Tim & Brent sit down with Gerlie Jeltema, Director of IT Enterprise Systems at South Orange County Community College District to talk about how the district works to make decisions that impact all employees and students, as well as what’s happening at the CCC Digital Center. For many instructors and classified staff, this is a rare look at what’s happening at higher levels and how decisions are made. This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation.
Episode Transcript
Brent Warner 0:00
What is the CCC Digital Lab, and how is the Director of IT Enterprise Systems at South Orange County Community College District involved? We’re interviewing Gerlie Geltima to learn more about what’s happening at the higher levels. This is the Higher Ed Tech Podcast, Season Eight, Episode Six.
Tim Van Norman 0:29
Welcome to today’s Higher Ed Tech podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Assistant Director of Technology Services at Irvine Valley College, an adjunct professor of business at Cypress College,
Brent Warner 0:38
and I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.
Tim Van Norman 0:46
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So this is a special treat. I’ve known Girlie for, I think, about nine years now, and it’s been great to get to know her. And now in my new role, I get to talk with her quite a bit, like earlier today and stuff. And most of it, I hope, is good. I try to make sure at least I’m not complaining too much. But she’s been fun to work with, and so I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to rope her into coming on the show this time.
Brent Warner 1:19
Yes, Gerlie Jeltema, welcome to the show!
Gerlie Jeltema 1:22
Thank you for having me. Thank you, Brent. Thank you, Tim. And as Tima said, I have been at the district actually forever and ever. It feels like, and Tim and I have been kind of partners in crime and and things technology related as far as the district is concerned. So I welcome the invitation to speak about the CCC Digital Center and how that relates to the work that we are doing on the local level. And I’m excited to just share information about it. So just have at
Brent Warner 1:55
it. Cool. Well, this is the first time we’ve actually. I think Tim is this the first time we’ve interviewed someone who’s passed the school, like the the level of this the individual school is that
Tim Van Norman 2:08
from district. I believe this is our first one. District or last time, last time we we interviewed the vice president of instruction for us, and then he moved to district after that. We’ve interviewed a couple people. I’m thinking at the state level or something like that.
Brent Warner 2:30
Pokansky Brock way back when. Yeah, we’ve done a couple other, but but this is a kind of a this is new. District level for sure is the first. So thank you, Gerlie, for joining us. First, I think so. I I said a mouthful in that first introduction, which was sorry. I think I said lab, but CCC Digital Center, and your your job title is director of IT enterprise systems. I don’t know how that fits onto a business card. Can you explain a little bit about just a little bit the basics of your job before we kind of get into some of the nitty gritty?
Gerlie Jeltema 3:07
Understood. Thank you, Brent. So, I have been working at District IT since 2018 as District Director of IT Enterprise Systems, which is a fancy title for really any software applications that we have across our systems across the colleges. Usually falls within my purview unless it is our ERP, which falls under somebody else. And part of what I am actually responsible for is our innovation arm or our innovation group. So, any new technologies that we want to adopt, any enhancements, capability gaps that need to be addressed with the solutions that we have in place, any new ideas that we might want to bring forth, those all fund, especially on the software development side, that that falls under my group, and I have an amazing team that backs me up. That a lot of them have years and years and years of experience, and Tim has had the pleasure of working with a whole bunch of them, actually. So you know we’re kind of unique district IT because we did build our own student information system, and we maintained that for years, and so you know we actually functioned very differently compared to other IT organizations in the California Community Colleges because we had a true software development arm. We had practiced true software development methodologies, and you know we built solutions using at that time what seemed like it was groundbreaking was you know the technologies the Microsoft tech stack we built on our SQL Server backend, and we built an amazing student and. System that has obviously reached end of life, and that’s why we transitioned to an ERP, and it’s a vendor-based ERP. And the innovation group at this point in time is really focused on, you know, just taking it to the next level. A lot of it right now is stabilization integrations, Working on the capability gaps of that ERP to address the needs of our students.
Brent Warner 5:28
For people listening, ERP stands for…
Gerlie Jeltema 5:32
oh, thank you. Enterprise Research Planning Software.
