Empower 2020 Gathers ASU IT Professional Community to Celebrate and Find New Technology Accomplishments
Empower 2020, ASU’s IT Professional Community Day, was suddenly shifted to a virtual affair, like so many other events, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as with previous years, attendees gathered to share ideas and still look to the future, reflecting on accomplishments while identifying the exciting work to be done. It’s no surprise that the people who were directly responsible for transitioning the entire university to a remote modality have a great deal of insight into this new way of learning, and the scope of their innovative ideas is impressive.
One of the most exciting developments of Empower 2020 was the culmination of last year’s top question: how do you make a better pizza through technology? That’s right; a series of crowdsourced conversations among the ASU IT community resulted in an apparently silly, yet creative, approach to universal solutions. Everyone likes pizza!
The University Technology Office is fortunate to also work with a local Girls Who Code chapter based at the ASU Preparatory Academy. The organization is dedicated to educating and providing creative opportunities to young women with the goal of increasing female representation in the STEM world. Empower 2019’s big question was brought to the Girls Who Code students as a big challenge in using their constantly improving skills, resulting in an inventive answer. View the result of their work in the video below.
ASU President Michael Crow also joined the over 600 members of the IT community to share his thoughts on the future of learning at the university and show his appreciation for their hard work. “We have gone from a traditional, archaic, 15th-century university to a modern university with our full-immersion, on-campus, technology-enhanced learning which you have all helped us to implement,” he said. “That would be enough of an achievement for UTO and the whole ASU IT community. But that isn’t where we stop. We have built these other realms of learning with digital immersion, online, technology-enhanced programs...we have been able to do anything.”
President Crow also acknowledged the sudden changes and accomplishments the COVID-19 pandemic presented. “We had to retreat from physicality. We had to go to a new way of learning. And now a third teaching and learning modality has emerged: full-immersion, synchronous, technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Going forward, we have decided to make the three modalities a part of our everyday existence.”
And the IT community is essential to this new world of teaching and learning. CIO Lev Gonick set the tone for the event with his opening remarks. “This is a day of celebration. It’s also a day of reflection and a day to learn from one another.” Speaking to the sudden shift in ASU’s teaching, learning and working modality, Gonick said, “This has been an unbelievable transformation of the campus community. I want to acknowledge in almost overnight fashion, more than 3,500 faculty and staff were trained in the remote modality.”
“I think it’s not only the technical piece of it, but really the reflections we see in the remote humanity conversations, that have caused ASU to realize even more its ambition to be accessible to all, to be supportive of student success, and to be mindful of the communities in which we work.”
The opening moments of Empower 2020 served as a reflection of the hard work already accomplished and the exciting challenges of the future. But the event turned to the details, as the bulk of the three-hour program was dedicated to interactive “mini-sessions” hosted by ASU IT community members.
These 13 mini-sessions addressed topics both current and far-sighted. Fittingly, a session addressing the challenges of bringing formerly in-person events online was joined by “Co-Creating Success in Times of Crisis.” “Cloud to Infinity and Beyond” ran alongside “Step Up Your Professional Development Game” as sessions seemingly pertaining to a world after a global pandemic. But the lessons learned from any of these educational opportunities can be applied to any modality, as insights into the continuous improvement of technology-enhanced teaching and learning.
This was the theme accompanying the final session of Empower 2020, where attendees brought their insights, conclusions and big ideas after their interactive sessions. Fifty-six groups recorded their thoughts for the improvement of ASU’s IT realm. A recurring theme was the continued use of data to drive decisions and better understand people, rather than use it as pure numbers. Similarly, a number of other groups expressed their desire to see cross-departmental collaboration, professional development and transparent culture developed further. And as a result of our sudden remote modality, many saw a future where tools like Zoom and Slack are leveraged in a hybrid model, not unlike the one described by President Crow.
"It was heartwarming to see everyone's faces from our IT community and to have the opportunity to experiment with our large-scale virtual format," UTO Chief Culture Officer Christine Whitney Sancez said. "I give a deep bow to the presenters for making this day so interesting and lively! Collective patience with glitches and enthusiasm for mini-session topics created the conditions where we could all learn together."
With the intersection of the ASU IT community-created focal points, President Crow’s comprehensive approach to the New American University and primary and secondary educational talent already forming, represented by Girls Who Code, Empower 2020 served as an incredible door to further opportunities. Join the #asu-it-community Slack channel to keep up with those opportunities and join the effort to craft new and improved educational experiences at ASU.