The rapid pace of technological advancement is having a profound effect on higher education and reshaping the ways in which students learn and in which universities deliver academic content. In response to this exciting, but challenging, educational environment a number of leading research universities have come together to form Unizin, an inter-university technology service that supports teaching and learning in the modern digital landscape.

At its core, Unizin is a consortium of higher education institutions working to shape an efficient and effective destiny for today’s higher education learning environment.  Unizin’s founding partners are Colorado State University, Indiana University, the University of Florida and the University of Michigan.

Unizin has been created to help member universities and subscribers customize and unify a wide range of tools for online learning and digital course management. It will support services for educational content, software platforms, and analytics.

Unizin is membership-based and university owned. It is funded by member investments and governed by those institutions as a not-for-profit service operator. Unizin members can use the service for a range of modern instruction scenarios, including in-person courses, online courses, massive open online courses (MOOCs), or flipped classrooms (in which lectures are viewed by students at home, and in-class time is for discussion or projects). 

Higher education needs Unizin for several reasons:

1. To manage the content our faculty and students create.
2. To share this content across universities at significant cost savings to all.
3. To foster interoperability among the various systems for teaching and learning, and break down the barriers that exist between platforms.
4. To facilitate learning analytics in order to improve student outcomes.

As educational content, software systems, and learner analytics become increasingly digital, it is important that universities have the ability to quickly grow and adapt. Unizin is a strategic move by universities to assert greater control and influence over the digital learning landscape than would otherwise be possible by any single institution.

Colorado State University, Indiana University, University of Florida, and University of Michigan were the first institutions to join and this list now includes the University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, Penn State, Ohio State, Colorado State, and Oregon State. These founding members will form the founding board for Unizin.

Unizin’s founding partners are united by a common set of values regarding the need for a service such as Unizin, as well as a willingness to make a financial commitment to the project. The founding partners will continue to actively seek out other institutions that share these values and are willing to make a financial commitment to Unizin. In addition, the Unizin business model eventually will allow institutions to subscribe to its services and products.

Unizin will have a board of directors, comprising representatives from each founding university that makes a significant financial investment.

• Instructors. They will be able to share their own teaching content and gain access to a repository of shared digital content, from campus colleagues and others at member institutions. Unizin will allow them to assemble and deliver this content to students in a range of ways. Likewise, analytics will allow for clearer assessments of student learning.

• Students. Learners will have access to the materials and thinking of the best minds in their fields. Instructors will be able to approach and assess learning in new ways – ways that reflect digital lifestyles and learning, and that take individual needs and experiences into account.

• Instructional technologists and support staff. They will gain access to a large and growing toolkit to help faculty transform and improve their teaching practice. Flexibility and adaptability of the environment will not only ease the job, but also ensure greater faculty support.

Member schools had access to Canvas licenses in late summer 2014. Here at the University of Iowa, we are planning pilot projects for summer and fall 2015.  More news on that to come.

Unizin staff are located in Austin, Texas.