Brent Warner 5:36
We have a lot of teachers who might be like, “Wait, what’s the thing you’re saying it? I want to make sure I know what it means.” (laughter)
Gerlie Jeltema 5:41
Yes, yes, yes. So thank you for asking that question. I just assume everybody speaks the language that I speak. So an ERP for the purposes of higher education typically means the back office applications, your HR system, your finance system, your financial aid system, your student information system, those are all encompassed within an ERP.
Tim Van Norman 6:07
Got it. Now, as you’ve talked about it, you talked about how you build the integrations. I know sometimes I’m your favorite person, and sometimes I’m not your favorite person. As I as I come up with yet another integration, or how come this integration is broken? I love the way you have built this around agile development and using agile development, even as you work with sprints and stuff like that, just to make everything work and and function. So you guys, you guys have really done an amazing job putting things together, especially in this new environment that we’re in. As you said, our old sis has reached its end of life, and now we’ve moved onto a new one, and that’s been a big, a big lift for you and your team. And I know I’ve been part of part of it. I know I’ve not been part of the whole thing, so love the way you have built that in. As you’re doing this, and part of this has also been you’ve been the lead person that I’ve heard of anyway with our fraudulent student task force. That has been, I would say, that could be a full-time job by itself, is working with fraudulent students. All the different innovations that you’re bringing, working with the state. Tell us a little bit about what that is, because I know, as faculty, I have no idea. You know what all is going on. I see fraudulent students pop up, and then they disappear in my class, or they don’t even get in my class. That’s always a positive for me because I hate dropping them and and stuff. But tell tell us a little bit about how you deal with the fraudulent student part of it as well.
Gerlie Jeltema 7:54
Yeah, so this is really an exciting a conversation to have. Just kind of talk about that for a little bit. We actually saw a massive rise in fraudulent students entering our systems when COVID hit. As soon as the pandemic hit, and a lot of the courses sections are being offered online, you know, you have a little bit of a disconnect there, right? Classes are asynchronous, or you know, there’s not as much interaction between the students and the faculty members. So it’s it was easier to penetrate that vulnerability as far as you know the systems are concerned, and there were a lot of bad actors that took advantage of the funds that were made available to higher ed, and it was it made it very very attractive to them to go ahead and create these fraudulent applications. Get into it’s an it’s an open system. The CCCs is an open system. Admission is very very relaxed. So we ended up with an influx, and not just locally across all the CCCs, and it’s not just in California across various states that higher education definitely got attacked with by bad actors with a lot of these fraudulent applications, and it was quite costly. It took up seats from real students, and you know a lot of these applications before they were detected, or the applicants they were receiving financial aid. So we luckily at SOC at that time when this was first starting out, we already had in place some semi-automated systems because we had our own student information system to detect fraudulent behavior. We could go into our own databases and look for patterns. You know, I’m not going to disclose what those patterns are, obviously. But there were definitely patterns that that we could detect. We didn’t have at that time the ability for machine learning to take advantage of just like even the the AI capabilities that are now just you kind of take For granted, so we had a lot of work that we had put in place so that detection of fraudulent behavior wasn’t, you know, one vigilant instructor or one vigilant vigilant financial aid specialist, And after the the magnitude of this problem was detected, we were actually lucky enough that we weren’t as vulnerable as most other institutions. Like I said, the digital center, and I’m introducing this to them. It was actually Foothill Dianza that worked with a vendor to say, “Hey, this is a big, big problem. That that fraudulent students is a big problem. Can we start leveraging the power of these emerging technologies like AI and machine learning to go ahead and you know detect fraud, look for patterns, learn from these patterns, build on these patterns, and so it was Foothill Dianza who partnered with a third-party vendor and built Light Leap AI, which that was a great kind of a starting point for the digital center approach, where you start with solving a problem at a small scale, at a specific, you know, school district, prototyping it, seeing if it works, and then scaling it out. You know, when scaling it out, meaning how do we brand it to everybody else? How how do we raise awareness? How do we create contracts that are look that are advantageous for all of the CCCs. How do we build it on technology that’s highly available across all CCCs? How do we make sure that it’s performant across all CCCs? And then who maintains this code? If there is a problem, you know who maintains it? And this was a really good example of the digital centers work and why it’s important, because it was a starting point for you know an emerging technology, the use of that emerging technology at an institution, proving out that it worked, scaling it out, and then going ahead and distributing it amongst the different CCCs. So, if if you want to really understand why the digital center is gaining traction, it’s because of a use case like this in particular. Because you know we we don’t necessarily need to anymore. I mean, Tim, you spoke about the advantage of using Scrum methodologies and just-in-time kind of development. And I’m sorry, I’m using tech terms again. I’m a geek at heart, but you don’t have to boil the ocean to solve problems, let’s start small and see. You know, kind of iterate quickly, solve the problems small with technology, and then can we go ahead and scale it? And so that was a great example for the need for the digital center across the CCCs.
