Sean Corp, Communications Lead

The Center for Academic Innovation is committed to helping more people experience the transformative power of education. The year 2024 marked 10 years since the launch of what would become the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) and a significant inflection point in our efforts to support the university’s goals as outlined in the Vision 2034 report. Through the work of the center and partners across campus to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for learners everywhere, U-M is well-positioned to continue as a leading institution in life-changing education.  

10 Years Stewarding the Academic Innovation Fund

The Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) celebrated its 10th year of helping advance innovation at the University of Michigan in 2024. The university created the AIF to provide funding and in-kind support from CAI to faculty and academic units interested in pursuing innovative ideas in teaching and learning through educational technology, online education, and educational research.  

The first 10 years of the AIF led to curricular innovations, such as creating more than 400 massive open online courses that extended a Michigan education to more than 11.5 million learners globally. Funding has also supported faculty incorporating experiential technologies, like extended reality, into online and residential courses and provided for the development of technologies that support student success. The center’s suite of educational technology tools is currently used by 99% of undergraduate students on the Ann Arbor campus and more than 250 external organizations. 

Major Investment in AI Course Launches 

Following a call for proposals, the center partnered with faculty from 10 schools and colleges to develop and launch 29 short open online courses in 2024. The courses help people build foundational and industry-specific knowledge in generative artificial intelligence (AI). Reflecting the breadth of excellence at Michigan, the courses offer learners practical AI skills in creative work, leadership, business, social impact organizations, learning experience design, law, and the responsible use of AI technologies, to name a few. 

The AI courses and series represent a growing portfolio of short courses available free to U-M students, staff, faculty, and alumni at Michigan Online. They are designed for learners to complete in under a day. 

Enhancing Lifelong Learning

There are many pathways to a Michigan education. In 2024, the center engaged with pre-college, residential, and adult learners in various ways. 

Pre-college

The center worked with Intend to Attend to provide high school students in their program access to ECoach to send tailored messages that helped them remember deadlines, resources, eligibility requirements, and more. They also utilized the personalized writing support tool Lettersmith to help them prepare college essays, personal letters, and cover letters. 

Pre-college learners also visited the center this summer as part of the Wolverine Pathways program. Wolverine Pathways serves students in under-resourced communities to help them prepare for college and post-secondary opportunities. Simone Charles, clinical associate professor of environmental and health sciences at the School of Public Health, worked with the center to create a virtual city for the students to explore to help them learn about sustainable development. 

The center also partnered with the Stamps School of Art and Design on a free online course on Michigan Online that teaches students fundamental drawing techniques and better understand the elements of a successful portfolio of creative work they can use in professional settings or as they consider enrollment in design programs. 

Online Students & Learners

Online and hybrid programs are essential to expanding the university’s reach to students and learners who cannot take advantage of traditional residential education. In a decade, the number of students enrolled in fully online programs offered by UM-Ann Arbor’s schools and colleges has grown from just a handful to more than 1,200. 

Residential students appreciate online options, too. In 2024, more than 440 U-M students joined over 200,000 learners around the world in completing an open online course available at Michigan Online, with 41 U-M students completing more than five courses! The center’s 2024 Online Learning Showcase celebrated notable milestones in the university’s efforts to develop and sustain world-class online for-credit and open learning experiences.

Adult Learners

In the innovative adult learning program Saturdays in the D, the center worked with the U-M Center for Innovation to offer Detroit-area residents free access to select courses available at Michigan Online that help people develop sought-after job skills. The participants progressed through the courses independently and then met every Saturday for a class discussion guided by a course facilitator. This year, 49 participants earned a certificate in entrepreneurship, negotiation, Python programming, and leadership courses. The two years of the summer adult learning program have been so successful that organizers have turned it into a year-round opportunity starting in the Fall. 

The center also offered a unique learning experience to U-M graduates in partnership with the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan. Participants enrolled in “Purpose at Work: A Course for Employees and Leaders,” taught by Vic Strecher, a professor at the School of Public Health. As part of the experience, they participated in an exclusive webinar Q&A with Vic. 

Advancing Student Success Technologies

The center is firmly committed to supporting the success of students enrolled in academic degree programs by empowering them with information and tools they can use to explore courses, boost their grades, and graduate on time and with job-relevant experiences. 

The center has developed several tools in the past decade that have supported students, and 2024 saw new features designed to help students gain and maintain early momentum in their first year at Michigan. 

Working closely with the university’s vice provost for undergraduate education, and a broad coalition of campus leaders, the center adapted its ECoach tool to help the advising community better support first-year students. Atlas will feature new course exploration tools and messaging on maintaining academic momentum. Michigan Online will be home to targeted educational videos that help students understand the Michigan campus and academic experience.  

Atlas also received new features in 2024 to better track degree progress and support students considering switching majors or minors. Updates will help students at UM-Dearborn achieve momentum and boost retention and graduation rates. The work is supported by a grant from Axim Collaborative, which will also include the center’s ECoach tool as part of a student success and momentum toolkit. 

Spire, which helps students find, catalog, and reflect on curricular and co-curricular experiences and their professional competencies, continues to expand in Michigan Ross, the College of Engineering, Michigan Medicine, and the School of Public Health. This year, students achieved top-level competency designations and could display these credentials as official LinkedIn badges as they prepare to enter the job market. 

Innovation Summit Showcased Gen AI, XR

The center hosted an innovation summit on using generative artificial intelligence tools and extended reality technologies to advance teaching and learning. The two-day summit attracted hundreds of faculty, students, and staff, who heard from keynote speakers Alton Glass and Mustafa Furniturewala. Glass is the founder of GRX Immersive Labs and a filmmaker who uses extended reality experiences to advance education and dialogue on social issues. Furniturewala is the chief technology officer at Coursera, and he outlined how the online learning platform uses artificial intelligence in online course design and delivery. 

Other featured speakers included AI leaders within U-M, including Michigan Medicine, the School of Nursing, the School of Information, School of Public Health, the College of Engineering, and UM-Flint. There was also a student showcase and panel discussions on the center’s use of its XR stage to create online courses and AI’s role in training medical professionals. 

Student Fellows Program

The center continues its successful Student Fellowship program, which brings students into the center to gain valuable professional experience in emerging career roles and help co-design educational opportunities for themselves and their peers. The center employed more than 80 student fellows representing 16 U-M schools and colleges in 2024. These students contributed to project management, XR design, learning experience design, software development, educational research, and more. Since its debut in 2015, the Student Fellows program has provided more than 400 students with critical experiences in helping design educational experiences and tools for the next generation of learners. 

Expanding Knowledge Through Educational Research

The center’s educational research and analytics team supported, authored, and co-authored 20 papers in 2024. Publication topics include transdisciplinary learning design, instructional design failure, tailored communications to boost assessment scores, and using ECoach to help graduate students with dissertation writing. In total, the center has supported the publication of 158 since 2013.