[Panel] Success by Design: Tailoring Strategies to Student Needs
Maybe the mic. Hello, everybody. How are you? Oh, boy. That's pretty dull. How are you everybody? You having a good time? Yes. Yay.
How many of you got a golden panda? Raise your hand if you got a woah. They'll be able to sell those on eBay or one other marketplace fairly quickly after the the conference. It's already about a hundred and fifty percent of the going price of free. So you'll be able to do do well with that. It's it's fantastic to have you back.
Welcome panelists. We're gonna be talking a little bit today about the students experience. And what it means to have success by design. In other words, tailoring strategies to student needs. I'm really looking forward to the conversation because I think it's wonderful that we're ending with students.
Don't you? Sort of the whole reason why we are all in the room. When I talk about the student experience, I really think about three things. I think about the learning and teaching. I think about the way the students interact with the university. So what many of you in the room would think of as student services.
But increasingly what I think about is belonging. Do the students have a sense of belonging to a community of scholars? And so I thought what I'd do is I'd just share just two or three quick slides with you just as a bit of a backdrop to the panel to sort of stimulate you because what I'm going to do is as we're going through the panel, I'm going to ask the panelists a couple of questions and then I'm going to throw to you for a couple of questions. We've got roving microphones at the back, we've got microphones at the front. Sorry, nobody can ask anything in the middle. No.
No. You can. We'll come to you. If you want to ask a question, just raise your hand really nice or stand up and raise your hand, so the people with the mics can can find you. But, let's have a little bit of a look about what's on my what's on my mind and I'm just clicking the slide and hopefully there we go.
KPMG, the consulting firm did a study this year and I was one of their contributing authors. Little did I know when they interviewed me that I would end up being the headline of the report. But supposedly or allegedly, this is what I said, No other sector except perhaps health would allow so many dead ends in their service architecture. For a lot of our students, we're not really friendly places to be a student. They often find themselves getting conflicting information.
They don't feel like they belong. Our systems aren't integrated. Their learning and teaching is disjointed because there's multiple learning management systems in different courses and different programs. It's not a very elegant experience for them. And in the same report, KPMG along with us as the contributing authors, we came up with what we thought were the six big shifts needed to overcome these challenges to create a more modern student experience.
And this is sort of what we talked about. We talked about going from compliance driven. I'm doing it because it's the way my regulator says I have to do it to student centric. Supplier led, this is the way we're gonna do it because we've always done it this way to service led. Disconnected, everything disconnected and not working well or seamlessly to digitally connected.
Insight poor to insight rich. Fragmented across the university to really partnering with across the university and moving from high cost to high value. The crisis of tuition all around the world, where students are graduating not so much in all parts of the world, but students graduating with more and more student debt or family debt, moving from a conversation of cost to really be a conversation of value. And so that sort of leads us to the importance of having what I describe as a three hundred and sixty degree digital view of our students. And why is that important? Because it allows us to have a comprehensive understanding of student needs.
It allows us to provide personalized support and personalized interventions. It enhances that belonging, that sense of student engagement. It improves resource allocation and perhaps most importantly, it allows us as the leaders of the institution to have data driven decision making. And I have to tell you going back to something I talked about this morning, the more we lean into lifelong learners and embrace lifelong learners, again something that that's very important to you here in the Philippines, the more that three hundred and sixty degree view becomes more important. So that ladies and gentlemen is my backdrop and with that, they wouldn't let me sit close to you by the looks of things.
So, they they separate I have no idea. Apparently, you you you might beat me up or something for bad bad questions. So, please down? Yeah. Couldn't No. I'm a very warm gentle soul Ruina.
Roselle, thank you. So again, what I might do if I can, and Galvin, I'll come to you first. Why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about you and SALT? Hi. So my name is Galvin Lo. I work in Ateneo de Manila University.
I run a center called SALT or the Institute for the Science and Art of Learning and Teaching. And essentially, what we do is we work with different departments and schools within the university that are interested to explore questions or projects related to education technology, innovation, and instructional or learning design. So that's generally our area. Yeah. And it's kind of a fun area and a couple of universities I've been a part of, I recognize what salt does.
You really, on the one hand, drive the boundaries of innovation, sort of what's on the horizon, other hand, you're there with the academics getting them ready to do the best they can and equip them with the know how technology processes, etcetera. Is that a fair summary? To the extent that we can do it. Oh, you're so humble. Look at look at you. Isn't that cute? That's really nice.
So well well done. Okay. Your term, Rizelle. Tell us a bit about your organization. As a program coordinator for instructional technology, I am part of a unit called the Office of Curriculum Development and Instruction.
Under my desk is the learning management system. So I am one of the LMS administrator, wherein I am in charge of capacitating faculty members, including, enabling students in their adoption. Mhmm. So this is one of my main function. Also, adoption of other, solutions like, if I may say, Labster, McGraw, that's under my test.
And it's also hap I just so happen to be the data protection officer of Dataverse. So hopefully it's not all under your desk, it's up in the cloud somewhere, otherwise you may have a big problem. Yeah. My desk would have been clattered all over. Yeah.
What's your favorite LMS? Mhmm. Good question. Of course. We only have one LMS. Oh, really? That's true.
And that is the canvas. Did you hear that everybody? Only one LMS. There we go. Sorry, it's late in the day. I have to have a bit of humor.
Alright. Should we get going with a couple of questions? Alright. First question. Gavin, I'll come to you first and then I'll come to you. Brazil.
How does your how does Salt and your the rest of your institution leverage data to generate actionable insights, something that I just talked about, to improve student engagement and success? So, so I'll start with some somewhat Yeah. Confession. We're pretty new to to Canvas. We, we onboarded in Canvas back in twenty twenty. What do you think? Sorry? Do you like it? It's pretty good.
Good. Okay. Carry carry on. Just kidding. They might evict me out of this room.
But anyway, so, so yeah. So having said that, we we have yet to really fully explore. Like today, we were introduced to a lot of new tools that we haven't touched on yet that will actually allow us to harvest more data and draw insights from the data from the learning management system as it is used. But what we've seen at least in the past few years are teachers really benefiting from the data that comes on the course level. I know it's pretty basic for many of you in the room.
But I've heard so many stories from teachers who have told me that now that things are on an LMS, they now know who needs catching up. They now know who they need to reach out to. And I guess today, we're talking about student success. And I think, more than the big data, I think for us, what matters is how our teachers are able to see students through the data. Even if it's as small as just being able to find out who they need to reach out to, who's lagging behind.
In fact, just this week, I reached out to a student just because, in the SpeedGrader, I saw that the student hasn't been submitting our formative assessments to find out that the student apparently has already dropped, which I wouldn't have been able to know, if I had not looked at these particular, dashboards. Right? So for us, it's a little small scale at the moment. We have yet to explore bigger scales of using, institution wide data, but we we see teachers in their own way looking at data that they have access to on the course level. Yeah. And by the way, actually understanding what a student is doing in the course and being able to proactively reach out to them before they drop, it's not a small thing.
Yeah. It's probably one of the most important things that we can be doing. So good for you. Of what you've seen at the conference, you mentioned you'd seen a lot of new things and you're exploring. Was there anything that you spotted at the conference around data that got you intrigued or or interested? I think the the AI feature that was introduced a while ago that allows us to query, the the data in the platform.
