Becker Collegeâ•Žs Agile Mindset Is Enhanced by Microsoft Technol

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Microsoft 365 Azure All Microsoft Office 365  Dynamics 365 Cart  SQL Search  Windows 10 Becker College’s Agile Mindset is enhanced by Microsoft

Customer Technology BECKER COLLEGE

Partner August 10, 2018 Live Tiles

Products and Services Azure Machine Learning Office 365 SharePoint Online

Industry Higher Education

Organization Size Medium (50 - 999 employees)

Country United States

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© 2017 Microsoft  Becker College is a small, distinctive institution in central Massachusetts that is ranked by the Princeton Review as the #4 school in the world for interactive media and game design, and with a #6 ranked Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media. With more than 600 students enrolled in the program out of the approximately 1,800 students across its 2 campuses (Worcester and Leicester, Mass.), Becker is considered to be one of the largest game design schools in the world. Becker College might sound like just another high- achieving, East Coast college, destined to be successful because it attracts the best of the best students, but in reality, what attracts students to Becker is something much different than what they can expect from other schools—an Agile Mindset and curriculum approach.

How the Agile Mindset is integrated into coursework

Alan Ritacco, Dean of the School of Design and Technology, says, “I think what draws students to Becker College is that we’re a small school that can impact students in a large way.” Ritacco says there are four key components to the Agile Mindset required for every student at Becker, regardless of school or major. They are:

This forward-thinking approach is integrated into every aspect of a student’s education from coursework—Ritacco explains, “If you used no empathy to create a game… it’s not marketable, no one wants to play it.”—to how the faculty approach education. Staff at Becker are encouraged to focus on experiential learning and to allow students to develop their own goals and ethics in a supportive, educational environment. The four values are also integrated into curriculum from the time students arrive at Becker as freshman through the end of their undergraduate career. “What really differentiates us is our Agile Mindset. It’s part of our operating system and is our core DNA,” Ritacco explains when talking about how educators are supported to teach the four key components through staff instructional workshops and town halls—this support impacts classroom experiences.

A Microsoft partnership makes Becker even more agile

Becker College is continually looking for ways to further integrate their four key components into the agile curriculum. The college as a whole has certainly had the concept of an Agile Mindset, but “the university themselves had to be agile, and not treat every student the same, and not assume that every student that’s failing or at risk should get the same sequence of care,” explains Rob Curtin, Senior Director of the Americas for Higher Education at Microsoft. Becker College wanted a way to integrate some technology into their softer skills to help with other student needs.

The first technology Becker College integrated was a Live Tiles platform built on the Office 365 system. Live Tiles is an app system that also operates like an interface. For example, a student can have one tile open showing the weather while another tile displays the current news headlines. All the tiles update in real time. Becker ran a © 2017 Microsoft Live Tiles pilot program for 6-9 months with non-traditional students, and they found a 90% increase in student response. Ritacco says, “Live Tiles has created a dashboard ability for one-stop shopping, and that’s what students are looking for.” Live Tiles is now being used by traditional and non-traditional students as a student-facing front-end system. It is a centralized online location for all student resources that easily integrates with Becker College’s learning management system. The customized learning modules and dashboards improve engagement. Students and faculty gain access within the platform to homework, email, athletics and sports announcements, student activities updates, etc. in real time, all in one place instead of opening dozens of windows or tabs. Faculty is able to utilize faculty-specific tools like department updates, communications with students, and SharePoint document sharing capabilities. “I can click on it and it keeps me within the portal and it’s all tied in to one place. Faculty members really like having that share-ability without having to look through emails and things, “says Ritacco.

The second technology Becker College integrated was Discourse Analytics which uses Azure machine learning technology. The easiest way to summarize how Becker uses Discourse Analytics comes from Rob Curtin at Microsoft, who says, “Becker is embracing learner- centric outcomes instead of institution-centric outcomes.” In essence, Becker uses Discourse Analytics to gather specific insights and data on students to develop profiles on each student. Predictive analytics help design personalized learning perspectives, which when applied, help individual students succeed in the best way they can. This innovative technology aligns with college’s forward-thinking agile approach. It empowers educators to understands the variety of challenges students might face and design flexible curriculums that fill those gaps and enable the creation of personalized learning pathways designed use Azure data to be effective and engaging.

What Ritacco hopes for his students is that through the agile learning approach they have the skills to be life-long learners. He says, “We’re not preparing you for your first job, we’re preparing you for every job, including your last job and last career.” And considering how often people are changing jobs in the modern workplace, having the soft skills put forth in his curriculum is crucial. A Forbes poll in 2017 said that 45% of newly hired college graduates stayed with their company for less than 2 years, and that by the age of 35, roughly 25% of

workers had held 5 different jobs.[1] (#_ftn1)

Ritacco is piloting a new program at Becker called Agile University that will utilize its existing Microsoft technology partnership. This proposed program targets non-traditional students who are technically oriented who will be targeted to fill the 1.4 million IT jobs that will be available by 2020. Becker College will utilize Azure machine learning and Microsoft AI to help create student profiles to place participants based off of aptitude, fit, and acumen. Agile University will continue to apply their Agile Mindset and curriculum approach in this new program, to have the support of faculty to implement the agile curriculum, and to integrate Microsoft technology to enhance their programs. There’s no doubt that with ongoing movement toward success, Becker College’s students will have sustainable careers that pay forward all of the valuable learnings they acquired there.

[1] (#_ftnref1) [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/11/10/millennials- arent-afraid-to-change-jobs-and-heres-why/#7fa8a24e19a5

—Alan Ritacco: Dean of the School of Design and Technology —Becker College

“ I can click on it and it keeps me within the portal and it’s all tied in to one place. Faculty members really like having that share-ability without having to look through emails and things.”

—Alan Ritacco: Senior Director of the Americas for Higher Education —Becker College

“ Becker is embracing learner-centric outcomes instead of institution- centric outcomes.”

—Rob Curtin: Senior Director of the Americas for Higher Education —Microsoft