2021 Year in Review

2021 Year in Review

Highlights from a year of transformation through innovation

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Table of contents

Table of contents A foreword from ASU CIO Lev Gonick

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Year in review: By the numbers

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Year in review: Snapshots from the year

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Year in review: A closer look at how we work, learn and transform

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Foreword from ASU CIO Lev Gonick

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The past year’s been unlike any other — a year of intersections, of more, a year of “plus”. For many, family life plus work shared the same space in the home.

Education plus health became irrevocably intertwined. And technology plus humanity collided as a foundational intersection for individual and societal wellbeing.

Here at ASU’s University Technology Office, we met the past year’s goals considering all of these factors. The 2021 Year in Review showcases our teams’ contributions and accomplishments to learning, teaching and working at ASU. Rather than focus exclusively on the “what” (although that is crucial), this publication will demonstrate “how,” and by extension “why,” UTO’s accomplishments serve the entirety of the ASU community, and in fact, our ASU community plus.

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Foreword from ASU CIO

SCALING

Year in review By the numbers

9.4 B

A look from January 1 to October 31, 2021.

Visits to websites ASU operates

50,256,699 Secure sign-in to ASU web

983,082 Unique active community members in My ASU

175 Terabytes Total data streamed on view.asu.edu, 4k video streams

LEARNING

116,138 Online immersion population students taking courses on Canvas

10,571 Visits to ASU’s “Digital Backpack” website, which offers access to Zoom, Slack, Dropbox, G Suite, and Adobe Creative Cloud

PROTECTING

THRIVING

275,631,812,886

680,961

Total number of “events of interest” flagged via our threat intelligence Secureworks service

SERVING

240,893,258

Visits to the UTO website

577 Pay it Forkward certificates given out to UTO family members by UTO family members

219

Zoom meeting minutes

Giving Back to the Community events

894,619

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Experience Center calls handled

UTO produced events

By the numbers

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Year in review Snapshots from the year January

Data Privacy Day conversation reveals need for digital trust

When it comes to data privacy, ASU places digital trust and learner agency at the forefront.

To recognize Data Privacy Day on January 28, ASU’s Chief Information Security and Digital Trust Officer Donna Kidwell shared key insights on the university’s approach to data privacy to over 140 participants: “Encompassing everything from cybersecurity to technology enablers like blockchain, digital trust

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Snapshots from the year

centers on the confidence, flexibility and empowerment in the relationships between individuals and organizations.”

February

ASU receives Slack in Education Award In 2019, ASU became the very first university to adopt Slack enterprisewide, rolling it out to five campuses and 200,000 users, including students, faculty and administrators.

Fast forward two years later, ASU receives the first-ever Slack in Education award, being recognized as a forward-thinking university that sees the future of learning through the lens of new technology.

March

ASU students build new “skills” at Cronkite’s Audio Hackathon UTO teamed up with Cronkite News, part of ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, to host the first-ever Audio Hackathon. Tasked with creating a Flash Briefing, students joined a one-hour workshop for a hands-on tutorial of Amazon’s Skills Blueprints and then got to work to build, record, and publish their own.

Women in the workplace: commit to be an ally

March’s UTO Town Hall recognized the inclusion of women in the workplace for Women’s History Month with an invitation to speak

to Dr. Delia Saenz, Chief Diversity Officer of The College at ASU. Dr. Saenz shared her insights, including the ways in which tokenism presents itself and the actionable steps we can all take toward equity.

April

$100B for broadband: ASU’s CIO weighs in On the heels of the White House announcing its $2.3 trillion package to overhaul the country’s infrastructure, ASU CIO Lev Gonick shared his aspirations for bringing universal broadband access to communities everywhere: “If not now, when? If not us, who? This is our time and our calling.”

May

Empower 2021 celebrates ASU’s IT boundary spanners At the fourth annual gathering of ASU’s IT community from May 1314, over 600 registered attendees shared ideas and strategized plans concerning the future of innovation across the university. ASU President Michael Crow joined to kick

off the event, sharing: “We’re doing the impossible... scaling to enterprise level and personalizing learning through innovative technology and dedication to democracy-advancing, socially-transformative culture.”

between learners, employees and institutions.

