>> Hi, everybody, and welcome to Happy Hour. Mike Hofherr, Chief Information Officer and Vice President at The Ohio State University. Today, I am joined by Cory Tressler. Corry Tressler is our Director of Learning Programs in the Office of Distance Education and eLearning, and we're going to be talking about Digital Flagship.

So Cory, welcome.
>> Hi, thanks for having me.
>> Thanks for being here. Long time that we wanted to talk about this. I think we've been trying to schedule this since November, so we're glad to finally get you in on the schedule. So we always start this out with what are we drinking?

And so Cory, what are we drinking?
>> We are drinking a strawberry and banana smoothie from Northstar. Very good smoothie, nice and fresh.
>> Delicious. Why Northstar? I love Northstar.
>> Good.
>> Why not Northstar? It's just so good.
>> It is good. Excellent. We can get right into it.

So Digital Flagship. Lot of news, lot of excitement at the university around this program. Our partnership with Apple and how we're bringing technology and coding, among other things to the campus. So you wanna give an overview, Cory on what those three main areas are and how we're diving into it?

Sure, so the three main areas are student technology, coding, and then, enterprise app development. And on the student technology side, we're really for the first time here at Ohio State looking at providing students with hardware in the form of an iPad Pro. We're gonna start all first year students starting in Autumn of 18.

They'll get an iPad Pro package with the Apple Pencil, with the smart keyboard, with a case, with a suite of apps. And then, we'll provide them learning sort of resources on how to utilize those in an academic and professional setting, sort of to raise their bar of technology use in general.

Along with that we're working with faculty on how faculty can engage these into their courses so we started Digital Flagship educator's cohort which will kick off in may, and those will be the first faculty to sorta lead us through this. What does it mean in a one to one iPad setting and higher ed scenario as we star to scale this up to all students as we move forward?


>> Can you talk a little bit about how many faculty we had apply and how many we're taking out? Maybe those decisions
>> Yep, yep, so we made an open call to faculty that primarily teach in the gen ed 1,000, 2,000 level courses. Because it will be the first year students that receive the iPads, so those are traditionally those types of courses.

But we had almost 200 responses, very nice response, very engaging excited faculty out there. We are going to target about a hundred and we're working with their departments. So we were looking at are their others from that same department that applied. Could we create sort of cohorts within the cohort, sort of learning communities that could work together and sort of support each other.

Sort of looking at that, looking at the regional campuses because we're also deploying to every Ohio state campus, not just centrally here in Columbus to wanna explore there. We also had a large number of advisers apply because they teach the first year survey course. So we are looking at how we can engage with them so we're looking a cohort in May that will be close to 100 instructors, and then, also looking at these smaller populations like advisers and departments and seeing how we can scale that an move forward to impact as many people as possible and then.

We're also planning at the registered iPad sections of some of these courses for the fall, and then, end of the spring of 19 so that any student with an iPad can engage with those courses and start integrating in different ways. So that's what the student technology piece. The next piece is coding, and we started at some workshops partnering with Apple and their swift language swift is really interesting language because it's a nice entry level language.

I won't say it's easy to learn. But there's less barriers of entry and then, opens you up to other languages down the road. So we're offering workshops for faculty, staff and students now. But ultimately, we wanna start looking at online curriculum and how we can do more skills-based courses so that students outside of just computer science students can get access to this type of information and explore, learn about how technology works in a new way.

Computational thinking, things like that, and then, hopefully leading to a credential that's again more skills based rather than credit based credentialing
>> And we've run one coding workshop since we've launched the new flagship or two?
>> We've run three.
>> Three.
>> Three on the Columbus campus and one on Mansfield campus, and then, we have scheduled throughout the rest of the semester


>> Just rough numbers how many people?
>> About 100 already that have attended and again faculty staff students are mix.
>> And then, I think we are really interesting we are talking about coding for everyone right and it's not just coding for a set group of people right because we are giving our students a piece of technology, the iPad, on which Apple has a program with coding, sort of workshop so we're gonna deploy that as well to all the students at Ohio state.


