University of Arizona - Transforming the Student Experience

The center of a student's experience is connected by all the digital tools that students must use throughout their engagement with their institution - third party applications, university websites and enterprise systems. Institutions often train, upgrade, enhance and teach individual tools and miss the opportunity to consider the entirety of students' experience within this ecosystem. Traversing the ecosystem leaves students frustrated, exhausted and with a sense that the institution doesn't care enough about them as individuals to spend time and effort to help them be successful in their academic journeys. 

The University of Arizona is creating a digital hub - a command center - for students to navigate their engagement with the university.  Critical to this creation and central to user-centered design philosophies is understanding and incorporating student voice and student mindsets to drive prioritization, organization and inclusion of important features that feel intuitive, timely and outcome-focused.  By personalizing the content and contexts a student interacts with in this hub, students "trip" over the things they need when they need them naturally, with a bonus of helping them develop heuristics and behavioral patterns necessary to be successful  as students and as emerging adults. 

Topics in this session include insights learned through student research and forums, technical aspects of formulating the Student Hub solution (architectural components, system integration, single sign-on, visual design, and data platform strategy). This work involves digital transformation at an enterprise scale and requires collaboration across university partner organizations.  

This session is relevant to technology leaders and departmental leaders whose organizations contribute to their institution's technology ecosystem.