Tim Van Norman 13:40
I want to get to the digital center, but first I want to ask you about two other things that you’re working on. One of them is the AI integration for students to be able to ask questions. The AI integration that we’re doing into our ERP with, or I I think eventually it’s going into our ERP, but so that students can just come to the website and start asking questions, I believe we went with a system called Element 451, and so I know you’ve been a huge proponent and really working on that, and then the other part I want to talk about is your just your work with the district AI task force stuff like that. So, tell us about Element 451. I know for myself, one of the things that I’m looking at is in the future we’re looking at doing student housing and things where we’re we already know we have a 24/7 digital world for students. We can’t support them. We can’t provide humans 24/7. So to me, that’s part of what I see coming out of this new system that we’re looking at, or this system that we’ve been working with, Element 451. I’d love to get your take and where you where you see it now, and where you see it going.
Gerlie Jeltema 15:00
Great question, Tim. So, if you look at most college websites now, there’s usually a 24/7 live not live 24/7 support in the form of a chat bot, and we had that for years and years and years. And the experience in the past has been that the responses are extremely structured. It is based on information that has been seeded into a knowledge base by some sort of a knowledge worker. You know, somebody from admissions and records or from our EOPS office goes ahead and provides, you know, content standard responses to questions that students may ask, and not not dissimilar to from a frequently asked questions or FAQ. And what we really understood this was actually a DTC goal. This was a goal for our district-wide technology committee, is that we need a more robust support system for our students that’s available 24/7, and luckily there is a solution that has taken advantage of AI capabilities as well, so we did. We went through a selection process, and our selection committee selected element 451, and this is now in place for both Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College on the college website. So it’s anonymous. You know, anybody can go on the college website and ask a question. It has been trained to look at content from our certified sources, our college websites. Obviously, you don’t want sources that I mean, AI hallucinates. So, you you want to make sure that when students ask a question like “When is the financial aid application due for you know fall 2027? that it is providing you with accurate information, and you don’t give your students inaccurate information that they may be basing decisions on. You know, so it has been seeded with certified sources, if if you will, what you what you want to call it, by our subject matter experts. The great thing about this tool is that different departments can build their own agents. So the outreach outreach department can build their own agent and you know change the tone of their agent. Have it be a little bit more like energetic. Hey, welcome! Come in. We want to see you. You know that kind of thing. Versus, you know something that’s more like maybe financial aid agent that is a little bit more you know standard responses. It’s matter of fact, so the different departments can build and train their own agents and set the tone if they want. And the responses are, you know, kind of like when you transition from structured query language to natural query. So I am no longer asking structured questions and getting structured responses. I can ask a question like, you know, why is the sky blue, and get some sort of a response. It doesn’t have to be a rote type of question. In the past, it was it was kind of like you keep your fingers crossed that the response is going to actually fit the question that was asked. So yes,
Tim Van Norman 18:46
to that point, I usually got live person. You just forget it. I’m not. I just go with live person, and that’s that’s why when I was so excited about Element 451 is because I’ve dealt with literally almost 30 years of chat bots that weren’t bots, they were just chatting, and it just didn’t work really well. And now, this is I love how it’s developing. So before, because you know we we’re talking AI, always got to ask: Is there any possibility of the students using it for cheating. How do we minimize hallucinations and those types of things out of this system?
Brent Warner 19:27
Oh, and I’m going to follow up to that as well because I think one thing you mentioned that it’s anonymous, right? And so, what level? Like, I think one thing that people worry about when they log in is like, well, is my information private or is it only meant for kind of general types of questions, not maybe specifically how much money am I going to get from my financial aid? Like, what what are the breakdowns of like the levels of conversation as well? Because I think people are want to know what their students are going to be getting into when they say, “Hey, you can chat with this thing as well.”