June

ASU’s Smart City Cloud Innovation Center, powered by AWS, was named a winner of the IDC Government Insights’ fourth annual Smart Cities North America Awards, which recognizes the “most innovative and forwardthinking municipalities across North America.”

The CIC is a strategic partnership with AWS to help fulfil the university’s commitment to expand smart solutions from campus to the community.

Putting learners first at ASU’s Digital Trust Summit From June 15-17, digital trust leaders, changemakers, students, faculty and technologists gathered virtually to shape the future of data privacy, cybersecurity and learner empowerment at ASU’s Digital Trust Summit.

ASU digital wallet unveiled at Digital Trust Summit

July

ASU’s CIC named winner of IDC Smart Cities North America Awards

A project stemming from UTO’s Digital Trust Initiative, Pocket is a digital wallet and portfolio designed to help students navigate the lifelong learner journey. The wallet uses distributed technology to store a learners’ record of learning — including skills, transcripts and more — as verifiable credentials that can be securely shared

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ASU hosts Future of Tech Commission’s Town Hall Nearly 400 attendees gathered virtually to hear local and national changemakers — including Arizona Senator Mark Kelly — who are ideating, crafting and advancing key technology policy measures. Four ASU students joined to share powerful, personal examples of why we need to close the digital divide.

August

New ASU IT Governance framework embraces an agile, collaborative approach In partnership with IT and business leaders across the ASU Enterprise Aspiring, UTO revised the ASU IT Governance approach, outlining a fresh governance model with culture, collaboration and community at its core.

Dreamscape Learn brought to ASU+GSV In partnership with EdPlus and other university leaders, the Learning Futures team helped to bring Dreamscape Learn’s immersive experience to participants at ASU+GSV from August 9-11 in San Diego, CA.

Engineering core “orchestrates” digital transformation at ASU As part of their DevSecOp approach, the Engineering core built and deployed an “orchestration platform” — which automates the

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Snapshots from the year

configuration, management and coordination of computer systems, applications and services.

And today, the platform has been used successfully to make improvements to the My ASU portal.

September

Guilds unite at Engage 2021 At UTO’s annual culturebuilding event, Engage 2021, guilds were front and center. Over 400 UTO team members gathered both virtually and in-person to explore the diversity of UTO guilds through a variety of workshops that were designed to impart new knowledge and skills — all

organized by the guilds themselves.

Immersive Creation Studio launches with 140 student workers The Learning Futures team wrapped its first-ever cohort for the Immersive Creation Studio, which launched back in May and invited students from across majors and disciplines to create a suite of content and experiences in virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Today, the ICS is already one of the largest undergraduate immersive creation studios in the country, with over 140 students participating in the first cohort this summer and 100 students participating this fall.

secure to student-led panels discussing the future of digital privacy, the ASU Think! Campaign drove best practices for cybersecurity.

November

Data Conference convenes the ASU IT community From November 15-17, over 700 registered ASU IT community members gathered virtually for the fifth annual ASU Data Conference.

With over 35 sessions, attendees had the chance to knowledge-share, problem solve and network with fellow data enthusiasts.

December

ASU ShapingEDU announces 2022 Pente Pitch Challenge In its third year, ShapingEDU welcomed a new director and revisited its Calls to Actions, focusing on five themes poised to shape the future of learning for all. Using these 5 Calls to Actions, project teams will explore solutions to improve teaching and learning in the digital age at the new 2022 Pente Pitch Challenge, coming in February.

October

Sun Devils provided resources to #BeCyberSmart To recognize October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, UTO led a series of discussions, activities and resources to help the Sun Devil community #BeCyberSmart. From tips for fighting phishing schemes, spotting scammers, and staying

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Year in review A closer look at how we work, learn and transform

How we work:

Empowering the modern workforce In 2021, UTO accelerated its commitment to not only learning and digital transformation, but also workplace overhaul.