Uh-huh. Obviously, I haven't tried that out. It's a very new thing. But, I think that that will help us. I'm also putting on my Researcher hat here, because there are lots of questions.
And as as we continue to use the LMS and, move forward with the school year, of course, you aren't able to really see what each classroom does. And getting some sense of what students are engaging in, what kinds of learning activities, those are some questions that I'd love to to ask that chatbot when I get the chance to do so. Wonderful. Thank you. Your thoughts? Data, insights, success? First, not data within Canvas first.
If if you don't mind. As our institution, I am Well, I'm proud to say that we have a very robust IT department, wherein most, if not all of our systems are developed in house by our programmers. That being said, we have a mass of data from enrollment report, admission report, student, evaluation, faculty performance. We all have this. So we utilize them, to decide on and to provide a a more directed approach in, let's say, ensuring that the curriculum are well planned, the delivery of instructions are, well monitored, as well as engagement of the students are achieved, the high engagement of students are achieved.
Now in terms of Canvas data, similar to Gavin, at the course level, we acquainted our faculty members in terms of the utilization of the Canvas analytics, of course. We've embedded that in our training, particularly for our newly hired faculty members, which we conduct every semester. At the sub account level, we what we did was to create accounts for the unit heads. We have accounts for the deans, associate deans, college secretaries, even principals, and assistant principals for them to be able to monitor the performance of the course, of the teachers, and even up to the student level. So that we that's where we are right now.
In terms of your last question, if I may Yeah. Jump right on it. What picked my interest? Not just because of this, conference. I've had this, wish list wherein all of the data portals are converted into a real time data visualization dashboard. Yeah.
I know one school have already accomplished that. I'm I'm envious of them that they're able to do that. It's a real time dashboard of all of the metrics that a, let's say, at an institutional level, at the course level, a sub account level, could really hope for. I wouldn't mention the school, but it's it's kind of an envious thing that they're able to do that. And for an institution to do that, you need to have a an IT department be able to appreciate data analytics and, design this, data architecture for you.
Yeah. To be able to provide this real time, reports. Absolutely. And I spoke about that earlier. Are any of those IT heroes here today? I have one, but I'm not sure.
He was at the Is he still? He was at the other, session a while ago, but I'm not sure if he's still here. But he he knows that it's been my my hope that our solution would have that dashboard of analytics. Thank you. That that's wonderful. So, another question.
You ready for another one? Is that okay? So, what, what do you think are the key barriers to adopting more flexible learning models? And how has your institution successfully navigated these challenges to improve the student experience? So what are the barriers and what have you done to get around those barriers? Away you go. So I I hope I don't get in trouble here. You're amongst friends. Everything's fine. Just just But one of the one of the barriers that that immediately, I that immediately comes to mind comes to mind are some policies that universities need to abide by locally.
For example, we have a current standing policy that dictates a certain percentage of on-site classes or face to face classes. And when that policy came out, it came out at a time wherein there are many people in our community who've embraced flipped learning, blended learning. And in a way, the policy forced them to rethink that. Right? Like, can I still do this within the policy, within the measures of the policy? Right? So I'll just give one example of what we do in the School of Education. So One of the ways by which we've been able to do it is to focus on the number of hours that's required, in the policy and to find ways to abide by the number of hours without necessarily having to, let's say, force our graduate students to be coming on to campus every week.
Right? Sorry. I'm not sure if I can say the number of hours or the office. But, yeah. So we've been able to work around that policy that way to think about how, how to meet the minimum requirements of the policy while still trying to do what we believe to be beneficial, most especially for our graduate students, which is, a good mix of asynchronous and synchronous online learning, and on-site learning as well as we know that these three spaces have their affordances. Yeah.
So and maybe just to add to that, just briefly, another barrier that we're also beginning to see, I would argue also connected to these policies is that now that we're back on-site, now that, formally, institutions are back on-site, we're no longer in hybrid, in general, in hybrid or online mode, these kinds of policies sometimes perpetuate the thinking that online learning is inferior to on-site learning. Right? There seems to be an assumption that face to face learning is always better. And I think that's something so it's a challenge in terms of paradigm. I think this is something that we now continue to challenge, because those who believed in that before are now, sort of, get reinforced, that the thinking gets reinforced by policies like this. But then, we do our best to try to introduce other perspectives.
Right? So, yeah. So those two barriers seem to be the utmost barriers that we're seeing right now. And I'm sure they're barriers many of the people in this room recognize. It always, I find that universities, schools, colleges, they're really trapped in the tyranny of conventional wisdom. You know, just because we've always done it this way or that's what the policy says.
We have to continue to do it that way, and I'm really struck by how much self imposed resistance we create. It's got nothing to do with our regulator or the government or the the students or the public. It's the stuff that we create that stands in our way. And on the point that you made about, you know, the assumption that face to face is better teaching than online or distance teaching, my whole career as an educator has taught me that there is great teaching face to face and there's terrible teaching face to face. There's great teaching online or at a distance and there's terrible teaching online at a distance.
The goal is great teaching and it's really about using whatever tools we've got at our disposal to create great teaching. And I've I've spent literally thirty years breaking those debates down of the war between face to face and and online. So, thank you. I think that's something I've run into my entire career. So, what are your thoughts? Barriers and how you've artfully snuck around them? I think our challenges are still there.
I mean, we have not fully successfully over overcame them. But, in terms of, let's say, I think the the the challenge would be rooted in terms of the modality. I hope that some of you would agree that during the pandemic, our main challenge was to put everything online. So when we do that, when we did that during pandemic, you have to have policies in place. We might have been implementing without, that online modality without a policy because it's something that, you know, just abruptly happened.
So what we did during the online thing was to force the use of Canvas. We've been in Canvas since twenty seventeen, but, it's a democratic way of of implementing, like, please use this. It would be very very beneficial to you. But come, twenty twenty, it's a different, you know, ball game. Everyone must use this.
If you have not finished training online, you will not be able to be give you will not be given, teaching load. Now, after the pandemic, we've struggled with, policy in terms of changing it every semester. What modality do we have now? Do we have sync, a sync? And then when we moved back at the, you know, at the campus, our our terminology has changed again. We use on-site, off-site. So it's an ever changing, modality, differentiation.
However, what what's good about this, academic year, our twenty four twenty five, because our policies before changed every semester. First semester, we draft. Second semester, we draft. But what we did for the academic year twenty four twenty five, and hopefully it will be implemented beyond, is that we stick to the hybrid thing. With that, we have specific dates for our asynchronous session.
We plotted exact dates when our asynchronous sessions would be for the entire school year, first semester and second semester. Mhmm. That being said, it is a structured thing, and and students and and faculty members appreciate that. Mhmm. That they don't have to wait if they can change the modality.
It's simply within the policy. Banking on again on the policy, if the policy is, strict in terms of how the LMS will be utilized, It follows that the teachers would implement that in the LMS, and the students will, of course, experience that. So if you have a very supportive, let's say management, if you have a very engaged faculty members, abiding by the policy, I think that the students engagement would soon turn out great. Yeah. Yeah.
I couldn't agree more. I, when I was running RMIT University in Melbourne, we were a blackboard user. It wasn't very popular. So we decided to move to Canvas. And when we actually became, I still believe RMIT is the largest installed university in the southern hemisphere on canvas, but we did something to your point.