>> Correct, they have a really great app called Swift Playgrounds that lays that foundation through a sort of a gamified app if you will so that students that have never had a computer science course or explored coding can start to get the basics of the language and how things work through this sort of, again, gamified experience.

And then, lead to these more developed courses that get a little bit higher level thinking.
>> So Cory, the third pieces is enterprise app development or app development. Let's just dive a little bit into that cuz we've already seen some really cool things come out of that and what that can mean.


>> Yeah, that's really exciting, and there's sort of two phases of it. The first phase is partnering with Apple and looking at just that, enterprise at development in a new way here locally. So as we have areas of need or ideas within the OSU community that can affect the greatest number of students or faculty or staff or whatever the idea entails, we can now partner with Apple on taking those ideas from conception to reality.

And what a mobile experience might look like to ease that workflow, make us more efficient, make us more effective what have you. In just a few weeks ago, we took a group of students, staff member from the first year experience office and from the office of student life, and we explored what the student experience looks like from day one.

From when they get here to orientation, what is their experience look like? What's the information flow? We know it's a little bit overwhelming cuz we're pretty big. We have a lot of resources. How can we help with that? So that was what this first app is looking to do.

We want to have it ready for May as we look to deploy. It's really exciting. It also includes some academic planner stuff, more personal planner tool, which has been hugely popular thus far with students that have seen it. So we're really excited about that aspect of it because it gives us a new set of talent to work with at Apple these experts on short of app development and the mobile experience for our teams here to work with and develop these things.

And then, the second component is this physical space a design lab here at the Columbus campus that students can bring their ideas to and talk with experts on not only the coding curriculum but also their own app ideas and that mean to take it to market. It's a way to engage with the community.

Central Ohio is really popular in the tech world right now. How can we engage that into the OSU Community and vice versa? And then, also, we're looking at how we engage with the regional campuses too. And we're thinking some really interesting things there.
>> I've heard some of those interesting ideas.

I think we should get quick to marketing. Coin the term, iPad. Before we lose out to Winnebago and Apple on that.
>> Yes.
>> Cory, this is such a big initiative and so impactful on so many levels to the university and how it aligns to our strategic plan.

But I think for those people listening, it's really important that we sort of lay some framework or some a quick groundwork that this wasn't the first thing we did, right. There's been a natural progression over the course of four, five, six years that have let us to this really big thing.

I just wanna talk a little bit about that from where we're starting in digital first and sort of where we are today in some sort of quick summary fashion.
>> Sure. And it's been a lot of really fun and exciting work, and it really started in digital first in 2012, starting to work and engage with faculty in a new way, knowing that our students are bringing iPhones and Androids and mobile devices with them to school.

Again, this is six years ago. We know that was happening then. It's obviously happening now at great scale. How can we look at content in the form of eBooks or courses or videos, or just how you create resources for students? That was sort of the start. Through that a lot of testing and evaluating, we did grants where we had our good friend now Dr. Nicole Craft got it iPad classroom.

We did evaluation and research based on there. Had other projects. Ones that went to Ethiopia, and we learned a lot. Out of that came the Affordable Learning Exchange that's doing amazing work. Has already saved students I believe three million dollars as of this semester. So that's sort of an affordable textbook initiative and open education resource initiative.

We've done a number of public online courses, faculty engagement projects, a lot of things and a lot of work internally and throughout the network of Ohio state. It sort of naturally progressed to this where now we are ready. I think in a lot of ways we have a great MLS now.

We have a lot of just amazing centralized services that we provide, a little differently than we did six years ago. We've learned a lot on how to scale professional learning to faculty. So as we look to engage this next step with Digital Flagship, it's really exciting that we've done a lot of work and created amazing relationships throughout the entire university.

That now can all have this new massive project to work on together. It's really exciting.
>> So Cory, you mentioned the word research, and I know we're doing a lot of research but also the program that we're building is based on research and what we're doing. So can you just about what that means when we say that?


