Today, 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.
Unizin tools and services provide a common infrastructure based on open standards, helping universities engage, educate, and inspire all students.
In June 2014, Indiana University formed Unizin through a partnership with Colorado State University, University of Florida, and University of Michigan.
Additional founding members included The Ohio State University, University of Iowa, Pennsylvania State University, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Oregon State University, and University of Nebraska.
The current members include:
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.
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:
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.
Unizin contracts with technology vendors for consortium-wide service availability, allowing for lower costs, advocacy for member institutions, and access to valuable data necessary for research.
For example, all Unizin members have access to Canvas, a learning management system chosen “based on [member institution’s] collective experience using various learning management systems and due to the Canvas team’s commitment to implementing open standards”.
IU's Unizin membership also provides access to the services listed below:
The Unizin consortium is committed to providing accessible, high-quality course materials at lower costs, while preserving faculty choice. Because Unizin negotiates with publishers for lower-cost materials, consortium members are able to offer etexts at significant price cuts to students.
By operating Engage, Unizin’s - and IU eTexts' - eReader service, the consortium provides not only a platform for hosting publisher content, but also open educational resources (OERs), including no-cost etexts.
Additionally, Unizin members have access to Pressbooks: a service that, at IU, allows anyone at the institution to author their own content (such as etexts), or to import, customize, and share OERs and faculty-produced materials, content licenses permitting.