Gerlie Jeltema 19:59
Right. So right now we’re kind of taking baby steps, you know. There’s there’s multiple parts to this question. So Tim, I think first I want to address something that you asked, which was about cheating. Like, how do you? Would you mind asking that part again? I just want to make sure I got that properly.
Tim Van Norman 20:18
So are students able to use it for cheating. How do we avoid allowing them to cheat? And then, basically, what trains the data? How do we make sure it doesn’t hallucinate? And they’re kind of related that way. Yeah.
Gerlie Jeltema 20:31
Okay. So the best part about Element 451 right now is there is no connectivity to our learning management system. So there’s absolutely no way that you can, you know, cheat using Element 451 into our learning management system, which is Canvas. With regards to, you know, I had mentioned that it’s anonymized right now. Basically, this is what I mean by taking baby steps. So there is the ability to integrate with our student information system, and down the line, you know, when we have a CRM tool, there is that potential for integration with our student management. I’m sorry, student information system too. So, absolutely, in the future, can somebody ask, financial aid reward? You know, if you provide your credentials and say this is Gerlie Jeltema, blah blah blah blah, you know that you you need to get authenticated. We need to know exactly who you are, and there are multiple steps to that authentication. Once the system understands that you are who you say you are, we can go ahead and provide that information to the student. So that’s down the line. Absolutely, another aspect of this that’s going to be down the line is you know that that live conversation with an agent. So at this point in time, the way that we have it implemented is that the chat bot is strictly responding as a bot. There is no transfer to a live person, an actual staff member. So, if a person, if a student asks a question that the bot does not have a response for, you know, it will redirect them to speak with somebody in that department. But there is no automatic handoff to somebody that’s in that department, and the reason that that is extremely intentional. Part of the reason of that is, you know, you have staffing constraints, obviously, right? So you want to make sure that that handoff only occurs when you actually have staff that to man to man that chat. At the same time, there’s a question of handoffs between different departments. Somebody might start their conversation with a chatbot asking admissions and records question, and then it it naturally navigates towards potentially financial aid questions, and so you need to be able to transfer and hand off that conversation that the student is having with a chatbot from an admissions and records staff member to a financial aid staff member. So those are some of the considerations that you know the colleges will like Rango Valley College will have to take into account, and the and the captains that have been involved with this implementation, are very well aware of of these conversations that need to be had before we implement something. I do want to add one thing with regards to Element 451 and the chat bot, and that is has to do with academic advising, because students are now asking questions about academic planning, and this is where we really need to make sure that the bot, the agent, is responding accurately and completely, and it doesn’t hallucinate. We don’t want to guide our students to, you know, the wrong information, and so we are actively working with the different counseling departments, you know, for both Iran Valley College and Saddleback College, to ensure accuracy of the the agent information and making sure that that is seated appropriately, so that you know we don’t end up misguiding our students with regards to something as important as academic advising. Did that answer all your questions?
Brent Warner 24:28
Oh yeah. Well, and I mean, it takes a lot to get your head wrapped around all of these things, like what’s happening with all of it. And so I think that people who are on our campus are starting to see some of those things, and they’re like, “Well, wait a second. What am I telling students as they’re stepping into it, or what am I? What what are they gonna? You know, because a lot of times students will ask the teacher like, “What happens when I do this? Right, and so I think that’s kind of the first step of levels of the conversations that we just wanted to share out a little bit, Gerlie. There’s so much we haven’t even started talking about the CCC Digital Center yet. So what we’re gonna do here, we’re gonna split this episode into two and. We’re going to take a pause here, and we will be back next week with the – Gerlie you’re staying here because we’re we’re still talking to you -but the episode will be back next week, and we’ll we’ll go on with part two where we can really dig into some of the digital center stuff as well.
Tim Van Norman 25:19
Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com.
Brent Warner 25:26
As always, we do want your feedback, so please go to thehigheredtechpodcast.com and let us know your thoughts.
Tim Van Norman 25:32
For everyone at IVC that’s listening, if you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. If you have questions about technology in your classroom. Please contact me, Tim Van Norman at tvannorman@ivc.edu.
Brent Warner 25:46
If you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brent G Warner. And if you want to reach out to Gerlie, you can send us a message, and we will put you in touch.