>> Sure, so on our side, for about six years, we've been doing a lot of evaluative research. Sort of implementing a thing like an iPad, or an e-book. And evaluating what the student reaction and faculty reaction is to that. And also looking a little bit at performance, making sure that we're not doing anything that is detrimental to the student.

But really looking at it from the evaluative standpoint on the research side to make ourselves better. While at the same time since Dr. Shawna Jaggers has joined our team, we've actually started looking at research a little differently on student success. How can we integrate an eBook or an open education research and look at, does it actually potentially enhance the opportunity for success for students?

Looking at sort of a lit review of all the research that's been done on iPad thus far and saying, okay, here's the themes that have come out of that research. And now, being us to take those themes and put them into action with this initiative has been huge.

And then, sort of going forward, the opportunity for research is massive, because in reality nobody has done this on this scale in higher education. So for OSU an R1 institution, sky is the limit, and the interest from the department, grad students and professors has been huge on, okay, I wanna do, look at chemistry education in light of the iPad or teacher prep education in light of the iPad.

So that's super exciting to have that opportunity ahead of us.
>> I think it's a really important point. Again, I hear a lot of times from a faculty member x or y, I shut off all my devices or I tell people to close their laptops. And that's done on nothing but assertion that they know what's right.

We're doing this on delimited but peer reviewed research that's out there in the field. So just to switch gears a little bit, one of the things I'm really excited about, and I think not only Ohio State. But the Columbus region is excited about, is Digital Flagships role in workforce development.


>> If we're gonna move, folks, this economy, how are we gonna train them to participate in this new economy? And so can you talk a little bit about the digital literaturely needs in the workplace, and how the digital life should get help with our career readiness of our students?


>> Absolutely, and that's sort of the epicenter of this whole initiative. It's about the student experience. But it's about preparing them for the world that's around them. And one of those elements as we know come to us from very different backgrounds. They may have a K-12 experience, high rich technology integration and everybody gets a laptop or an iPad, and they are getting computer science in different sort of courses to go along with that.

To students, they don't get any of that. We are also noticing sort of our students when they get to us are really great at certain aspects of technology and they have no fear of technology in the sense. But at the same time, they are not at the level of professionalism maybe with collaboration via technology or communication, time management, literacy and, of course, privacy and online security.

This is where we have an opportunity to present this information and new learning opportunities for our students to explore that, so that when they do go to market and go into their careers, they are that much more employable because they have a better background in coding. Or they have a better background in time management, and they can show that, that I went to Ohio state, and yes, I had some opportunities to talk to faculties and with also professionals about what life balance.

Because that's a big part of this is. There isn't really a traditional 5 o'clock anymore.
>> Mm-hm.
>> In the real world now because you're constantly connected to either e-mail or other forms of communication or your work will flow over past those normal working hours.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Instead of say twenty, thirty years ago.

We have to talk to our students about themselves, their wellness side of you need to figure out your own work life balance and what will work for you. And let them know it's okay to turn it off. It's okay to take time away from all this technology but there's so many efficiencies and effectiveness through that workflow that we're all used to.

Managing our outlook calendars things like that, that's time management. Responding properly to email, that's professional communication. It's a really interesting opportunity to, again, engage with students differently than we've ever done before. And really, in higher ed in general. So that's gonna be a focus of a lot of our work, especially at the beginning as to getting them integrated into that, and what these things mean.


>> Yeah.
>> One also really interesting thing that we hear a lot from faculty, but also academic affairs. When students get here as first year students, they're really reluctant to help seek, to go help ask questions, because maybe they're intimidated by our scale. They might be not used to the structure of our academic life and lectures and sort of the way we deliver content.

So they're a little intimidated that first year. By the time, they're seniors that's gone. They're in the flow. I think technology and this resource and talking about digital literacy and talking about that collaboration and communications skill development. Maybe it takes that barrier away down a little bit earlier.

So students are comfortable with talking with their professor or emailing them or things like that sooner which could then help them academically their entire time they're here.
>> Yeah, and I think you've more than answer the question but as you could hear from all these answers, this isn't a device initiative.