From considering the diverse needs of new remote and hybrid modalities to the dissolution of silos, “how we work” has shifted to a more agile and inclusive model, focusing on the importance of culture, communication, organization, prioritization and partnerships.

10 A closer look at how we work, learn and transform

“UTO 2.1 has been a reframing not only of how work gets done at UTO, but also about how we are agile in addressing the needs of ASU and the broader community,” said Lev Gonick, ASU CIO.

Unleashing the modern IT workforce Over the past year, UTO has embarked on a journey to become a more agile and antifragile organization. This internal digital transformation has become known by the moniker “UTO 2.1” and shaped the organization into a rapidly reconfigurable and entrepreneurial model that better meets the needs of the community.

UTO 2.1’s agile nature allows for quick responses to external changes in the marketplace or environment. This structure is focused on the community’s needs, which many times call for customized and fluid — rather than standardized — offerings. At the center of UTO 2.1 are four cores — Engineering, Products and Projects, Data and Analysis, and Service Delivery — that work together rather than in silos. Within the cores are chapters, which develop and manage an array of offerings. Portfolios bring together chapters and even other cores to collaborate extensively. And self-organized groups known as guilds are working to achieve a UTO- or university-wide goal, like culture or responsible innovation.

“The UTO 2.1 structure has also empowered me to reach out to individuals for help on projects, making it easier than before to solve resource constraint issues,” said portfolio director Kelly Mukherjee. With a year of 2.1 reframing now underway, this new modern workforce has already transformed its impact on UTO family members, the Sun Devil community and our partners within and outside ASU.

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Advancing a culture of innovation: A view from the top The necessity of a healthy, fruitful workplace culture is one President Crow acknowledges wholeheartedly: “Culture and innovation are the inseparable enabling forces of the ASU Charter,” he explained during ASU’s “Innovation & Culture” event.

“Culture” is something that must be actively created for an organization to flourish, an effort eagerly embodied by UTO’s Culture Weavers, as well as various guilds centered around community engagement and improvement. UTO’s own Lev Gonick stresses the importance of empowerment, interconnectedness and equality in an organization’s culture, emphasizing: “(We) preposition ourselves to meld together our culture and our commitment to innovation to anticipate the needs of the university moving forward … ASU can and must create a more learner-centered future rather than an elite, top-down approach of previous ‘waves.’”

As 2022 approaches, it is with these sentiments that ASU’s leaders and teams alike will carry the vision of an equitable, inclusive, empowered New American University into the future.

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UTO Stretch Program offers new opportunites for working students As all members of the Sun Devil community know, lifelong learning is an important part of the university experience. Whether a student, instructor or staff member, your time with ASU will prepare you for personal growth in the future.

In keeping with this mission, UTO’s Experience Center (EC), the front door for all services that provides the highest level of support for the ASU community, has boldly created a new learning experience for its staff, many of whom are students themselves. In fusing the professional experience with learning, this “Stretch Program” demonstrates the agility and improvement inherent to UTO’s way of working. It brings its customer service agents into other areas at the university, embedding them into units to gain new knowledge, skills and experiences that align with the employees’ career aspirations and interests.

One such individual was Xavier McDonald, an IT support agent at the EC who studied Digital Culture at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. McDonald graduated in May 2021, and on top of his curricular requirements, his participation in the EC Stretch Program helped him prepare him for his future goals. For his Stretch Program assignment, McDonald worked at ASU’s Meteor Studio, a research laboratory dedicated to virtual and augmented reality. “My work at the Meteor Studio is closely related to my school curriculum, which aligned very well for me,” McDonald said. The EC Stretch Program is the perfect representation of UTO’s commitment to ensuring the best experience for staff and students and connecting studies to the future of work.

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How we learn:

Innovating the learning future Everyone is a learner at ASU. UTO is no exception, as it has learned new methods to support the educational experience at the New American University. The applications of new technologies are transforming learning experiences and creating innovative new ones for generations to come.

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“This year, in addition to bold new technologies, we are contending with the global pandemic, which has brought unprecedented challenges to the fabric of our centuries-old institutions of governance and structures that guide layers of human, economic, and social interactions,” said Lev Gonick, ASU CIO.

