C21U Blog

The Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is one of the founding members of the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC), whose mission is to create a trusted, distributed, and shared infrastructure that becomes the standard for issuing, storing, displaying, and verifying digital academic credentials.

This year, as C21U graduate research assistants, we were tasked with researching and designing initial concepts for a nascent but quickly-developing CNE project: the Georgia Tech atrium. As a physical gathering space and gateway to both in-person and digital GT services—such as career counseling, exploring GT credentials, and networking—the GTatrium™ is intended to expand the possibility for individuals to experience Georgia Tech beyond Atlanta.

With the start of fall semester, C21U welcomes Ashok Goel to the team in the role of chief scientist. Goel will lead C21U's research agenda, with a focus on education innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI). He will work in tandem with the comprehensive C21U unit, including the core research and digital learning technology teams, the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) Program Office, as well as our new sister unit, the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC). 

What does it mean to be Deliberately Innovative? On April 11, Georgia Tech’s Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) Program Office partnered with the Center for Deliberate Innovation (CDI) to host an information session and workshop focused on the concept and process of Deliberate Innovation.

What is Service Design?

I’ll admit, I’m new to service design. I first became familiar with the term a few months ago when a Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) graduate researcher, Lindsay Kelly, introduced me to the concept. Lindsay convinced C21U to take service design for a spin, and co-facilitated a workshop with me in February. The following post is my attempt to explain service design to others in higher education who – like me – were unaware of its potential. 

On February 7, C21U hosted a seminar titled “Extended Reality (XR) for Teaching and Learning.” XR refers to real-and-virtual combined environments, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). We invited speakers from four teams across Georgia Tech’s campus to discuss projects currently underway throughout the Institute, and to discuss the future of XR in education.

During the Summer of 2018, the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) embarked on a journey to introduce Blockcerts at Georgia Tech. Blockcerts are blockchain-powered academic credentials, housed on a mobile application, that are decentralized, secure, and verified.  

A funny thing happens as online learning scales. At first, learning scales by breaking the requirement for collocated meetings, allowing students to attend live lectures via telepresence from anywhere in the world.

The Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Modern Languages, in collaboration with the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC), recently announced the launch of a set of Master of Science programs in language, culture, and media skills, with f

Every year, the C21U research team hosts a group of students as part of Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program. VIP brings students with diverse backgrounds together to work closely with faculty on cutting edge research.

Over the past few weeks, several of us in C21U have been working with others at Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE), Georgia State University (GSU), the University System of Georgia (USG), and USG eCampus to plan a series of events on “precision academics.” Precision academics is a relatively new term – we’re using it to describe technology-enabled, data-informed, and empirically-evidenced instruction.

This blog post originally appeared on the Georgia Tech Canvas Blog and is featured here in our Canvas Spotlight.

On April 25, 129 educational innovators from around the world gathered in Scottsdale, Arizona to discuss the future of education. The event fostered a great deal of conversation and collaboration among participants due to its “unconference” format in which the agenda, speakers, and topics of discussion were determined throughout the conference proceedings.

So, what was this particular “unconference” experience like for participants? How would these conversations unfold? I traveled to Scottsdale to find out.

This blog post was originally shared on http://educationcommissionblog.gatech.edu/. 

In the last couple of months, I have had the opportunity to speak to groups of Engineering Education Researchers. That doesn’t happen often to me, and I feel very fortunate to get that chance.

This blog post was originally shared on http://educationcommissionblog.gatech.edu/. 

Judging from recent books, articles, and editorials, higher education is poised for a cataclysmic collapse. There is a considerable body of opinion that systemic problems such as runaway tuition, student debt, low graduation rates and pervasive elitism are so wired into the collective culture of college faculty and administrators that only drastic and disruptive measures can break through institutional logjams.

In fact, this list barely scratches the surface.