Otterbein is still in control of its artificial intelligence (AI) use, despite a recent partnership with an AI third party contractor, Navigate360, according to Sonny Gulati, Otterbein’s chief information officer.
The partnership with Navigate360 was made to help with student retention strategies and has an AI component in the ways it gathers and interprets student data, according to Kate Lehman, Student Success and Career Development (SSCD) executive director.
The AI component is meant to assist coordination across campus between students and faculty members. Lehman gave the example of a student wanting to schedule an appointment with the SSCD center. Rather than setting up the appointment via email, the student could coordinate with their faculty member through Navigate360.
But given an ever-increasing digital world, this partnership begs the question as to how student data will be used and how that data will be kept secure by the university.
A 2021 student voice survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed and College Plus found most students to be unaware of how much data their institutions have about them, but it also reported that students are not “overly concerned” with the idea either.
While students participating in the survey didn’t feel their universities holding their data to be too concerning, approximately 40% of the 2,286 students considered it “very important” that their colleges and universities had a student data privacy policy put in place.
According to Gulati, Otterbein has an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) security system where all student data gets stored. Student data with information on course enrollments and student schedules will be sent to Navigate360 who will then build an academic portfolio with the SSCD on how that information will be used to advise students.
The encryption of the data is what Gulati says keeps the data secure as well as the cloud base storage system used by Navigate360. The partnership is also on a three year contractual basis, which means that if Otterbein chooses to move forward with a different contractor in three years, Navigate360 is contractually required to return all data back to the university.
Gulati explained that AI is not involved in the data transfers between the university and Navigate360. As such, it can hardly be considered AI in its “true form” since it is not being used as an interactive tool like a chatbot, for example.
“We’re just using it from a data perspective,” Gulati said.
In other words, AI is being used to generate reports based on certain criteria set by the SSCD which Lehman says will help faculty members identify students who may be showing signs of academic risk.
Since the ultimate goal is to help students in their academic success, Lehman feels the platform will be more helpful in offering the support students need versus other tools used in the past. Otterbein has currently been using an early alert system, which is a manual process where faculty members can submit a “cardinal concern” to alert the SSCD when a student is struggling in their coursework.
But generally, Otterbein hasn’t jumped into the deep end of AI yet.
Even if the university decided to do enable chatbots or other interactive measures powered by AI in the future, Gulati said they would still be in control since they would be able to decide what kinds of questions the technology could answer and how it would be able to go about providing those answers.
In terms of a policy, Otterbein is still in the process of drafting and approving its AI policy for faculty and students.
“AI is still evolving ... everything is still [in the] works,” said Gulati.
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