Aria Chernik (Duke University) on A Vision for Continuous Innovation in Higher Ed

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Aria Chernik to discuss the transformative role of technology in creating personalized, learner-centered experiences while driving the shift towards lifelong learning

Transcript

Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Aria Chernik, who is Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Applied Research in Learning Innovation at Duke Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education. Aria and podcast host Shauna Cox, discuss the transformative role of technology in creating personalized, learner-centered experiences while driving the shift towards lifelong learning. 

Shauna Cox (00:02):Aria, welcome to the Illumination Podcast. I am so glad you could join me today.

Aria Chernik (00:08):Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.

Shauna Cox (00:11):Absolutely. So we are here to talk about staying relevant in higher ed and some of the work that Duke is doing in order to remain innovative. So before we dive into that, let's set the stage here. And I'm going to ask, what structural changes do you believe higher ed institutions have to embrace in order to stay relevant, especially in this rapidly evolving educational landscape?

Aria Chernik (00:37):So I think about structural changes in three different ways. So we desperately need change in how we think about place and time. So place thinking about a physical campus only, and time thinking about synchronous learning, which of course relates to a physical campus, but also tied to calendar. So time thinking about competency-based learning or just in time, or just as needed learning versus learning that's tied to a calendar.

Aria Chernik (01:56):And then there are structural changes related to pedagogy in terms of how we're teaching and learning, but also who so away from a focus on a single tenured professor to learning alongside experts within and beyond the university as well as peers, also learners who are not 18 to 21 in the case of undergrads or learners, just beginning a career in the case of grad students. And then the third change that I think about is the changes we need in structural inequity and exclusion. We have to recognize how structural inequities like racism and sexism have excluded students from entering and fully participating in higher education.

Shauna Cox (02:49):Absolutely. And I think a component to it is we can't have this big transformation or shift without talking about the digital transformation that's involved and the technology that encompasses it. So what role do you see emerging technologies playing in redefining this new student experience?

Aria Chernik (03:10):So I feel like it's now come to be almost a joke where you have to say, okay, I'm going to talk about ai, but I'm really going to have to talk about AI and in particular, generative AI in teaching and learning. So generative AI will redefine the student experience, but also the experience of most people working at a university. But in terms of the student experience, the hopeful answer and the one that a lot of people are working toward is that generative AI can make the student experience joyful, productive, and deeply meaningful. So that's to say much more personalized. And we've been talking about personalized learning for decades, but it does feel like we're at a point where we really can achieve what we've been hoping to for many years. And to me, personalized learning refers to the academic side of learning, but I'll push harder and say it also has to include success that thinks about success of the whole person. So generative AI will allow us to offer tutoring anytime, anywhere, but it will also allow us to offer mentoring or personal wellness services. But I want to say as a caveat to that, that I'm very concerned about the inhumane consequences of poorly designed and used, poorly designed and poorly used generative ai, especially as pertaining to issues of commodifying learners student data and privacy and inscribing in our technological systems, the inequities were fighting against in our social systems.

(05:12):So we're excited about generative ai, and I do think that there is a lot to be excited about, but I also think there is a lot that we really need to guard against and that we need to design humane technology if what we want is humane learning.

Shauna Cox (05:33):Absolutely. It's proceeding with caution, which I think is certainly the way that we should be approaching something like this. And another component to what I would say, redefining the student experience is the idea of lifelong learning. Because I believe that's something that is becoming more and more present in all students' lives. Even if they're 18, the trajectory isn't just four years. It can be the whole beyond four years and then going till they're 60 or something like that. So what are some of the most significant opportunities, but also the challenges that higher ed is facing as it's slowly starting to move towards that shift of a lifelong learning model across the institution?

Aria Chernik (06:23):So I love this question, especially given what you just asked me and what I just said, because I really think it also comes back to personalized learning. So the most significant opportunity, which is also the most significant challenge, is that education and in particular, lifelong education must be learner-centered. So this gives me tremendous enthusiasm because of learner-centered model of education is something that I've been working towards and working on for many, many years. So at Duke learning Innovation and Lifetime education, we think about lifelong learning as pre-college. So that's to say pre-K through 12 through post-career. So it's really looking at the whole lifetime learning journey.

(07:51):So when we talk about a lifelong curriculum, it's not just as I said before about academics, but how do people thrive in our 21st century world throughout our lives, especially when learners look very different than they used to. But this diversity encourages us to learn more and be more flexible and nimble, and that's the kind of mindset, and those are the kind of skills that we need to innovate forward. So the shift towards lifelong learning also gives us so many more opportunities to reach people throughout their lives no matter where they got their degrees. So whether someone went to Duke for an undergraduate degree or not, we now have an opportunity to engage people around the globe with transformative learning experiences. And that's extremely exciting.

Shauna Cox (08:52):Absolutely. And I want to dive into the work that you are doing. So let's talk about it. How can institutions foster a culture of continuous innovation while balancing with tradition? Because you don't want to completely throw everything out the window, and quite honestly, in something like higher ed, it's not going to be thrown out the window right away. And then how after creating that culture of continuous innovation, how is Duke delivering on that?