Tim Van Norman 25:59
So I’m Tim Van Norman,
Brent Warner 26:01
and I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care, everybody.
What is the CCC Digital Lab, and how is the Director of IT Enterprise Systems at South Orange County Community College District involved? We’re interviewing Gerlie Geltima to learn more about what’s happening at the higher levels. This is the Higher Ed Tech Podcast, Season Eight, Episode Six.
Tim Van Norman 0:29
Welcome to today’s Higher Ed Tech podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Assistant Director of Technology Services at Irvine Valley College, an adjunct professor of business at Cypress College,
Brent Warner 0:38
and I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.
Tim Van Norman 0:46
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So this is a special treat. I’ve known Girlie for, I think, about nine years now, and it’s been great to get to know her. And now in my new role, I get to talk with her quite a bit, like earlier today and stuff. And most of it, I hope, is good. I try to make sure at least I’m not complaining too much. But she’s been fun to work with, and so I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to rope her into coming on the show this time.
Brent Warner 1:19
Yes, Gerlie Jeltema, welcome to the show!
Gerlie Jeltema 1:22
Thank you for having me. Thank you, Brent. Thank you, Tim. And as Tima said, I have been at the district actually forever and ever. It feels like, and Tim and I have been kind of partners in crime and and things technology related as far as the district is concerned. So I welcome the invitation to speak about the CCC Digital Center and how that relates to the work that we are doing on the local level. And I’m excited to just share information about it. So just have at
Brent Warner 1:55
it. Cool. Well, this is the first time we’ve actually. I think Tim is this the first time we’ve interviewed someone who’s passed the school, like the the level of this the individual school is that
Tim Van Norman 2:08
from district. I believe this is our first one. District or last time, last time we we interviewed the vice president of instruction for us, and then he moved to district after that. We’ve interviewed a couple people. I’m thinking at the state level or something like that.
Brent Warner 2:30
Pokansky Brock way back when. Yeah, we’ve done a couple other, but but this is a kind of a this is new. District level for sure is the first. So thank you, Gerlie, for joining us. First, I think so. I I said a mouthful in that first introduction, which was sorry. I think I said lab, but CCC Digital Center, and your your job title is director of IT enterprise systems. I don’t know how that fits onto a business card. Can you explain a little bit about just a little bit the basics of your job before we kind of get into some of the nitty gritty?
Gerlie Jeltema 3:07
Understood. Thank you, Brent. So, I have been working at District IT since 2018 as District Director of IT Enterprise Systems, which is a fancy title for really any software applications that we have across our systems across the colleges. Usually falls within my purview unless it is our ERP, which falls under somebody else. And part of what I am actually responsible for is our innovation arm or our innovation group. So, any new technologies that we want to adopt, any enhancements, capability gaps that need to be addressed with the solutions that we have in place, any new ideas that we might want to bring forth, those all fund, especially on the software development side, that that falls under my group, and I have an amazing team that backs me up. That a lot of them have years and years and years of experience, and Tim has had the pleasure of working with a whole bunch of them, actually. So you know we’re kind of unique district IT because we did build our own student information system, and we maintained that for years, and so you know we actually functioned very differently compared to other IT organizations in the California Community Colleges because we had a true software development arm. We had practiced true software development methodologies, and you know we built solutions using at that time what seemed like it was groundbreaking was you know the technologies the Microsoft tech stack we built on our SQL Server backend, and we built an amazing student and. System that has obviously reached end of life, and that’s why we transitioned to an ERP, and it’s a vendor-based ERP. And the innovation group at this point in time is really focused on, you know, just taking it to the next level. A lot of it right now is stabilization integrations, Working on the capability gaps of that ERP to address the needs of our students.
Brent Warner 5:28
For people listening, ERP stands for…
Gerlie Jeltema 5:32
oh, thank you. Enterprise Research Planning Software.
Brent Warner 5:36
We have a lot of teachers who might be like, “Wait, what’s the thing you’re saying it? I want to make sure I know what it means.” (laughter)
Gerlie Jeltema 5:41
Yes, yes, yes. So thank you for asking that question. I just assume everybody speaks the language that I speak. So an ERP for the purposes of higher education typically means the back office applications, your HR system, your finance system, your financial aid system, your student information system, those are all encompassed within an ERP.
