Dear Center for Academic Innovation Community,
We have reached the end of another amazing year at the Center for Academic Innovation. I want to thank every part of our global learning community, innovators and partners on campus and beyond for their support. Together we are expanding U-M’s capacity for developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.
This year, we added 23 new open online courses to a portfolio that serves more than 10 million learners worldwide. We created 23 for-credit online degree courses with our U-M program partners and made countless updates and iterations to existing experiences. We launched 11 groundbreaking extended reality educational experiences for use in class and online. We worked with industry partners like Google, Siemens, and Microsoft to develop new career-ready courses and pursue new learning innovations.
The numbers are impressive, but the impact on our learning community and the world is what motivates us. We are working to share more stories of the students and global learners who are engaged in our learning experiences and using our tools. We are seeing learners move from our open courses and MasterTrack programs to degree programs, and our alums re-engage with the U-M community through open courses and Teach-Outs. Our degree-seeking students and lifelong learners are engaging in more immersive experiences facilitated by educational technology and extended reality experiences developed at our center. Through all these experiences, our educational data and research experts assess what works for whom to advance knowledge and keep us on a path of perpetual innovation in learning. A new mode of lifelong learning, engagement, and connection is emerging.
We are deeply grateful for your continued engagement and support as we continue designing the future of education. I am excited about what the Center for Academic Innovation will be doing in 2023 and how we will continue working together to design the future of education.
But now is the time to enjoy the rest of what 2022 has to offer. I hope the rest of the year is packed with time for fun, time with loved ones, and time for yourself. However you celebrate, I wish you a happy and healthy holiday season and a joyful start to the new year.
Go blue!
James DeVaney
Associate Vice Provost for Academic Innovation
Founding Executive Director of the Center for Academic Innovation