My head of learning and teaching came to me and said, Martin, when we put canvas in, we want to define a really fantastic consistent set of minimum standards for the canvas shell for every course. And I said, that sounds great. And she said, but vice chancellor, we now want you to be a little courageous. And I said, well what do you mean? And they said, she said, Belinda was her name, Belinda said, Martin, when we go live semester one next year, I want you not to allow any course to be allowed to be offered unless it meets the minimum canvas shell requirement. So not only did we move in canvas, if the quality of every single course in the university rose because of the combination of me running the university with my wonderful learning and teaching people, and a lot of courage and leadership to make sure we did it, and I am so glad we did.
Because in one move, all boats rose in the tide in terms of the quality for the students and you're talking about similar, similar things. Thank you. Alright, questions from the audience. Do not be shy. I'm sure that, Ed has some prizes for you if you ask a question.
So who's got a question? Raise your hand or stand to your feet. Please don't be shy. There we go. Thank you, sir. Can you just say who you are? Where you're from, and what your question is, please? Good afternoon everyone.
I'm doctor Julius Migrino from the Zambia University College of Medicine. So my question is, actually this is targeted towards Galvin. Right? Galvin. Galvin. Galvin.
Yes. So you mentioned something about the student in, the the preference of modalities. Actually, this this was also touched by, the the other panelists. I forgot their name. But, my question is in terms of student preference.
So at least some loud majority at the start of the transition from from on from on-site to online learning, students were quite excited about the novelty of online learning. When it got back to going from online to face to face, now at least our students or most of our students or at least the loud major the loud minority or majority of our students miss the face to face learning. But this is for the college of medicine, and, of course, the dynamics for the college of medicine might be different from the the, lower education. So my question is, did what's your comment on that? Did do you think that that is something that which is different in terms of student preference, in terms of the novelty of the modality? Kung baga, If it's newer, we are more we are more excited to learn or to do it, but at the end of the day, we go back to our old rules, our old traditional modes of learning. So in short, in English, what the heck? Round of applause for the question.
Thank you. Give a big round of applause. Great question. Okay. Roselle, you go first.
Alright. When you said earlier that there's just, you know, bad teacher face to face, bad teacher online, and there should only be great teachers. So for me, right now, I don't think full on-site can fully be successful anymore. Even though I am not a digital native, our students are. To them, it's like as normal as the air that they breathe.
These are all digital natives. Our students are all digital natives. That the the best balance or the best mix of on-site and off-site experience. That's that's what I believe. That's where we would want to achieve the best.
I mean, in terms of, we we said earlier that there's this notion that on-site is better in terms of whose perception? From the perception of? The teachers, of our admin. But we have to also take into consideration the perception of our students. Right? It's not necessarily just preference, but it is a consideration. It could be a consideration of the outcomes needed to be achieved in that particular program. Just to give you an example.
Our college of dentistry, leveraged on their actual physical, laboratory experience. All other colleges in our university are in hybrid. They are in full face to face, except for their GE core courses. And we allow that because that's their standard. They believe that their their teachers, would be able to deliver the best education for this dentist if they fully immerse themselves in an actual laboratory experience.
So we allow that for that specific, department. So it's not just about the student's preference, but what outcomes necessary to achieve the best student engagement? Fantastic. Gavin? Yeah. So the first thing I want to say is that, it depends. I know everyone wants to say that when answering a question.
In Ateneo, there's been a recent survey that we actually, there was a report that was presented to us. There was a big survey that just happens, I think every three years of graduate and undergraduate students. And in fact, when undergraduate students were asked, they said the same thing. They said that they prefer on-site learning. Right? On the other hand, when graduate students were asked, most of them teachers, practitioners, they said they prefer to be online.
Right? So I start with that, just to nuance our thinking about preference. Because I think that when we think about preference, most probably, these stakeholders are coming from different places and they're often not just coming from learning, from the space of learning. So for example, most probably, I can assume that our graduate students prefer online because of logistics, right? They don't want to breathe the traffic to our campus, right? Drive from their offices or their work spaces, and then, take a five to eight pm class on a weekday, right? In Metro Manila, as, hopefully, our guest, not hopefully, but unfortunately our guests may have experienced, right? On the other hand, undergraduate students will probably want more on-site experiences not just because of classes, right? Because college is not just about the classroom experience, right? It's also about organizations, being with their peers. Informatively, there is a benefit to that. So that's the first thing I want to say.
Right? In terms of preferences, I think that, I guess as educators, our goal is what's best for learning. And usually, when we ask for preferences, we need to unpack if what they really mean is this is best for them for learning. And we often don't do what's asking those kinds of questions. The second thing is that we also know from research in learning sciences that there is a weak correlation between, student preference for learning and what actually helps them learn. Right? So for example, if I tell you that, I love learning through videos, you can assume you might want to just give me videos, right? But the research already tells us that that's not true.
That there are lots of research that point to the fact that, just because a student says that they like this, doesn't always mean it will be helpful for them in learning, right? So again, a second nuance, I think, to thinking about this question. And then, maybe the third thing I want to say is that, at least in our conversations within the community in Ateneo de Manila, we've been trying to nuance conversations about these things so that we don't just focus on time and space, like whether you're physically together or whether you're online or on-site. But we really think about, the kinds of interactions that are happening. So for example, one of the guiding principles we introduced in the SALT Institute are the three Cs, like content, coach, and community. The content, the interaction between students and content.
Poached between the teacher and the student. And community, between among students. Right? So as a Jesuit institution, we believe that, at least for us, our stance is that there should be a good balance between these three Cs. So as a course designer, as an instructor, we think that it's more important to think about where those interactions are happening, whether online or on-site, and the quality of those interactions. Right? Rather than just simply saying, Let's do more online or Let's do more on-site.
Because as was mentioned earlier, it's not as simple as that. So you need to consider context, discipline among other things. Right? So I'm sorry if I did not directly answer your question but I hope these questions help you think about what you're thinking about. Thank you. Yeah.
Nice job. You can give a round of applause. Well done. Very good answers. Unscripted.
I'm increasingly, by the way, talking about omnichannel learning. It isn't even on learning. It isn't even on campus or on, I mean, there are so many different ways. And in English, we have these wonderful expressions like, horses for courses or one size doesn't fit all, you know, it's exactly what you've both been talking about. It really is situational.
Remember, we spend far too much of our time talking about the bricks and mortar of our institution. We should be spending all of our time talking about the clicks and water of our institution. It's that wonderful blending of the digital with the physical to create great teaching. So, good stuff. Another question from the audience.
Another one. Have we got a hand? Anybody want to? And thank you for your question, doctor. Other questions? Ed's got an amazing prize if you have the courage to ask a ask a question. Here we go. Thank you.
Hi. I'm Rich Juan from Far Eastern University. My question to you guys, I'm pumped and, sir, is, how you how do you address the digital divide between your students wherein some students have limited capacity when it comes to devices? And also the digital divide between the digital immigrants and digital natives? Thank you. Oh, that's a question I've been getting since nineteen eighty eight. I love that question.