Tim Van Norman 6:07
Got it. Now, as you’ve talked about it, you talked about how you build the integrations. I know sometimes I’m your favorite person, and sometimes I’m not your favorite person. As I as I come up with yet another integration, or how come this integration is broken? I love the way you have built this around agile development and using agile development, even as you work with sprints and stuff like that, just to make everything work and and function. So you guys, you guys have really done an amazing job putting things together, especially in this new environment that we’re in. As you said, our old sis has reached its end of life, and now we’ve moved onto a new one, and that’s been a big, a big lift for you and your team. And I know I’ve been part of part of it. I know I’ve not been part of the whole thing, so love the way you have built that in. As you’re doing this, and part of this has also been you’ve been the lead person that I’ve heard of anyway with our fraudulent student task force. That has been, I would say, that could be a full-time job by itself, is working with fraudulent students. All the different innovations that you’re bringing, working with the state. Tell us a little bit about what that is, because I know, as faculty, I have no idea. You know what all is going on. I see fraudulent students pop up, and then they disappear in my class, or they don’t even get in my class. That’s always a positive for me because I hate dropping them and and stuff. But tell tell us a little bit about how you deal with the fraudulent student part of it as well.
Gerlie Jeltema 7:54
Yeah, so this is really an exciting a conversation to have. Just kind of talk about that for a little bit. We actually saw a massive rise in fraudulent students entering our systems when COVID hit. As soon as the pandemic hit, and a lot of the courses sections are being offered online, you know, you have a little bit of a disconnect there, right? Classes are asynchronous, or you know, there’s not as much interaction between the students and the faculty members. So it’s it was easier to penetrate that vulnerability as far as you know the systems are concerned, and there were a lot of bad actors that took advantage of the funds that were made available to higher ed, and it was it made it very very attractive to them to go ahead and create these fraudulent applications. Get into it’s an it’s an open system. The CCCs is an open system. Admission is very very relaxed. So we ended up with an influx, and not just locally across all the CCCs, and it’s not just in California across various states that higher education definitely got attacked with by bad actors with a lot of these fraudulent applications, and it was quite costly. It took up seats from real students, and you know a lot of these applications before they were detected, or the applicants they were receiving financial aid. So we luckily at SOC at that time when this was first starting out, we already had in place some semi-automated systems because we had our own student information system to detect fraudulent behavior. We could go into our own databases and look for patterns. You know, I’m not going to disclose what those patterns are, obviously. But there were definitely patterns that that we could detect. We didn’t have at that time the ability for machine learning to take advantage of just like even the the AI capabilities that are now just you kind of take For granted, so we had a lot of work that we had put in place so that detection of fraudulent behavior wasn’t, you know, one vigilant instructor or one vigilant vigilant financial aid specialist, And after the the magnitude of this problem was detected, we were actually lucky enough that we weren’t as vulnerable as most other institutions. Like I said, the digital center, and I’m introducing this to them. It was actually Foothill Dianza that worked with a vendor to say, “Hey, this is a big, big problem. That that fraudulent students is a big problem. Can we start leveraging the power of these emerging technologies like AI and machine learning to go ahead and you know detect fraud, look for patterns, learn from these patterns, build on these patterns, and so it was Foothill Dianza who partnered with a third-party vendor and built Light Leap AI, which that was a great kind of a starting point for the digital center approach, where you start with solving a problem at a small scale, at a specific, you know, school district, prototyping it, seeing if it works, and then scaling it out. You know, when scaling it out, meaning how do we brand it to everybody else? How how do we raise awareness? How do we create contracts that are look that are advantageous for all of the CCCs. How do we build it on technology that’s highly available across all CCCs? How do we make sure that it’s performant across all CCCs? And then who maintains this code? If there is a problem, you know who maintains it? And this was a really good example of the digital centers work and why it’s important, because it was a starting point for you know an emerging technology, the use of that emerging technology at an institution, proving out that it worked, scaling it out, and then going ahead and distributing it amongst the different CCCs. So, if if you want to really understand why the digital center is gaining traction, it’s because of a use case like this in particular. Because you know we we don’t necessarily need to anymore. I mean, Tim, you spoke about the advantage of using Scrum methodologies and just-in-time kind of development. And I’m sorry, I’m using tech terms again. I’m a geek at heart, but you don’t have to boil the ocean to solve problems, let’s start small and see. You know, kind of iterate quickly, solve the problems small with technology, and then can we go ahead and scale it? And so that was a great example for the need for the digital center across the CCCs.