Aria Chernik (09:20):I love this question, and I would like to preface my answer with something that I just heard. I was at a symposium at Georgia Tech earlier, earlier this week, and the president of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Raj emba said, innovation is a message of hope. And so I'm really excited to talk about CARite, which is our new academic center at Lyle, which is what we call learning Innovation in Lifetime Education. CARite is the acronym for the Center for Applied Research and Development in Transformative Education. And we launched this center literally days ago with Hope. And so I really wanted to pull in that merging of the idea of innovation and hope. Our vision for CARite is broadly accessible, transformative education that enables all learners to design self-determined and flourishing lives. And to your question about how can you foster continuous innovation and balance it with tradition, the idea with Ker is to blend the exceptional research acumen of an academic research center with the mindset and practices of something like a skunkworks and the ethos of open access, public scholarship and community building.

(10:55):So to achieve that, we think about four levers that we want to pull on. So of course, iterative research. So we see ourselves as a living laboratory for all facets of innovative design-based educational research and development at the intersection of equity, education, technology, and society. Our approach to doing this kind of iterative research is grounded in humane centered inquiry. So I mentioned a few minutes ago the idea of humane technology. So we are human-centered researchers and trusted co-designers. I also mentioned open sharing. So that's really the heart of our ethos. We share what and how we learn and disseminate public facing scholarship and then cross sector collaboration. So we see ourselves as serving as a hub, connecting research and practice, and also connecting change makers at Duke and across our partners who will include K 12 educators, industry leaders, and government organizations.

Shauna Cox (12:13):Amazing. The work you're doing, everyone just needs a CARite. That's the answer to the question. Right? And so you mentioned, thank

Aria Chernik (12:21):You. Yes, exactly. It's that easy.

Shauna Cox (12:24):And you mentioned a key point that I really want to expand on here, and because not everything is done in a vacuum and it shouldn't be done in a silo, internal and external partnerships and stakeholders are so key to this. So how do you see that role of interdisciplinary collaboration and those external partnerships shaping that transformative educational outcomes?

Aria Chernik (12:49):Yeah, thank you. So as I just talked about with CARite, I see interdisciplinarity and cross-sector collaboration is absolutely critical. So I've started my career decades ago, and when I first started my career, the idea of interdisciplinarity was actually a negative. And I was told numerous times in numerous ways that the idea of pursuing an interdisciplinary inquiry would sideline me as a scholar, as a teacher, as a researcher. So in some ways, universities of course have deep expertise in teaching and learning, and yet we know that in other ways we are seriously out of step with the world around us. So we have to facilitate cross sector and interdisciplinary collaboration. We have to get outside of our disciplines and our institutions to truly think in new ways, exchange ideas across barriers and boundaries. And just almost, I guess as a counterpoint, I do think that there are a lot of innovative things that are happening at universities, but they're being done in parallel. They're being done in silos. So our hope for IDE is that we can bring these ideas and practices together in conversation with educational research to truly transform the way we teach and learn.

Shauna Cox (15:06):Absolutely. And I want to touch on a point that you mentioned about being out of step with the world. Obviously we need to be in step with the world. So pulling out your crystal ball that is clearly in your back pocket, what emerging trends in higher ed do you believe will have that greatest impact over say the next five to 10 years? And then how can institutions prepare to navigate any of these changes that are yet to come?

Aria Chernik (15:35):So clearly online and lifetime learning are going to be critical as we think about changes in higher ed. I also want to say something about the idea of fluidity between formal and informal learning experiences. I also think that that is something that we're just going to see more and more of. We're going to need a way to credential these kinds of learning experiences. So I think alternative credentials are going to continue to be really relevant to what we're doing in higher education. I also think peer-to-peer learning is that's something that I'm really excited about. I've been excited about peer-to-peer learning for a long time. Right now, I'm feeling an energy similar to almost the early two thousands when we had Wikipedia and very early Twitter, because there was almost a communal vision about how we could learn together and co-create knowledge. And that was participatory, and it was more authentic to how we learn in the wild, so to speak.

(17:00):And I do think that with what generative AI tools are being developed, what I've seen, what I'm sure I'll continue to see, I do think that we will enable peer-to-peer learning anytime learning, but anytime learning that's credentialed in ways that we've been hoping for a long time. And I think considering how institutions should be preparing to navigate these changes mean we have to do as an institution, what we're saying that learners need to do to thrive in the world today. So we ourselves must be agile and nimble. We must understand that the role of education is changing. We must look to learners to better understand what they need and what they want, how they learn, because that is radically different than a generation, certainly two generations ago.

Shauna Cox (18:07):Yeah, absolutely.

Aria Chernik (18:09):And that really excites me, right? As a learner centered pedagogue, that really excites me that we're at a point where we're acknowledging that we have to include learners in helping us solve these design challenges about what education should look like.

Shauna Cox (18:33):Absolutely. We're here to serve them, so let's loop them into the conversation. That's why we're here.

Aria Chernik (18:38):Absolutely. It does sound simple when you put it that way. In some ways, it is indeed. We must be talking with the people with whom we're designing.

Shauna Cox (18:54):Absolutely. Well, aria, those are all the questions that I have for you. But before I let you go, we're switching onto the food side of our podcast. And I'm going to ask you, were based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Where do people need to go?

Aria Chernik (19:09):Well, our family tradition is to go to Pizza Mercado, or I should say order from Pizza Mercado, which is a local pizza place, but they also have really very seasonal vegetables. And I love the food, but I also really love the tradition that my family has, which is pizza and movie night on Friday.

Shauna Cox (19:42):Love it. I also had the same tradition growing up, so always a classic. Always great to have. Aria, thank you so much for the conversation. It was really great chatting with you and learning the stuff that Duke is doing. It's so great to see.

Aria Chernik (19:55):Thank you so much.