It comes up in every every conference. Away you go, Rizelle. In terms of the digital divide, we had a very wide gap when we started in twenty twenty. It's just like a lot of, I mean, all, education solutions in the Philippines at that time, we needed to determine the readiness of our students and our faculty members in terms of implementing fully online. At the time, unfortunately, most of our students didn't have laptops.
Right? Similarly, with our many faculty back then. But, today, they may not have laptops, fewer or lesser percentage. But good thing with I'm promoting Canvas now. Good thing with the offline, feature of the mobile app, the, the the student will be able to experience, the LMS LMS even without internet. Now, to address How did we address that? Honestly, in terms of administrative, policies, we offered, how do I say that? Subsidy in terms of purchasing laptops for faculty members.
Salary deduction, something like that. So, internet load, we started with that. So we have that for the faculty members, but unfortunately, we didn't have and we don't have that for students yet. I hope I answered your question. You did.
Well done. Alright, Calvin. What's on your mind? Sure. Just a quick answer. So three things.
The first is, so when I think about questions like this, I often think about, people, process, and technology. So for example, when you talk about people, I think when we think about the digital divide, one of the interesting experiences we've had in supporting these kinds of initiatives within our community is that obviously, there are some faculty members who will be more comfortable with technology in general than others. And then, we talk about faculty members who might be less comfortable with technology as compared to their students. Right? So I think in terms of people, we need to think about supporting faculty members in different ways that there's no one way to support them. So for example, in our transition to Canvas, we did the workshops, the usual workshops that we do.
But then, we made a couple of Canvas coaches available for one on one tutorials. So I literally taught one of our faculty members how to navigate a certain browser. Right? And I know that we shouldn't laugh about those things. And, in fact, in that conversation, I was proud of that faculty member making that effort so that they can reach their students at that time. Right? So in terms of process, I guess, thinking about differentiating how we support faculty so that no faculty is left behind in the same way that we talk about no student left behind.
The second thing is about technology. I think that in Ateneo, if you're you're an undergraduate student and you need to borrow a device, there are provisions for that. We also have spaces on campus where they can access the internet and we encourage them to use those spaces so students maximize that, most especially if they have, let's say, intermittent connectivity at home. And then, the third thing is about process. Right? That one of the policy mechanisms that we have in place for equity and for allowing for these things to be considered is, in our policy, we ask teachers not to ask students to do something, to do a requirement.
So requirement due dates should be at least a week from the point of announcement, right? So it's a clear policy that we try to follow within the college. And so the the the time element at least allows our students to find that space and opportunity to participate. So I hope that helped. It's wonderful. And I've perhaps just got a little bit of a provocation for you when it comes to the digital divide and and access.
When I was running education products for Microsoft, I partnered with the Gates Foundation to do quite a lot of research as to what the real power of technology was for education globally in all parts of the world. We spent a lot of money, we spent a lot of time. And when we boiled it all down, we realized the great promise of technology was to open up access to high quality learning to more people on the planet than could be open up in any other way. It might be worth us from time to time not fixating on what the technology can't do for everybody and instead start realizing what technology has done to open up high quality learning and teaching for people often for free in some of the edges of our communities and societies and places in the world where they never would have got access to high quality education if it wasn't for technology. Now that being said, the really smart technology providers are not running away from questions of equity.
They're building their technology to work well offline when the internet isn't available. They're doubling down on a mobile first platform so that high quality experiences can be rendered to smartphones, Java feature phones, and other technology devices. As you think about the education technology that you want to deploy, go look for those EdTech companies that treat access and equity seriously. Both in the way that they deploy the technologies, but the way that they help people who might be challenged in using technology to get the most out of it. Because my whole time in this industry, I can tell you every time we think or every time I work with a high quality EdTech customer, that's one of the first things we talk about.
And the real challenge is how do you not hold everybody back while you're doing the best you possibly can to open yourselves up to as many as you possibly can. We've got time for one last question. Be fair to say we talked quite a lot about generative AI at this conference. Institution, what are you most excited about doing for your students with generative AI and how do you do that in a fair and equitable way? So thank you for that question, as they say in the Miss Universe. It's a pretty packed question.
I'll be honest that, climate wise, of course, it's a mix of those who are excited about it, while those who are very critical and skeptical about it, they would shun away from it. In our conversations in the university, we try to take a stance of measured enthusiasm, where we want to be excited about things but then, we need to be critical about certain things as well, most especially ethical considerations. So having said that though, at least with what we've seen, we really look forward to the promise of AI to reach students who need the extra help. I think it's a very common problem across different universities and schools like that. You have one teacher as to, let's say, thirty students or even more students probably in some classes.
And it doesn't financially and sustainably, it doesn't feel like that will change much. Right? But we also know that in that whole class size environment, there are students who fall behind. And the teacher, the one teacher that's assigned to that class may not always be there to support those students. I don't know what it will look like yet on Canvas, and I'm excited to find out. But I think if ever there's an impact that I hope AI can make, I think that's one of the things that we're excited about.
Oh, I'm excited. I could feel my body tingle when you were talking about that. That's really, really wonderful. Rizelle? Right now in the University of the East, we have yet to finalize we are in the process of finalizing our AI acceptable use policy. Even without that policy, I believe it was you said with, earlier this morning.
Even without the policy, our teachers are already using it, and our students are using it. So that being said, we have to be very careful in crafting that policy. It should not be limiting. It should be empowering. Right? At the moment, we are, if you may say, drumming up the excitement by creating forums and conversations and webinars to introduce what, Gen AI can do for faculty members in terms of course design, assessment, personalized learning, and, up to the level of making making them understand how, Gen AI, particularly for example, Chargebee, can improve their productivity or their task, administrative task.
That's, I think, Rafin said, like, you you capitalize on productivity, creativity. Right? So that's what we wanna hope for. That faculty members would understand that Gen AI, Chargebee, Dall e are not Gen AI, Chargebee, DALL E are not just tools that they can, you know, utilize at a whim. It would help them, in their, adversative task, and it would make them it would have better opportunities for creativity that they can apply in their responsibilities as teachers. That's what we are very excited for.
Why? Martin, may I just just very quickly? I wanna say though that what we are least excited about is how AI might also diminish thinking, among our students. And we're very careful about that. We're very careful about the line, between, students using AI to make things more efficient, and where AI is beginning to replace activities that will actually benefit their thinking and development. So I think that's an important nuance for us. So I just wanted to put that on the table.
Yeah. No. I I agree. So folks, we're just about done. In fact, I've got one minute and forty five seconds left.
But it's Friday afternoon, we've got the weekend ahead, and one of the things that I've been doing a lot of reading about recently is the power of thankfulness. So here we are on a Friday afternoon, we're about to have a networking event. I want you all just to look back on the week, the month, the day, this conference and just think of one thing that you're thankful for in your life. Just spend a moment to think of one thing that you're thankful for and send that energy off somewhere. Because all the energy, all the research shows that actually taking a moment in your day to be thankful for what we have and what I wanted to say in that exercise is I'm thankful to Instructure, I'm thankful to all of you for hosting me in Manila and giving me such a wonderful experience today.
I'm thankful for all the amazing people who worked tirelessly to make sure that this conference could happen today. I'm thankful the weather behaved enough to make sure that we could actually get into the room. And I'm very very thankful to have shared the stage with two wonderful people. Will you give them a big round of applause for me? Well done panel. Thank you. We are very thankful to you as well, Mohammed. Take care everybody.
