Unizin at UCI
As part of our commitment to enhancing educational outcomes and fostering an environment of continuous improvement, UCI has joined forces with the non-profit Unizin consortium, alongside 13 other distinguished R1 public universities. Launched in September 2023, this strategic partnership leverages the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) to bring to life an array of innovative dashboards and applications designed to support our faculty, staff, and researchers. By intertwining student and learning data through a sophisticated series of Context and Event stores, the UDP acts as the backbone for tools like ScoreShare, Spark, and the LTI Usage Dashboard. Our mission is clear: to equip instructors with secure, insightful access to learning data for their classes, thereby paving the way for enriched educational experiences across campus.
Learn more about Unizin or read the UCI press rlease about the Unizin partnership.
Who's involved from UCI?
The key members of UCI leadership involved in the Unizin partnership are:
| Name | Title | Board Member? | Data Steward? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Dennin | Professor of Physics & Astronomgy, Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning, Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education | ||
| Tom Andriola | Vice Chancellor for Information, Technology & Data | ||
| Patricia Morales | Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management |
On the IT side, two groups collaborate to integrate and maintain the Unizin Data Platform:
- OIT Student Data Warehouse, under the leadership of Valerie Jones, Director, OIT Data & Information Management
- Astrud Reed, SDW Community of Practice Manager, serves as a member of the Unizin Teaching & Learning Advisory Group Leadership Team
- OIT Student Success Technologies, under the leadership of Briandy Walden, Acting Director, OIT Student & Academic Services
The Compass Teaching & Learning Analytics project is responsible for leveraging the UDP through a variety of dashboards, reports, and web applications. TLA acts as the central organizing and contact point for questions about Unizin and accessing the UDP, and meets routinely with staff from Unizin to help execute on our vision for its use.
UDP in Action at UCI
There are several active projects leveraging the Unizin Data Platform directly:
UCI Spark
Provides students with a personalized student success dashboard and interesting Canvas usage visualizations.
Compass ScoreShare
Provides advisors with a comprehensive view of student performance in Canvas, including how students are performing in their courses, which students are at risk, and how performance has changed over time.
LTI Usage
Provides information about how often LTI tools are used in Canvas, which tools are most popular, and how usage has changed over time.
Canvas Adoption
Provides information about the adoption of Canvas, including how many courses are using Canvas, visualizations around when instructors create and publish spaces, and how usage has changed over time.
LMS Usage
Provides feature-level usage information for Canvas, including how often students are using the LMS, which features are most popular, and how usage has changed over time.
Unizin & UDP Data
Provides several dashboards providing access to key information from the UDP.
Accessing the UDP
The Canvas data contained in the UDP is a rich store of student learning data, but this extensive data store has tight security controls to ensure that this data is safe and secure. However, its importance as a research resource cannot be overstated, and the Office of Information Technology is supporting several methods of accessing the UDP:
If you need access to data stored in the Unizin Data Platform (UDP), please contact the Compass TLA team attlanalytics-support@uci.edu to get started.
Once you email us, we'll reach out to discuss your data needs and determine the best approach to get you the data you need.
This could include:
- Partnering to create a report or dashboard in Tableau
- Providing a one-time data extract
In the future, we'll be working to provide secure, self-service access to the UDP for instructors to access data for their own course spaces. Stay tuned for more information!
Learning the UDP: Synthetic Data
In mid-2024, Unizin began offering a new service, Synthetic Data, to member institutions. This service provides a statistically similar data set to the UDP, but with all real student data removed. This data set is intended to be used for training purposes, allowing instructors and staff to learn how to use the UDP and explore its capabilities without the risk of exposing real student data.
The TLA team is still exploring how to best leverage Synthetic Data for training purposes, and will provide more information as it becomes available. If you're interested in learning more about Synthetic Data, please contact us attlanalytics-support@uci.edu
"From a macro perspective, we now have access to the largest pool of aggregated learning data ever assembled to look deeply into the many facets and factors that impact learning outcomes. At the same time, Unizin tools enable us to get very granular with our data to provide faculty and students actionable insights about student learning patterns, trends and behaviors that can benefit them for a lifetime."
— Michael Dennin, Vice Provost, Teaching & Learning; Dean, Undergraduate Education, UCI
News and Updates
- New LMS Usage dashboard based on UDP launched2024-04-29
- UCI joins Unizin consortium2023-06-15