Tim Van Norman 13:40
I want to get to the digital center, but first I want to ask you about two other things that you’re working on. One of them is the AI integration for students to be able to ask questions. The AI integration that we’re doing into our ERP with, or I I think eventually it’s going into our ERP, but so that students can just come to the website and start asking questions, I believe we went with a system called Element 451, and so I know you’ve been a huge proponent and really working on that, and then the other part I want to talk about is your just your work with the district AI task force stuff like that. So, tell us about Element 451. I know for myself, one of the things that I’m looking at is in the future we’re looking at doing student housing and things where we’re we already know we have a 24/7 digital world for students. We can’t support them. We can’t provide humans 24/7. So to me, that’s part of what I see coming out of this new system that we’re looking at, or this system that we’ve been working with, Element 451. I’d love to get your take and where you where you see it now, and where you see it going.
Gerlie Jeltema 15:00
Great question, Tim. So, if you look at most college websites now, there’s usually a 24/7 live not live 24/7 support in the form of a chat bot, and we had that for years and years and years. And the experience in the past has been that the responses are extremely structured. It is based on information that has been seeded into a knowledge base by some sort of a knowledge worker. You know, somebody from admissions and records or from our EOPS office goes ahead and provides, you know, content standard responses to questions that students may ask, and not not dissimilar to from a frequently asked questions or FAQ. And what we really understood this was actually a DTC goal. This was a goal for our district-wide technology committee, is that we need a more robust support system for our students that’s available 24/7, and luckily there is a solution that has taken advantage of AI capabilities as well, so we did. We went through a selection process, and our selection committee selected element 451, and this is now in place for both Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College on the college website. So it’s anonymous. You know, anybody can go on the college website and ask a question. It has been trained to look at content from our certified sources, our college websites. Obviously, you don’t want sources that I mean, AI hallucinates. So, you you want to make sure that when students ask a question like “When is the financial aid application due for you know fall 2027? that it is providing you with accurate information, and you don’t give your students inaccurate information that they may be basing decisions on. You know, so it has been seeded with certified sources, if if you will, what you what you want to call it, by our subject matter experts. The great thing about this tool is that different departments can build their own agents. So the outreach outreach department can build their own agent and you know change the tone of their agent. Have it be a little bit more like energetic. Hey, welcome! Come in. We want to see you. You know that kind of thing. Versus, you know something that’s more like maybe financial aid agent that is a little bit more you know standard responses. It’s matter of fact, so the different departments can build and train their own agents and set the tone if they want. And the responses are, you know, kind of like when you transition from structured query language to natural query. So I am no longer asking structured questions and getting structured responses. I can ask a question like, you know, why is the sky blue, and get some sort of a response. It doesn’t have to be a rote type of question. In the past, it was it was kind of like you keep your fingers crossed that the response is going to actually fit the question that was asked. So yes,
Tim Van Norman 18:46
to that point, I usually got live person. You just forget it. I’m not. I just go with live person, and that’s that’s why when I was so excited about Element 451 is because I’ve dealt with literally almost 30 years of chat bots that weren’t bots, they were just chatting, and it just didn’t work really well. And now, this is I love how it’s developing. So before, because you know we we’re talking AI, always got to ask: Is there any possibility of the students using it for cheating. How do we minimize hallucinations and those types of things out of this system?
Brent Warner 19:27
Oh, and I’m going to follow up to that as well because I think one thing you mentioned that it’s anonymous, right? And so, what level? Like, I think one thing that people worry about when they log in is like, well, is my information private or is it only meant for kind of general types of questions, not maybe specifically how much money am I going to get from my financial aid? Like, what what are the breakdowns of like the levels of conversation as well? Because I think people are want to know what their students are going to be getting into when they say, “Hey, you can chat with this thing as well.”