How many of you got a golden panda? Raise your hand if you got a woah. They'll be able to sell those on eBay or one other marketplace fairly quickly after the the conference. It's already about a hundred and fifty percent of the going price of free. So you'll be able to do do well with that. It's it's fantastic to have you back.
Welcome panelists. We're gonna be talking a little bit today about the students experience. And what it means to have success by design. In other words, tailoring strategies to student needs. I'm really looking forward to the conversation because I think it's wonderful that we're ending with students.
Don't you? Sort of the whole reason why we are all in the room. When I talk about the student experience, I really think about three things. I think about the learning and teaching. I think about the way the students interact with the university. So what many of you in the room would think of as student services.
But increasingly what I think about is belonging. Do the students have a sense of belonging to a community of scholars? And so I thought what I'd do is I'd just share just two or three quick slides with you just as a bit of a backdrop to the panel to sort of stimulate you because what I'm going to do is as we're going through the panel, I'm going to ask the panelists a couple of questions and then I'm going to throw to you for a couple of questions. We've got roving microphones at the back, we've got microphones at the front. Sorry, nobody can ask anything in the middle. No.
No. You can. We'll come to you. If you want to ask a question, just raise your hand really nice or stand up and raise your hand, so the people with the mics can can find you. But, let's have a little bit of a look about what's on my what's on my mind and I'm just clicking the slide and hopefully there we go.
KPMG, the consulting firm did a study this year and I was one of their contributing authors. Little did I know when they interviewed me that I would end up being the headline of the report. But supposedly or allegedly, this is what I said, No other sector except perhaps health would allow so many dead ends in their service architecture. For a lot of our students, we're not really friendly places to be a student. They often find themselves getting conflicting information.
They don't feel like they belong. Our systems aren't integrated. Their learning and teaching is disjointed because there's multiple learning management systems in different courses and different programs. It's not a very elegant experience for them. And in the same report, KPMG along with us as the contributing authors, we came up with what we thought were the six big shifts needed to overcome these challenges to create a more modern student experience.
And this is sort of what we talked about. We talked about going from compliance driven. I'm doing it because it's the way my regulator says I have to do it to student centric. Supplier led, this is the way we're gonna do it because we've always done it this way to service led. Disconnected, everything disconnected and not working well or seamlessly to digitally connected.
Insight poor to insight rich. Fragmented across the university to really partnering with across the university and moving from high cost to high value. The crisis of tuition all around the world, where students are graduating not so much in all parts of the world, but students graduating with more and more student debt or family debt, moving from a conversation of cost to really be a conversation of value. And so that sort of leads us to the importance of having what I describe as a three hundred and sixty degree digital view of our students. And why is that important? Because it allows us to have a comprehensive understanding of student needs.
It allows us to provide personalized support and personalized interventions. It enhances that belonging, that sense of student engagement. It improves resource allocation and perhaps most importantly, it allows us as the leaders of the institution to have data driven decision making. And I have to tell you going back to something I talked about this morning, the more we lean into lifelong learners and embrace lifelong learners, again something that that's very important to you here in the Philippines, the more that three hundred and sixty degree view becomes more important. So that ladies and gentlemen is my backdrop and with that, they wouldn't let me sit close to you by the looks of things.
So, they they separate I have no idea. Apparently, you you you might beat me up or something for bad bad questions. So, please down? Yeah. Couldn't No. I'm a very warm gentle soul Ruina.
Roselle, thank you. So again, what I might do if I can, and Galvin, I'll come to you first. Why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about you and SALT? Hi. So my name is Galvin Lo. I work in Ateneo de Manila University.
I run a center called SALT or the Institute for the Science and Art of Learning and Teaching. And essentially, what we do is we work with different departments and schools within the university that are interested to explore questions or projects related to education technology, innovation, and instructional or learning design. So that's generally our area. Yeah. And it's kind of a fun area and a couple of universities I've been a part of, I recognize what salt does.
You really, on the one hand, drive the boundaries of innovation, sort of what's on the horizon, other hand, you're there with the academics getting them ready to do the best they can and equip them with the know how technology processes, etcetera. Is that a fair summary? To the extent that we can do it. Oh, you're so humble. Look at look at you. Isn't that cute? That's really nice.
So well well done. Okay. Your term, Rizelle. Tell us a bit about your organization. As a program coordinator for instructional technology, I am part of a unit called the Office of Curriculum Development and Instruction.
Under my desk is the learning management system. So I am one of the LMS administrator, wherein I am in charge of capacitating faculty members, including, enabling students in their adoption. Mhmm. So this is one of my main function. Also, adoption of other, solutions like, if I may say, Labster, McGraw, that's under my test.
And it's also hap I just so happen to be the data protection officer of Dataverse. So hopefully it's not all under your desk, it's up in the cloud somewhere, otherwise you may have a big problem. Yeah. My desk would have been clattered all over. Yeah.
What's your favorite LMS? Mhmm. Good question. Of course. We only have one LMS. Oh, really? That's true.
And that is the canvas. Did you hear that everybody? Only one LMS. There we go. Sorry, it's late in the day. I have to have a bit of humor.
Alright. Should we get going with a couple of questions? Alright. First question. Gavin, I'll come to you first and then I'll come to you. Brazil.
How does your how does Salt and your the rest of your institution leverage data to generate actionable insights, something that I just talked about, to improve student engagement and success? So, so I'll start with some somewhat Yeah. Confession. We're pretty new to to Canvas. We, we onboarded in Canvas back in twenty twenty. What do you think? Sorry? Do you like it? It's pretty good.
Good. Okay. Carry carry on. Just kidding. They might evict me out of this room.
But anyway, so, so yeah. So having said that, we we have yet to really fully explore. Like today, we were introduced to a lot of new tools that we haven't touched on yet that will actually allow us to harvest more data and draw insights from the data from the learning management system as it is used. But what we've seen at least in the past few years are teachers really benefiting from the data that comes on the course level. I know it's pretty basic for many of you in the room.
But I've heard so many stories from teachers who have told me that now that things are on an LMS, they now know who needs catching up. They now know who they need to reach out to. And I guess today, we're talking about student success. And I think, more than the big data, I think for us, what matters is how our teachers are able to see students through the data. Even if it's as small as just being able to find out who they need to reach out to, who's lagging behind.
In fact, just this week, I reached out to a student just because, in the SpeedGrader, I saw that the student hasn't been submitting our formative assessments to find out that the student apparently has already dropped, which I wouldn't have been able to know, if I had not looked at these particular, dashboards. Right? So for us, it's a little small scale at the moment. We have yet to explore bigger scales of using, institution wide data, but we we see teachers in their own way looking at data that they have access to on the course level. Yeah. And by the way, actually understanding what a student is doing in the course and being able to proactively reach out to them before they drop, it's not a small thing.
Yeah. It's probably one of the most important things that we can be doing. So good for you. Of what you've seen at the conference, you mentioned you'd seen a lot of new things and you're exploring. Was there anything that you spotted at the conference around data that got you intrigued or or interested? I think the the AI feature that was introduced a while ago that allows us to query, the the data in the platform.
