Consortia

Unizin Adds New Institutional Members

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/23/19

Unizin is expanding: The higher education consortium recently announced the addition of two institutional members and two vendor partners. Unizin focuses on producing data management applications for its members; promoting the use of open educational resources; and negotiating contracts with learning material providers. Previously, the nonprofit had 25 colleges and universities as members, representing some 900,000 learners.

The latest member additions are Rutgers University in New Jersey and Miami University in Ohio. Also joining as vendor partners are Examity and Kaltura.

Last year the organization introduced the Unizin Data Platform (UDP), an assemblage of data marts, event processing and application programming interfaces that work to collect and standardize data from multiple sources for projects undertaken by member institutions in learning analytics, application development, research and business intelligence.

Miami U hopes to tap Unizin resources as it implements an inclusive access model and to provide faculty with data to make informed decisions about their students. "Being able to offer real-time data to faculty will help them provide even more valuable classroom experiences," explained Associate Provost Jeffrey Wanko, in a statement. "It is also an ongoing goal to reduce costs to students, so we're glad to be able to offer significant textbook savings through the e-texts available in consortium membership."

"This membership allows us to share resources with our peers, have a voice in developing standards around learning technologies, enhance our learning analytics and leverage the consortium's size and reach to negotiate favorable licensing terms for member institutions," added Michele Norin, senior vice president and chief information officer at Rutgers.

Examity CEO Michael London said his company joined Unizin to "support student success at unprecedented scale." The company's participation in the UDP work "brings together [artificial intelligence]-enabled online proctoring with sophisticated analytics and tools to assist higher ed institutions across the country to protect the quality and integrity of their online programs."

Kaltura sought membership to help "universities get the full value from their student data, including the rich data that interactive videos can provide," according to Jeff Rubenstein, vice president of product strategy for that company.