Universities band together to share and protect digital resources

Posted on June 1st, 2014

Colorado State University, Indiana University, the University of Florida, and the University of Michigan recently unveiled Unizin, a consortium that “enables each institution, its faculty, and students to draw on an evolving set of tools to support digital learning for residential, flipped classroom, online courses/degrees, badged experiences for Alumni, or even MOOCs if desired.” Unizin will negotiate contracts with technology vendors for products and services that many universities already buy individually. But instead of implementing the technologies locally, member institutions will get a set of “sewn-together services” from Unizin in exchange for dues. The Canvas learning management system, developed by Instructure, will be used as a delivery platform, and the consortium also intends to build a learning analytics platform. Internet2 will serve as the consortium’s “fiscal agent.”

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/4-universities-band-together-to-share-and-protect-digital-resources/53269