C-Level View | Feature
ASU: Laser-Focused on Ensuring the Current Learning Experience; Sights Set on Designs for the Future
A Q&A with Kyle Bowen
We're happy to be catching up with Kyle Bowen for the first time since his move to Arizona State University in February 2020 to assume his new post in the University Technology Office as the executive director of ASU's Learning Experience Group. Here, we learn how the university can continue to offer students the experiences they expect from an ASU education during the current phase of remote learning and how, at the same time, the institution can leverage its work into plans for the future.
"We are laser-focused on ensuring that our students continue to have the kinds of educational opportunities that attracted them to Arizona State University."
— Kyle Bowen
Mary Grush: I'm sure you and your colleagues have been exceptionally busy these past few months serving the necessity of remote learning while, I expect, setting your sights on innovations for the future. What have you been focusing on most? Has Zoom been a big part of your strategy in the current times?
Kyle Bowen: This is a period in time during which we are laser-focused on ensuring that our students continue to have the kinds of educational opportunities that attracted them to Arizona State University.
As did most institutions, ASU entered into its own particular kind of remote instruction period this past spring semester. At the time, I had recently joined the Learning Experience Group, an academic support and learning design team for the university that launched in February 2020. Talk about perfect timing!
During the shift to remote instruction, a central element of our successful transition was making sure our learning environments preserved the connection between the faculty and students.
That's where we were able to leverage Zoom, heavily at first. Today, our campus is consuming literally millions of minutes of Zoom time in the delivery of live, online classes, with nearly 19,000 class sessions streamed via Zoom already this fall semester. Looking back, our support for a large volume of synchronous remote classes has demonstrated the myriad possibilities and potential of this type of delivery.
Grush: So ASU is doing a large amount of Zoom meetings right now for remote instruction. Are you planning for an expansion of blended learning and other modes of digital instruction for some time — hopefully soon — in the future?
Bowen: Zoom is hugely important, though it is only one of the tools that we are using to expand our support of three distinct modalities for now and for the near future at ASU, including: online courses; immersive on-campus courses; and ASU Sync, which allows for students to engage in the same types of learning activities offered online and on campus in a live and synchronous form, using Zoom and other tools. To date, the initiative has activated more than 960 permanent or portable ASU Sync-enabled classrooms throughout our campuses.
Again, what our live, synchronous remote classes do so well is that they help us make sure students can continue to engage with their professors, ASU resources, and the values of an education they've come to expect at ASU.
What our live, synchronous remote classes do so well is that they help us make sure students can continue to engage with their professors, ASU resources, and the values of an education they've come to expect at ASU.
And this is only going to improve over time. There are growing opportunities for greater degrees of personalization as well as for the development of new and different types of learning experiences, both on campus and in our surrounding learning communities. Such learning opportunities are live and interactive, and, at the same time they are complemented by engaging digital experiences.
There are growing opportunities for greater degrees of personalization as well as for the development of new and different types of learning experiences.
These initiatives are what we have concentrated on over the past few months, with ASU Sync at the front and center of it all. It's definitely one of the key enablers from a technology standpoint.
Grush: Are there any tools or technologies you're developing on campus that might eventually enable more personalization?
Bowen: We do have another key enabler we recently launched called the ASU Digital Backpack. Over the past few months, we've been working with partners across the university to design and develop the Digital Backpack as a workflow that supports the student's learning experience. The Digital Backpack is loaded with 21st Century technologies — including Zoom, Google Suite, Slack, Dropbox, and, our most recent addition, Adobe Creative Cloud — that our students can use throughout a range of learning scenarios from the very beginning of their college years to well beyond graduation.
One important characteristic of the Digital Backpack is that it can take advantage of new and different learning designs to amplify the connection that happens in the live interactions between faculty and students, among students and their peers, and with ASU campus resources.
Enhancements to physical spaces also have interesting implications for the use of technology. Over time, we will continue to see a deeper blending of physical and digital environments.
Grush: Will students find tools in their Digital Backpacks that they can use both during their academic careers at ASU and on into their professional lives?
Bowen: Our immediate and perhaps most obvious goal is to support learners in the current semester. However, we see the Digital Backpack as an enduring part of the student learning experience going forward.
The ASU Digital Backpack includes tools and enterprise technologies that don't stop at the door — they don't expire at the end of a course and they don't end with graduation. They are the same class of tools and technologies that students will ultimately find or bring with them in the workplace. With their Digital Backpacks, students learn in a rich, authentic technology-supported environment that, in many ways, mirrors the future workplace.
With their Digital Backpacks, students learn in a rich, authentic technology-supported environment.
Grush: Could you give some examples of what you'd want to accomplish with the digital backpack as it's used in the technology-enhanced environments you're creating at ASU?
Bowen: Sure. As we think about designing the ASU learning experience, one of the essential, game-changing pieces that stands out is enabling the co-creation of new knowledge. This moves us away from sheer content delivery and into deeper constructivist forms of learning. Co-creation is so empowering that it can be considered one of the highest forms of learning. Using the tools available in the Digital Backpack, along with other related strategies, we can aspire to co-creation as a reachable and practical element of the ASU learning experience.
Tools from the digital backpack can support storytelling and enable students to create narratives. For example, when students are able to take on generative topics that are of intense personal interest to them, the learning experience becomes a very motivating aspect of their lives. Those narratives may then become artifacts of learning, and potentially be included in digital portfolios or with other strategies for assessment. And ideally, students may discover pathways into their future professional lives that offer more relevance than they could ever have imagined.
Students may discover pathways into their future professional lives that offer more relevance than they could ever have imagined.
Grush: Those are some inspiring goals, and it's exciting that you consider them already reachable. I'll look forward to hearing more from you soon. Meanwhile, could you suggest links that describe some of the Learning Experience Group's current work at ASU?
Bowen: Absolutely! Head over to the ASU Sync initiative's page to learn more about ASU Sync, and check out what's available in our ASU Digital Backpack by visiting its home page. We are also highlighting innovative learning experiences taking place throughout our campuses in the UTO Newsroom.
[Editor's note: Image courtesy of Arizona State University.]