Uh-huh. Obviously, I haven't tried that out. It's a very new thing. But, I think that that will help us. I'm also putting on my Researcher hat here, because there are lots of questions.
And as as we continue to use the LMS and, move forward with the school year, of course, you aren't able to really see what each classroom does. And getting some sense of what students are engaging in, what kinds of learning activities, those are some questions that I'd love to to ask that chatbot when I get the chance to do so. Wonderful. Thank you. Your thoughts? Data, insights, success? First, not data within Canvas first.
If if you don't mind. As our institution, I am Well, I'm proud to say that we have a very robust IT department, wherein most, if not all of our systems are developed in house by our programmers. That being said, we have a mass of data from enrollment report, admission report, student, evaluation, faculty performance. We all have this. So we utilize them, to decide on and to provide a a more directed approach in, let's say, ensuring that the curriculum are well planned, the delivery of instructions are, well monitored, as well as engagement of the students are achieved, the high engagement of students are achieved.
Now in terms of Canvas data, similar to Gavin, at the course level, we acquainted our faculty members in terms of the utilization of the Canvas analytics, of course. We've embedded that in our training, particularly for our newly hired faculty members, which we conduct every semester. At the sub account level, we what we did was to create accounts for the unit heads. We have accounts for the deans, associate deans, college secretaries, even principals, and assistant principals for them to be able to monitor the performance of the course, of the teachers, and even up to the student level. So that we that's where we are right now.
In terms of your last question, if I may Yeah. Jump right on it. What picked my interest? Not just because of this, conference. I've had this, wish list wherein all of the data portals are converted into a real time data visualization dashboard. Yeah.
I know one school have already accomplished that. I'm I'm envious of them that they're able to do that. It's a real time dashboard of all of the metrics that a, let's say, at an institutional level, at the course level, a sub account level, could really hope for. I wouldn't mention the school, but it's it's kind of an envious thing that they're able to do that. And for an institution to do that, you need to have a an IT department be able to appreciate data analytics and, design this, data architecture for you.
Yeah. To be able to provide this real time, reports. Absolutely. And I spoke about that earlier. Are any of those IT heroes here today? I have one, but I'm not sure.
He was at the Is he still? He was at the other, session a while ago, but I'm not sure if he's still here. But he he knows that it's been my my hope that our solution would have that dashboard of analytics. Thank you. That that's wonderful. So, another question.
You ready for another one? Is that okay? So, what, what do you think are the key barriers to adopting more flexible learning models? And how has your institution successfully navigated these challenges to improve the student experience? So what are the barriers and what have you done to get around those barriers? Away you go. So I I hope I don't get in trouble here. You're amongst friends. Everything's fine. Just just But one of the one of the barriers that that immediately, I that immediately comes to mind comes to mind are some policies that universities need to abide by locally.
For example, we have a current standing policy that dictates a certain percentage of on-site classes or face to face classes. And when that policy came out, it came out at a time wherein there are many people in our community who've embraced flipped learning, blended learning. And in a way, the policy forced them to rethink that. Right? Like, can I still do this within the policy, within the measures of the policy? Right? So I'll just give one example of what we do in the School of Education. So One of the ways by which we've been able to do it is to focus on the number of hours that's required, in the policy and to find ways to abide by the number of hours without necessarily having to, let's say, force our graduate students to be coming on to campus every week.
Right? Sorry. I'm not sure if I can say the number of hours or the office. But, yeah. So we've been able to work around that policy that way to think about how, how to meet the minimum requirements of the policy while still trying to do what we believe to be beneficial, most especially for our graduate students, which is, a good mix of asynchronous and synchronous online learning, and on-site learning as well as we know that these three spaces have their affordances. Yeah.
So and maybe just to add to that, just briefly, another barrier that we're also beginning to see, I would argue also connected to these policies is that now that we're back on-site, now that, formally, institutions are back on-site, we're no longer in hybrid, in general, in hybrid or online mode, these kinds of policies sometimes perpetuate the thinking that online learning is inferior to on-site learning. Right? There seems to be an assumption that face to face learning is always better. And I think that's something so it's a challenge in terms of paradigm. I think this is something that we now continue to challenge, because those who believed in that before are now, sort of, get reinforced, that the thinking gets reinforced by policies like this. But then, we do our best to try to introduce other perspectives.
Right? So, yeah. So those two barriers seem to be the utmost barriers that we're seeing right now. And I'm sure they're barriers many of the people in this room recognize. It always, I find that universities, schools, colleges, they're really trapped in the tyranny of conventional wisdom. You know, just because we've always done it this way or that's what the policy says.
We have to continue to do it that way, and I'm really struck by how much self imposed resistance we create. It's got nothing to do with our regulator or the government or the the students or the public. It's the stuff that we create that stands in our way. And on the point that you made about, you know, the assumption that face to face is better teaching than online or distance teaching, my whole career as an educator has taught me that there is great teaching face to face and there's terrible teaching face to face. There's great teaching online or at a distance and there's terrible teaching online at a distance.
The goal is great teaching and it's really about using whatever tools we've got at our disposal to create great teaching. And I've I've spent literally thirty years breaking those debates down of the war between face to face and and online. So, thank you. I think that's something I've run into my entire career. So, what are your thoughts? Barriers and how you've artfully snuck around them? I think our challenges are still there.
I mean, we have not fully successfully over overcame them. But, in terms of, let's say, I think the the the challenge would be rooted in terms of the modality. I hope that some of you would agree that during the pandemic, our main challenge was to put everything online. So when we do that, when we did that during pandemic, you have to have policies in place. We might have been implementing without, that online modality without a policy because it's something that, you know, just abruptly happened.
So what we did during the online thing was to force the use of Canvas. We've been in Canvas since twenty seventeen, but, it's a democratic way of of implementing, like, please use this. It would be very very beneficial to you. But come, twenty twenty, it's a different, you know, ball game. Everyone must use this.
If you have not finished training online, you will not be able to be give you will not be given, teaching load. Now, after the pandemic, we've struggled with, policy in terms of changing it every semester. What modality do we have now? Do we have sync, a sync? And then when we moved back at the, you know, at the campus, our our terminology has changed again. We use on-site, off-site. So it's an ever changing, modality, differentiation.
However, what what's good about this, academic year, our twenty four twenty five, because our policies before changed every semester. First semester, we draft. Second semester, we draft. But what we did for the academic year twenty four twenty five, and hopefully it will be implemented beyond, is that we stick to the hybrid thing. With that, we have specific dates for our asynchronous session.
We plotted exact dates when our asynchronous sessions would be for the entire school year, first semester and second semester. Mhmm. That being said, it is a structured thing, and and students and and faculty members appreciate that. Mhmm. That they don't have to wait if they can change the modality.
It's simply within the policy. Banking on again on the policy, if the policy is, strict in terms of how the LMS will be utilized, It follows that the teachers would implement that in the LMS, and the students will, of course, experience that. So if you have a very supportive, let's say management, if you have a very engaged faculty members, abiding by the policy, I think that the students engagement would soon turn out great. Yeah. Yeah.
I couldn't agree more. I, when I was running RMIT University in Melbourne, we were a blackboard user. It wasn't very popular. So we decided to move to Canvas. And when we actually became, I still believe RMIT is the largest installed university in the southern hemisphere on canvas, but we did something to your point.