This is much bigger than giving students a piece of technology, right.
>> Yeah, this is about the student as a whole in their lives.
>> We announced this effort back in November. We've learned a lot since November, it's now the end of February. What have we learned? Or what are some of the exciting things that You're looking forward to.

I know your team is heads-down trying to figure out how we're going to hand out over 10,500 iPads over the summer. Just talk us through a couple of the exciting things that you're starting to see.
>> The pilot groups have been really interesting, and they align to the valuative work we've done the last few years in that you'll get a few students that are extremely passionate about the PC world or extremely passionate about android.

And they're like, okay, why iPad, why Apple? To a student that all goes away within about 48 hours because if once they start to see these resources, start to use the iPad taking notes, managing their time, doing all of this stuff. What happens is the laptop now becomes a desktop in their residence hall or their dorm, and now iPad is what they take on campus.

And that creates some really exciting scenarios because I've seen computer science students that are doing coding for C++ or other things directly on the iPad, which I. We didn't provide them training on that. But they're finding these answers right away. And really quickly. And it's really, that's super exciting.

But I also think this sort of mobile act development how we can engage with the community of Ohio State. Again, being so big. What's fun for me is always interaction with the people. We have such great people at Ohio State. And we have so many amazing services and resources available to our students.

Being able to promote some of those in a new way is a lot of fun. So that's what keeps me energized. It's like okay, students are gonna get the access to this a little bit faster. And Dr. Jay and student life are gonna be able to do this because of that.

That's really a lot of fun.
>> I gotta say some cool things the other day about how students are taking notes on the iPad.
>> Yeah. Just amazing stuff, and I think if you printed some of these things out and framed them, they would be works of art, right?


>> They're beautiful, color code and draw your attention when you're studying back to this point that may have been confusing, things like that, and actually recording audio into it.
>> Or pictures or images. I saw one girl was taking pictures of slides and putting input notes, so just really cool stuff.

More and more of those stories will come out. So Cory, we always like to end with something fun. And so two fun facts about Cory. One is in the next few days on top of running our Digital Flagship Initiative. He's gonna be a dad for the second time with twins.


>> Twins.
>> So if you see him around-
>> And he looks a little tired, you know why. But the other cool thing that Cory does here is teaching and has co-taught a British invasion course. With Dr Tim Gerber for a couple years and now you're teaching it on your own.


>> Yeah, so for five years now I've taught it with Dr Gerber. He's now Professor Emeritus.
>> He's retired, as we like to say.
>> An amazing individual.
>> Tell us a little about your British Invasion.
>> Yeah, so British Invasion is a music course that studies the 1960s rock, the British invasion music of that time period, and its impacts on society in general but specifically American society.

But also how American society of say the 1950s, the early rock and roll, actually influenced them. And how were this sort of cross pollination and all of this different genres of music, and The Beatles influencing, even blues acts and things like that, and blues acts influencing them first.

And then, we have the Rolling Stones in there, and you have Eric Clapton, and all of this music that's just so meaningful to my life. And to have a chance to talk to the next generation of students about that, and to keep that music alive. It's also a study abroad course.

So we've taught it. This will be the sixth year. I went abroad with him for the past three. We go to London. We stop in Oxford for the day, but we really spend a lot of the time in Liverpool, where the Beatles grew up. We've met a lot of people that have grown up with the Beatles, that were childhood friends.

We know and have a really good relationship with the owner of the Cavern Club, which is where they started out in Liverpool and because famous. It's just a lot of really amazing experiences and relationships through that. And it's just, it's a really cool opportunity to have that here at Ohio State.

It's just amazing. This week actually I met a group that's going to go this year. Another round of students we're planning out this year's class.
>> I can't wait to see what you do with that when all your kids have iPads.
>> Corey, thanks again for joining me today.

I'm Mike Hoffer Vice President and Chief Information officer. And thanks for having a drink in
>> Thank you very much.