Initiatives

Unizin at Indiana University

Higher education institutions face critical issues, from learner success to access to affordability. The Unizin consortium provides solutions in three areas: data and analytics, learning environment, and content.

Students studying together while sitting on the grass outside an IU Bloomington campus building

Unizin

Data and analytics

When students and teachers use digital services, the footprints they leave behind can be examined to gain insight into the way we teach and learn. Just as human behavior is studied in physical classrooms, it can be studied in online learning environments.

Unizin Data Platform

The Unizin Data Platform combines digital footprints created in services such as Canvas, Engage, and Top Hat, enabling new and exciting discoveries. By examining learner and instructor behavior across multiple environments, researchers can discover answers to complex questions, like:

  • Do students who annotate their etext in Engage more often tend to earn higher grades in Canvas?
  • Do students who have more consistent participation in Top Hat questions perform better on exams in Canvas?
  • When instructors annotate their etext in Engage, do students tend to earn higher grades in Canvas? (The answer is yes!)

The Unizin Data Platform will also combine the digital footprints generated across the entire consortium, enabling research across institutions of varying sizes, economies, and cultures. While these footprints will be removed from the original context for privacy purposes, they will be invaluable resources for studying learning behavior.

ManyClasses logo

ManyClasses

ManyClasses, led by a team of researchers at Indiana University, is a collaborative research project investigating the generalizability of educational interventions in real classrooms. ManyClasses “will examine the same research question in dozens of contexts, spanning a range of courses, institutions, formats, and student populations,” as enabled by the collaborative network of institutions in the Unizin consortium. For more information, visit manyclasses.org.