Gerlie Jeltema 19:59
Right. So right now we’re kind of taking baby steps, you know. There’s there’s multiple parts to this question. So Tim, I think first I want to address something that you asked, which was about cheating. Like, how do you? Would you mind asking that part again? I just want to make sure I got that properly.
Tim Van Norman 20:18
So are students able to use it for cheating. How do we avoid allowing them to cheat? And then, basically, what trains the data? How do we make sure it doesn’t hallucinate? And they’re kind of related that way. Yeah.
Gerlie Jeltema 20:31
Okay. So the best part about Element 451 right now is there is no connectivity to our learning management system. So there’s absolutely no way that you can, you know, cheat using Element 451 into our learning management system, which is Canvas. With regards to, you know, I had mentioned that it’s anonymized right now. Basically, this is what I mean by taking baby steps. So there is the ability to integrate with our student information system, and down the line, you know, when we have a CRM tool, there is that potential for integration with our student management. I’m sorry, student information system too. So, absolutely, in the future, can somebody ask, financial aid reward? You know, if you provide your credentials and say this is Gerlie Jeltema, blah blah blah blah, you know that you you need to get authenticated. We need to know exactly who you are, and there are multiple steps to that authentication. Once the system understands that you are who you say you are, we can go ahead and provide that information to the student. So that’s down the line. Absolutely, another aspect of this that’s going to be down the line is you know that that live conversation with an agent. So at this point in time, the way that we have it implemented is that the chat bot is strictly responding as a bot. There is no transfer to a live person, an actual staff member. So, if a person, if a student asks a question that the bot does not have a response for, you know, it will redirect them to speak with somebody in that department. But there is no automatic handoff to somebody that’s in that department, and the reason that that is extremely intentional. Part of the reason of that is, you know, you have staffing constraints, obviously, right? So you want to make sure that that handoff only occurs when you actually have staff that to man to man that chat. At the same time, there’s a question of handoffs between different departments. Somebody might start their conversation with a chatbot asking admissions and records question, and then it it naturally navigates towards potentially financial aid questions, and so you need to be able to transfer and hand off that conversation that the student is having with a chatbot from an admissions and records staff member to a financial aid staff member. So those are some of the considerations that you know the colleges will like Rango Valley College will have to take into account, and the and the captains that have been involved with this implementation, are very well aware of of these conversations that need to be had before we implement something. I do want to add one thing with regards to Element 451 and the chat bot, and that is has to do with academic advising, because students are now asking questions about academic planning, and this is where we really need to make sure that the bot, the agent, is responding accurately and completely, and it doesn’t hallucinate. We don’t want to guide our students to, you know, the wrong information, and so we are actively working with the different counseling departments, you know, for both Iran Valley College and Saddleback College, to ensure accuracy of the the agent information and making sure that that is seated appropriately, so that you know we don’t end up misguiding our students with regards to something as important as academic advising. Did that answer all your questions?
Brent Warner 24:28
Oh yeah. Well, and I mean, it takes a lot to get your head wrapped around all of these things, like what’s happening with all of it. And so I think that people who are on our campus are starting to see some of those things, and they’re like, “Well, wait a second. What am I telling students as they’re stepping into it, or what am I? What what are they gonna? You know, because a lot of times students will ask the teacher like, “What happens when I do this? Right, and so I think that’s kind of the first step of levels of the conversations that we just wanted to share out a little bit, Gerlie. There’s so much we haven’t even started talking about the CCC Digital Center yet. So what we’re gonna do here, we’re gonna split this episode into two and. We’re going to take a pause here, and we will be back next week with the – Gerlie you’re staying here because we’re we’re still talking to you -but the episode will be back next week, and we’ll we’ll go on with part two where we can really dig into some of the digital center stuff as well.
Tim Van Norman 25:19
Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com.
Brent Warner 25:26
As always, we do want your feedback, so please go to thehigheredtechpodcast.com and let us know your thoughts.
Tim Van Norman 25:32
For everyone at IVC that’s listening, if you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. If you have questions about technology in your classroom. Please contact me, Tim Van Norman at tvannorman@ivc.edu.
Brent Warner 25:46
If you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brent G Warner. And if you want to reach out to Gerlie, you can send us a message, and we will put you in touch.
Tim Van Norman 25:59
So I’m Tim Van Norman,
Brent Warner 26:01
and I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care, everybody.