New Ed Challenge to Seek 'Weirdness' and Innovation in Higher Ed

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/07/18

During her remarks yesterday at the Austin-based SXSWedu conference, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos advocated for weirdness in education. "I can't help but think of this city's unofficial motto: 'Keep Austin weird,'" she said, adding, "Let's apply that same unique spirit to doing what's best for students. Be different. Be bold. Try something unexpected. Do something new. Because what students really need won't originate in Washington. It will come from people in this room. It will come from entrepreneurs, philanthropists, teachers and parents — those closest to students. And it may well come from students themselves."

Along similar lines, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has plans to launch a new "Higher Education Ecosystem Challenge," announced in a blog post published on Medium.

According to Senior Policy Advisors Sharon Leu and David Soo, the challenge will seek "multi-sector teams to propose design concepts for a truly student-centered ecosystem." Those ideas with the most potential for improving the outcomes of students "that need postsecondary education the most" will be launched with the help of "a variety of partners."

This isn't the first time the agency has become involved in promoting education innovation. Under the previous administration the department launched EQUIP, Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships, an experiment in 2016 to promote partnerships between colleges and "non-traditional providers," such as coding boot camps, to see if those education models could improve learning and job outcomes for students, especially those from low-income backgrounds.

During that same year the department also convened a series of tech "meet-ups" to bring educators and technologists together to "reimagine higher education."

More details on the new program are expected to appear shortly on the Office of Ed Tech website.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • SXSW EDU

    Explore the Future of AI in Higher Ed at SXSW EDU 2025

    This March 3-6 in Austin, TX, the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival celebrates its 15th year of exploring education's most critical issues and providing a forum for creativity, innovation, and expression.

  • white clouds in the sky overlaid with glowing network nodes, circuits, and AI symbols

    AWS, Microsoft, Google, Others Make DeepSeek-R1 AI Model Available on Their Platforms

    Leading cloud service providers are now making the open source DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model available on their platforms, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

  • glowing futuristic laptop with a holographic screen displaying digital text

    New Turnitin Product Brings AI-Powered Tools to Students with Instructor Guardrails

    Academic integrity solution provider Turnitin has introduced Turnitin Clarity, a paid add-on for Turnitin Feedback Studio that provides a composition workspace for students with educator-guided AI assistance, AI-generated writing feedback, visibility into integrity insights, and more.

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.