

About the Georgia Tech College of Computing

The Georgia Tech College of Computing is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 10th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human-centered solutions. For more information about the Georgia Tech College of Computing, its academic divisions and research centers, visit http://www.cc.gatech.edu

About Udacity

Udacity is a Silicon Valley-based start-up that brings accessible, engaging and effective higher education to the world. We believe that higher education is a basic human right, and we seek to empower our students to develop their skills in order to advance their education and careers. Udacity has been at the forefront of developing new online pedagogy that bridges education and employable skills with courses in computer science, mathematics, programming, general sciences, and entrepreneurship at www.udacity.com

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company and one of the most honored companies in the world. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and internationally. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s largest 4G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile Internet, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T |DIRECTV brands. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world.

Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com/aboutus or follow our news on @ATT, on Facebook at  http://www.facebook.com/att and YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/att

“The update provides an opportunity to recap some of the outstanding things that the people of Georgia Tech have accomplished this academic year,” Peterson said. “However, for every example given, there are dozens of others that could have been included. It is the collective work of all of our outstanding faculty, staff, students, and alumni that makes Georgia Tech the outstanding institution it is today.”

Read the entire article here.

“Georgia Tech Professional Education seeks to define and be the 21st century transformational leader in professional education,” said Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education. “The executive team will define new ways to meet global industry needs, and apply cutting-edge research to aid in the education for individuals of multiple generations and their employers.”

In addition to Baker, the Georgia Tech Professional Education executive leadership team is comprised of:

• Dr. Leo Mark, associate dean for academic programs and student affairs
• Patrice Miles, assistant dean of business operations
• Dr. Mark Weston, associate dean of learning systems.  
• Diane Lee, director of development and interim director of Georgia Tech-Savannah

Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Student Affairs

Dr. Leo Mark leads Georgia Tech Professional Education as the new associate dean for academic programs and student affairs. Through this position, he collaborates with faculty and the Georgia Tech community to develop world class academic professional education programs. He also serves as a voice for students enrolled in the division's programs, and oversees all academic offerings including professional master’s degrees, the Georgia Tech Language Institute, and student affairs.

A familiar face within the Georgia Tech community, Mark has been an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s College of Computing (CoC) since 1992. Prior to joining the Institute, he taught at Aarhus University in Denmark, the University of Maryland, and worked with many private companies. Mark earned both his M.S. and Ph.D. from Aarhus University in Denmark.

Assistant Dean of Business Operations

Patrice Miles is the newly appointed assistant dean of business operations. Miles works hand in hand with Professional Education's executive team to align the division's strategic business objectives for academic programs, while creating and sustaining effective processes to support superior customer service. She oversees and manages the business/finance, communications, human resources, IT, marketing, operations, and space rental sales departments. Additionally, Miles collaborates with campus leaders and faculty members to develop new business models to drive the expansion and growth of Professional Education programs.

Miles most recently served as the director of marketing and sales for Professional Education from 2007-2012.  Before joining Georgia Tech, she had a successful career of more than 20 years with Delta Air Lines serving as their vice president of consumer marketing. Miles graduated with a B.A. from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, with additional course work at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va.

Associate Dean of Learning Systems

Dr. Mark Weston has been appointed the associate dean of learning systems. His responsibilities include developing and implementing technological solutions and learning management systems to create a better environment for students and industry partners – whether in the classroom, online, or in a blended format. He directs the division's online, instructional design, registration, educational logistics, and new program development departments.

Previously, Weston served as the global education strategist for Dell, Inc., and was the senior national manager for strategic educational initiatives at Apple, Inc. In addition, he has worked with many governmental agencies including the Education Commission of the States, United States Department of Education, and the United States House of Representatives. Weston has taught at the University of Colorado-Denver and at Long Island University. He earned a B.S.S. from Cornell College, M.S.E. from Drake University, and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Denver (UCD).

Director of Development & Interim Director of Georgia Tech-Savannah

Diane Lee has been appointed interim director of the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus, the Institute’s newest focal point for professional education curriculum. As interim director, Lee is charged with handling campus operations, while working closely with community and business leaders to assess the educational needs of Coastal Georgia and surrounding regions. Lee is also responsible for the development and implementation of a comprehensive fundraising strategy for Georgia Tech Professional Education, including oversight of philanthropy, business development, community relations, alumni relations, board development, and corporate relations. She has been with Georgia Tech since 2007.

Before joining Georgia Tech, Lee worked in senior leadership and fundraising capacities for healthcare, non-profit, and Fortune 50 companies. She has an extensive background in strategic planning, business development, acquisitions, and finance.