My head of learning and teaching came to me and said, Martin, when we put canvas in, we want to define a really fantastic consistent set of minimum standards for the canvas shell for every course. And I said, that sounds great. And she said, but vice chancellor, we now want you to be a little courageous. And I said, well what do you mean? And they said, she said, Belinda was her name, Belinda said, Martin, when we go live semester one next year, I want you not to allow any course to be allowed to be offered unless it meets the minimum canvas shell requirement. So not only did we move in canvas, if the quality of every single course in the university rose because of the combination of me running the university with my wonderful learning and teaching people, and a lot of courage and leadership to make sure we did it, and I am so glad we did.
Because in one move, all boats rose in the tide in terms of the quality for the students and you're talking about similar, similar things. Thank you. Alright, questions from the audience. Do not be shy. I'm sure that, Ed has some prizes for you if you ask a question.
So who's got a question? Raise your hand or stand to your feet. Please don't be shy. There we go. Thank you, sir. Can you just say who you are? Where you're from, and what your question is, please? Good afternoon everyone.
I'm doctor Julius Migrino from the Zambia University College of Medicine. So my question is, actually this is targeted towards Galvin. Right? Galvin. Galvin. Galvin.
Yes. So you mentioned something about the student in, the the preference of modalities. Actually, this this was also touched by, the the other panelists. I forgot their name. But, my question is in terms of student preference.
So at least some loud majority at the start of the transition from from on from on-site to online learning, students were quite excited about the novelty of online learning. When it got back to going from online to face to face, now at least our students or most of our students or at least the loud major the loud minority or majority of our students miss the face to face learning. But this is for the college of medicine, and, of course, the dynamics for the college of medicine might be different from the the, lower education. So my question is, did what's your comment on that? Did do you think that that is something that which is different in terms of student preference, in terms of the novelty of the modality? Kung baga, If it's newer, we are more we are more excited to learn or to do it, but at the end of the day, we go back to our old rules, our old traditional modes of learning. So in short, in English, what the heck? Round of applause for the question.
Thank you. Give a big round of applause. Great question. Okay. Roselle, you go first.
Alright. When you said earlier that there's just, you know, bad teacher face to face, bad teacher online, and there should only be great teachers. So for me, right now, I don't think full on-site can fully be successful anymore. Even though I am not a digital native, our students are. To them, it's like as normal as the air that they breathe.
These are all digital natives. Our students are all digital natives. That the the best balance or the best mix of on-site and off-site experience. That's that's what I believe. That's where we would want to achieve the best.
I mean, in terms of, we we said earlier that there's this notion that on-site is better in terms of whose perception? From the perception of? The teachers, of our admin. But we have to also take into consideration the perception of our students. Right? It's not necessarily just preference, but it is a consideration. It could be a consideration of the outcomes needed to be achieved in that particular program. Just to give you an example.
Our college of dentistry, leveraged on their actual physical, laboratory experience. All other colleges in our university are in hybrid. They are in full face to face, except for their GE core courses. And we allow that because that's their standard. They believe that their their teachers, would be able to deliver the best education for this dentist if they fully immerse themselves in an actual laboratory experience.
So we allow that for that specific, department. So it's not just about the student's preference, but what outcomes necessary to achieve the best student engagement? Fantastic. Gavin? Yeah. So the first thing I want to say is that, it depends. I know everyone wants to say that when answering a question.
In Ateneo, there's been a recent survey that we actually, there was a report that was presented to us. There was a big survey that just happens, I think every three years of graduate and undergraduate students. And in fact, when undergraduate students were asked, they said the same thing. They said that they prefer on-site learning. Right? On the other hand, when graduate students were asked, most of them teachers, practitioners, they said they prefer to be online.
Right? So I start with that, just to nuance our thinking about preference. Because I think that when we think about preference, most probably, these stakeholders are coming from different places and they're often not just coming from learning, from the space of learning. So for example, most probably, I can assume that our graduate students prefer online because of logistics, right? They don't want to breathe the traffic to our campus, right? Drive from their offices or their work spaces, and then, take a five to eight pm class on a weekday, right? In Metro Manila, as, hopefully, our guest, not hopefully, but unfortunately our guests may have experienced, right? On the other hand, undergraduate students will probably want more on-site experiences not just because of classes, right? Because college is not just about the classroom experience, right? It's also about organizations, being with their peers. Informatively, there is a benefit to that. So that's the first thing I want to say.
Right? In terms of preferences, I think that, I guess as educators, our goal is what's best for learning. And usually, when we ask for preferences, we need to unpack if what they really mean is this is best for them for learning. And we often don't do what's asking those kinds of questions. The second thing is that we also know from research in learning sciences that there is a weak correlation between, student preference for learning and what actually helps them learn. Right? So for example, if I tell you that, I love learning through videos, you can assume you might want to just give me videos, right? But the research already tells us that that's not true.
That there are lots of research that point to the fact that, just because a student says that they like this, doesn't always mean it will be helpful for them in learning, right? So again, a second nuance, I think, to thinking about this question. And then, maybe the third thing I want to say is that, at least in our conversations within the community in Ateneo de Manila, we've been trying to nuance conversations about these things so that we don't just focus on time and space, like whether you're physically together or whether you're online or on-site. But we really think about, the kinds of interactions that are happening. So for example, one of the guiding principles we introduced in the SALT Institute are the three Cs, like content, coach, and community. The content, the interaction between students and content.
Poached between the teacher and the student. And community, between among students. Right? So as a Jesuit institution, we believe that, at least for us, our stance is that there should be a good balance between these three Cs. So as a course designer, as an instructor, we think that it's more important to think about where those interactions are happening, whether online or on-site, and the quality of those interactions. Right? Rather than just simply saying, Let's do more online or Let's do more on-site.
Because as was mentioned earlier, it's not as simple as that. So you need to consider context, discipline among other things. Right? So I'm sorry if I did not directly answer your question but I hope these questions help you think about what you're thinking about. Thank you. Yeah.
Nice job. You can give a round of applause. Well done. Very good answers. Unscripted.
I'm increasingly, by the way, talking about omnichannel learning. It isn't even on learning. It isn't even on campus or on, I mean, there are so many different ways. And in English, we have these wonderful expressions like, horses for courses or one size doesn't fit all, you know, it's exactly what you've both been talking about. It really is situational.
Remember, we spend far too much of our time talking about the bricks and mortar of our institution. We should be spending all of our time talking about the clicks and water of our institution. It's that wonderful blending of the digital with the physical to create great teaching. So, good stuff. Another question from the audience.
Another one. Have we got a hand? Anybody want to? And thank you for your question, doctor. Other questions? Ed's got an amazing prize if you have the courage to ask a ask a question. Here we go. Thank you.
Hi. I'm Rich Juan from Far Eastern University. My question to you guys, I'm pumped and, sir, is, how you how do you address the digital divide between your students wherein some students have limited capacity when it comes to devices? And also the digital divide between the digital immigrants and digital natives? Thank you. Oh, that's a question I've been getting since nineteen eighty eight. I love that question.
It comes up in every every conference. Away you go, Rizelle. In terms of the digital divide, we had a very wide gap when we started in twenty twenty. It's just like a lot of, I mean, all, education solutions in the Philippines at that time, we needed to determine the readiness of our students and our faculty members in terms of implementing fully online. At the time, unfortunately, most of our students didn't have laptops.
