Page 23 - Campus Technology, January/February 2019

VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE
skew caused by models powered by more general data sets. Leon: AI-powered chatbots seem to be the fad these days, and Fresno State is exploring this topic in collaboration with a number of other Cal State campuses. To us, it is more than just creating a thorough knowledgebase of information to be able to answer a variety of questions. We hope we can create AI that can truly be smart and attempt to infer based on context. Georgia State has done some great work on the IBM Wat- son platform, though the world has also seen chatbots that have not gone well (such as Tay from Microsoft in 2016). At Fresno State, one of the chatbots we are trying to mature will work with students to try to guide them to be more successful based on behaviors of peers who have demonstrated success (based on grades, for now). Another chatbot will serve as a more straightforward bot, answering admissions and financial
aid questions 24/7 via text messaging.
6) Accessibility
Leon: Accessibility, or more broadly, universal design and ac- cess, has been a more and more important topic since the late 2000s, and recently the Department of Justice, the Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Education have adjudicated on a few cases that highlight where accessibility will head in the future. The topic touches every service and tool that is digi- tal and used by students and employees. Fresno State and the Cal State system have made steady progress over the past
10-plus years, working on various areas of technology acces- sibility that now include technology procurement, instructional materials and web. Our efforts include an annual assessment of current progress based on a large number of indicators, as well as a maturity rating for several key areas, with the intent of maturing or maintaining each area year-over-year.
Rowe: As we engaged in compliance with accessibility standards at OU, we broadened our thinking to include univer- sal design for learning. While we are aware of the legal issues and landscape, we are driven by our mission to seek student success in all activities for all of our students, being inclusive in all our endeavors. Inclusive and accessible learning and admin- istrative support activities and materials are created in a part- nership between vendor-supplied solutions and university fac- ulty and staff using all solutions in a way that is compliant. This partnership requires everyone to change in a positive and will- ing way. The inescapable challenge is that inclusive and broad approaches mean rethinking what we are doing and how we are doing it, on many levels. There is a very high cost to any transition, however important that transition may be. We will continue to focus on student success for all, prioritizing efforts for accessibility and universal design for learning principles.
7) Digital Course Materials
Jett: Our university recently engaged Pearson to move one of our schools to a fully integrated delivery of course materi-
als, online tutoring, career services, online labs, etc., at one price point. The effort was designed to make sure every stu- dent had their course materials, as well as allow us to more affordably provide tutoring and career services to our online student population. As publishers move away from physical textbook inventories and toward these types of digital deliv- ery models, you will see more and more schools begin to de- velop partnerships like this to drive down costs and improve accessibility to more enhanced course materials.
Rowe: The fundamental question is should the cost of any learning materials (i.e., textbooks, learning aids, software, etc.) be separate from tuition? We cannot make decisions about digital course materials in a vacuum; the decision must be in- cluded in a full review of the total cost of education. It is a long-standing tradition to separate the costs of textbooks from tuition, but textbooks are not what they were in history. Today’s textbooks may also be a paywall for access to other related learning materials, and the access code to the paywall may expire at the end of the semester, making the textbook worth- less in resale. Textbooks may be updated more frequently, par- ticularly in the STEM fields, making a prior edition unusable for a course — again stopping purchase at a lower cost in the resale market. Digital learning materials, then, may be both positive (providing faster access to updates) and negative (in- creasing costs). Separating the purchase of learning materials from tuition requires careful evaluation of the learning materials
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | January/February 2019