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The University of Michigan’s Digital Innovation Greenhouse (DIG) exists to design and develop innovative software tools that support the improvement of education through personalization at scale.
“Personalization at scale” refers to taking innovations that personalize education, tailoring them to individual student needs and increasing engagement, and scaling these up so that all students can have access to them.
Digital enterprises too often lack the resources to fully grow from early innovation to widespread adoption, and DIG exists to help efforts overcome the “valley of death.”
DIG works with user communities to grow tools to maturity, and establishes a pathway to scale through collaboration across U-M’s digital ecosystem. With a team (including faculty, staff, and student fellows) of developers, designers, behavioral scientists, and data scientists, DIG helps translate digital engagement tools from innovation to infrastructure.
One of DIG’s main projects is developing Academic Reporting Tools (ART 2.0).
ART 2.0 is a data visualization tool that will assist decision makers in accessing and analyzing course and academic program data to help administration, faculty, and students make more informed decisions. ART 2.0 will optimize instructional practices for faculty and answer questions such as “what majors are my students pursuing?” while also structuring the learning process for students through an interactive platform that answers questions such as “what courses have most of the students in this course already completed?”
By allowing students and faculty alike to access data on courses and majors from past academic terms, ART 2.0 is fostering a community that allows for data-driven information to lead towards better decision making.
Other projects DIG is currently engaged in include:
- ECoach – a way to provide students with personalized assistance in large classes, which has already assisted over 15,000 students at U-M.
- GradeCraft – using gaming to enhance student motivation and learning.
- M-Write - writing-to-learn pedagogies that ask students them to explain what they know, interact with one another through peer review, and learn through a revision process.
DIG has also worked on learning tools focused on sustainability cases, interactive role-playing simulations, and a library of problems for self-testing, as well as developing an early warning system for advisors that flags when students are struggling in their courses.
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