Right? Similarly, with our many faculty back then. But, today, they may not have laptops, fewer or lesser percentage. But good thing with I'm promoting Canvas now. Good thing with the offline, feature of the mobile app, the, the the student will be able to experience, the LMS LMS even without internet. Now, to address How did we address that? Honestly, in terms of administrative, policies, we offered, how do I say that? Subsidy in terms of purchasing laptops for faculty members.
Salary deduction, something like that. So, internet load, we started with that. So we have that for the faculty members, but unfortunately, we didn't have and we don't have that for students yet. I hope I answered your question. You did.
Well done. Alright, Calvin. What's on your mind? Sure. Just a quick answer. So three things.
The first is, so when I think about questions like this, I often think about, people, process, and technology. So for example, when you talk about people, I think when we think about the digital divide, one of the interesting experiences we've had in supporting these kinds of initiatives within our community is that obviously, there are some faculty members who will be more comfortable with technology in general than others. And then, we talk about faculty members who might be less comfortable with technology as compared to their students. Right? So I think in terms of people, we need to think about supporting faculty members in different ways that there's no one way to support them. So for example, in our transition to Canvas, we did the workshops, the usual workshops that we do.
But then, we made a couple of Canvas coaches available for one on one tutorials. So I literally taught one of our faculty members how to navigate a certain browser. Right? And I know that we shouldn't laugh about those things. And, in fact, in that conversation, I was proud of that faculty member making that effort so that they can reach their students at that time. Right? So in terms of process, I guess, thinking about differentiating how we support faculty so that no faculty is left behind in the same way that we talk about no student left behind.
The second thing is about technology. I think that in Ateneo, if you're you're an undergraduate student and you need to borrow a device, there are provisions for that. We also have spaces on campus where they can access the internet and we encourage them to use those spaces so students maximize that, most especially if they have, let's say, intermittent connectivity at home. And then, the third thing is about process. Right? That one of the policy mechanisms that we have in place for equity and for allowing for these things to be considered is, in our policy, we ask teachers not to ask students to do something, to do a requirement.
So requirement due dates should be at least a week from the point of announcement, right? So it's a clear policy that we try to follow within the college. And so the the the time element at least allows our students to find that space and opportunity to participate. So I hope that helped. It's wonderful. And I've perhaps just got a little bit of a provocation for you when it comes to the digital divide and and access.
When I was running education products for Microsoft, I partnered with the Gates Foundation to do quite a lot of research as to what the real power of technology was for education globally in all parts of the world. We spent a lot of money, we spent a lot of time. And when we boiled it all down, we realized the great promise of technology was to open up access to high quality learning to more people on the planet than could be open up in any other way. It might be worth us from time to time not fixating on what the technology can't do for everybody and instead start realizing what technology has done to open up high quality learning and teaching for people often for free in some of the edges of our communities and societies and places in the world where they never would have got access to high quality education if it wasn't for technology. Now that being said, the really smart technology providers are not running away from questions of equity.
They're building their technology to work well offline when the internet isn't available. They're doubling down on a mobile first platform so that high quality experiences can be rendered to smartphones, Java feature phones, and other technology devices. As you think about the education technology that you want to deploy, go look for those EdTech companies that treat access and equity seriously. Both in the way that they deploy the technologies, but the way that they help people who might be challenged in using technology to get the most out of it. Because my whole time in this industry, I can tell you every time we think or every time I work with a high quality EdTech customer, that's one of the first things we talk about.
And the real challenge is how do you not hold everybody back while you're doing the best you possibly can to open yourselves up to as many as you possibly can. We've got time for one last question. Be fair to say we talked quite a lot about generative AI at this conference. Institution, what are you most excited about doing for your students with generative AI and how do you do that in a fair and equitable way? So thank you for that question, as they say in the Miss Universe. It's a pretty packed question.
I'll be honest that, climate wise, of course, it's a mix of those who are excited about it, while those who are very critical and skeptical about it, they would shun away from it. In our conversations in the university, we try to take a stance of measured enthusiasm, where we want to be excited about things but then, we need to be critical about certain things as well, most especially ethical considerations. So having said that though, at least with what we've seen, we really look forward to the promise of AI to reach students who need the extra help. I think it's a very common problem across different universities and schools like that. You have one teacher as to, let's say, thirty students or even more students probably in some classes.
And it doesn't financially and sustainably, it doesn't feel like that will change much. Right? But we also know that in that whole class size environment, there are students who fall behind. And the teacher, the one teacher that's assigned to that class may not always be there to support those students. I don't know what it will look like yet on Canvas, and I'm excited to find out. But I think if ever there's an impact that I hope AI can make, I think that's one of the things that we're excited about.
Oh, I'm excited. I could feel my body tingle when you were talking about that. That's really, really wonderful. Rizelle? Right now in the University of the East, we have yet to finalize we are in the process of finalizing our AI acceptable use policy. Even without that policy, I believe it was you said with, earlier this morning.
Even without the policy, our teachers are already using it, and our students are using it. So that being said, we have to be very careful in crafting that policy. It should not be limiting. It should be empowering. Right? At the moment, we are, if you may say, drumming up the excitement by creating forums and conversations and webinars to introduce what, Gen AI can do for faculty members in terms of course design, assessment, personalized learning, and, up to the level of making making them understand how, Gen AI, particularly for example, Chargebee, can improve their productivity or their task, administrative task.
That's, I think, Rafin said, like, you you capitalize on productivity, creativity. Right? So that's what we wanna hope for. That faculty members would understand that Gen AI, Chargebee, Dall e are not Gen AI, Chargebee, DALL E are not just tools that they can, you know, utilize at a whim. It would help them, in their, adversative task, and it would make them it would have better opportunities for creativity that they can apply in their responsibilities as teachers. That's what we are very excited for.
Why? Martin, may I just just very quickly? I wanna say though that what we are least excited about is how AI might also diminish thinking, among our students. And we're very careful about that. We're very careful about the line, between, students using AI to make things more efficient, and where AI is beginning to replace activities that will actually benefit their thinking and development. So I think that's an important nuance for us. So I just wanted to put that on the table.
Yeah. No. I I agree. So folks, we're just about done. In fact, I've got one minute and forty five seconds left.
But it's Friday afternoon, we've got the weekend ahead, and one of the things that I've been doing a lot of reading about recently is the power of thankfulness. So here we are on a Friday afternoon, we're about to have a networking event. I want you all just to look back on the week, the month, the day, this conference and just think of one thing that you're thankful for in your life. Just spend a moment to think of one thing that you're thankful for and send that energy off somewhere. Because all the energy, all the research shows that actually taking a moment in your day to be thankful for what we have and what I wanted to say in that exercise is I'm thankful to Instructure, I'm thankful to all of you for hosting me in Manila and giving me such a wonderful experience today.
I'm thankful for all the amazing people who worked tirelessly to make sure that this conference could happen today. I'm thankful the weather behaved enough to make sure that we could actually get into the room. And I'm very very thankful to have shared the stage with two wonderful people. Will you give them a big round of applause for me? Well done panel. Thank you. We are very thankful to you as well, Mohammed. Take care everybody.
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