Looking to the future with Lev Gonick In order to chart the future of higher education, ASU constantly promotes change within its own environment. ASU CIO Lev Gonick authored a five-part series that shared his top 10 trends — from new technologies, service delivery models and processes — that addressed some of the most important socio-technical developments facing university leadership, including technologists, for the year ahead.

Demonstrating the shape of learning experiences to come, Gonick provided studied insights about nationwide (and global) developments as well as ASU’s part in these innovative trends. For example, Dreamscape Learn is a part of the trend towards more immersive and experiential learning. Additionally, cities as classrooms of the future and nextgeneration networks illustrate the capacity for changing the everyday lives of learners and citizens. Engagement and collaboration platforms have also shifted, creating new spaces to learn and keep in touch with other aspects of the college experience. Other trends explored how real-time video instruction is persisting in a new way, machine learning is supporting student success and advances in digital trust and blockchain are changing how we secure and communicate information.

Spearheading all of these changes is a new approach to digital transformation that looks to future action rather than reaction.

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Cox Collaboratory works to improve bike parking Education and exploration in technology fields at ASU aren’t confined to the classroom. A student intern with the Cox Connected Environments Collaboratory at ASU gained crucial hands-on experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence. For Rachel Hayden, the experience not only upskilled her for her future career, but also leveraged video analytics of the bike racks in use across campus to improve access. When the machine learning model she built was tested on data it had never seen before to see how well it would detect or count bikes in “real life,” the model received an accuracy score of 90.7%.

With such a high score, Hayden noted that the model’s success could potentially lead to monitoring overall utilization of racks. By accurately counting how many bikes are currently on each rack, the system can help to optimize rack placement around campus based on utilization data over time and provide students insights into where spots are available. This convenient solution benefits transportation efforts on campus, encouraging bike use and therefore promotes ASU’s far-ranging sustainability goals. In helping devise this concept and put it into prototype action, Hayden demonstrated the practical applications of exciting new ideas and technologies, a prime example of “how we learn.”

Students at Watts College are ‘Coding for a Social Good’ In Spring 2021, a new course launched at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, in collaboration with UTO. Called “Coding for a Social Good,” the course combined computer science, research and social entrepreneurship to create real-world impact through technology, which is representative of the innovative learning experiences constantly coming into being at ASU. Working in teams, students researched, designed and tested service-oriented apps aimed at reducing the burdens for individuals experiencing homelessness. The course used Apple’s Swift Playgrounds, a software that helps students learn app development, to support the high-concept ideas and pitches of the students; this course was most of their first experience with coding. The course concluded with a Shark Tank-style pitch session to an esteemed panel of judges, where each of the five teams took the virtual stage to present their ideas and design in under five minutes. The educational process in Coding for a Social Good combined computer science, research and social entrepreneurship to create real-world impact through technology.

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Introducing XKits: Adobe Creative Cloud toolkits for ASU faculty A key part of preparing students for the future workforce is introducing them to the 21st century tools for collaboration, communication and productivity. And with Adobe Creative Cloud offered for free to all Sun Devil students, working with ASU faculty members to design new classroom strategies that leverage this suite of tools helps to drive these efforts. To that end, a new course for ASU instructors approached the process of bringing Adobe Creative Cloud into an ever-increasing number of classes.

The course, called Digital Fluency Creative, brought together 15 ASU faculty members across five departments to design resources for fellow instructors to better incorporate Adobe’s suite of tools — such as photo, video and audio editing, graphic and web design, and more — into their classroom. Upon completing the class, the faculty created “XKits,” which are open-source teaching materials that can be used by their colleagues.

One approach to creating an XKit utilized Adobe Audition, an audio editing software.

Two instructors in the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies redesigned an assignment that teaches students the rhetorical moves used in writing: invention, organization and revision. Students were tasked to demonstrate these same principles to create a 10-minute podcast using Adobe Audition. Now bundled as an XKit, the podcast assignment is available to other professors.

The integration of industry standard tools like those offered by Adobe, into classes of all disciplines, demonstrates a cyclical, ongoing learning experience for both faculty and students.

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How we transform:

Opening access and opportunities for all A lot of work goes on behind the scenes at UTO to support ASU. But these stories bring achievements in digital trust and information security, automation, optimization, smart technologies, NextGen Networks and digital equity out from behind the curtain.

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ASU’s data warehouse migration to the cloud proves valuable ASU’s data warehouse migration to the cloud proves valuable As part of the university’s shift to become a fully cloud-based infrastructure, UTO led the migration of ASU’s entire data warehouse to Amazon Redshift. From over a decade of carefully curated data spread across billions of objects, the Data and Analysis team undertook the ambitious task of migrating this wealth of information to the cloud: an online service in which data is not stored locally on a personal device or data center.

This transition offered an essential solution for ASU’s large datasets, enabling the storage of large datasets at significantly faster speeds with lower costs. This matters in a world that is increasingly moving online, where the amount of data that is available to capture and store continues to grow exponentially. “One of the key offerings of the cloud is its scalability to meet demand, whether that’s peak loads to the servers which typically happen at the beginning of the semesters or lulls over holiday breaks,” shared Jason Green, IT director for ASU’s Data Warehouse. By taking advantage of the efficiency and flexibility of cloud-based infrastructure, units across ASU found their daily tasks — especially the retrieval and analysis of vital reports and records — completed with enhanced speed and ease. Empowered by the cloud, ASU is paving the way towards a highly efficient and effective streamlined process for serving its Sun Devil community.

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“This last year has exacerbated the notion that the internet is no longer just ‘nice to have.’ It is an absolute must-have for our communities to be able to learn, work and live,” said ASU CIO Lev Gonick.

ASU advances broadband initiatives to connect the under-connected Guided by ASU Charter’s statement that the university is measured “not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed,” UTO helped to advance a series of discussions, projects and initiatives over the summer to further close the digital divide. These took form as: a three-part Lighting Up the Future series; the FTC Town Hall; and the launch of the Digital Equity Initiative.

Aiming to develop an inclusive tech policy agenda for the nation, the Future of Tech Commission (FTC) co-hosted a virtual Town Hall with ASU in July, featuring Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and a remote audience of nearly 400. Four ASU students also joined to share powerful, personal testimonials of the impact of digital literacy on an individual’s pursuit of valuable opportunities in education and their careers. Aspiring to make these vital observations manifest, ASU’s Digital Equity Initiative pledged to test and deploy new and emerging networking technologies to extend wireless internet access into the homes of learners and families. In partnership with ASU’s Watt’s College, the teams successfully deployed millimeter wave technology to extend a local elementary school’s wi-fi into the homes of nearby students. By committing to the reformation of the digital landscape, ASU hopes to tackle the digital divide and ensure equitable opportunities to students across Arizona and beyond.

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ASU’s CIC is “working backwards” to innovate the future Sustainable and long-term partnerships with leading organizations play a critical role in advancing ASU’s smart technology initiatives from campus to community. One notable partnership is the ASU Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC), powered by Amazon Web Services. The CIC brings together faculty, professors, students and technologists to work alongside city leaders to tackle challenges that ultimately support navigating the digital transformation.

From challenges in efficient data-sharing to the centralization of vital information, the CIC’s impacts have spanned across not only Arizona, but across the globe. Designing a digital dashboard to monitor water supply and demand, the eThekwini municipality in South Africa is empowered by CIC to more efficiently address instances of water scarcity. Faraway communities aren’t the only ones prospering from CIC’s innovations — CIC’s partnership with the Greater Phoenix Economic Council yielded a prototypical homegrown data-sharing platform that allows targeted opportunities for economic growth, acknowledging the unique needs of our local population.

Now in its third year, these are only a handful of examples of the CIC’s impact. With ongoing research into regional and international challenges, the development of additional “smart technology solutions” are on the horizon, indicating a brighter future for all those who collaborate with the ever-evolving ASU CIC.

ASU’s CIC is “working backwards” to innovate the future 21

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2021 Year in Review

Highlights from a year of transformation through innovation

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