Tim & Brent continue the conversation 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 2 of a 2-part conversation.
Episode Transcript
Brent Warner 0:00
We’re back with part two of the conversation with Gerlie Jeltema, the the long title director of IT Enterprise Systems at South Orange County Community College District, and the conversation around her work and what she does with the CCC Digital Center. This is the Higher Ed Tech Podcast, Season Eight, Episode Seven. right, we are back with Gerlie Geltima. This is part two of the interview, Gerlie. We did not really even get to talking about all the things that we wanted to talk about. There’s a lot going on here, so thank you for being willing to stick around and keep sharing with us. We definitely want to talk about the CCC Digital Center, but I know that Tim has a couple of questions about the District AI Task Force, which is also kind of a continuation. We’re talking a little bit about AI, of course, with your job. There’s always AI conversations going on, and so let’s start with Tim. I know you wanted to move into it just a little bit of district AI task force conversation.
Tim Van Norman 1:10
Gerlie, you’ve been involved in our AI task force at IVC, I think, since the very first time, the first date that we were there. It’s been great having you. We love having the fact that somebody from district is also involved in our in ours, and I know that you’re yes, absolutely, and and you’re involved in Saddlebacks at the same time. That that lends a lot of credibility, and also means that as we’re talking, we know that you’re paying attention to it, and you correct us when we’re wrong. And I appreciate that. Hopefully, we’re not wrong very often, but it can happen. But I know a lot of what you’ve been working on really, really recently has been AI policies. We did an AI website and stuff like that at the district level. Those I know are really important to have at a district level. What brought you into all of this part of it? Because I know you know. I’m sorry, but governance and stuff like that isn’t normally what people really want to be involved in, especially when they’re talking AI, but it is so important.
Gerlie Jeltema 2:29
Let me just say that when I said yes, pick me, pick me, pick me, you know, to head the the AI task force, mr. Cuy, I was thinking fun things because you know innovation. I’m like, yes, I want to try new tools. Yes, can I have some money so I can try new tools? You know, and very, very, very quickly it turned into, who we probably need some guardrails for this. We need some guidance. We need some structure. We need some sort of governance. You know, and it’s it’s important work, like you said, Tim. You know, I I heard saying at the future summit this year that I will keep going back to because it’s super relevant. I don’t even remember. I think one of the speakers actually said it. He said that don’t mistake hesitancy for a skills gap when it comes to AI. You have to really think about it from a discernment and judgment perspective, you know, and I have to remember that every single time I feel like we’re bound and we can’t just have fun, you know. So it’s fun with boundaries is is really what it boils down to, and the model that we have for both the college AI task forces and the district AI task forces not having any sort of hierarchical nature in in the relationships. It’s really just sharing out, and it’s a part. It’s kind of like a three way partnership of the different AI task forces, I think, has worked really, really well. The colleges having your tri chair models and having representatives in the important area make sure that the voices are balanced, and so that’s really awesome. And on God, I sounded like an eighth grade kid. They’re really awesome, and on the district side, it really helps to have representation that kind of just pulls it back and say, “Hey, listen, you know, at the forefront we have to make sure we have humans in the loop and.” We abide by academic freedom, the principles of academic freedom. So, and there’s also, hey, we have classified staff. What does this mean for them if we are creating guidelines for them? So, the work that we are doing now, although it is not sexy, is extremely important. I love the fact that you know we were able to go ahead and publish employee do’s and don’ts guidelines. We are in the process of drafting, reviewing the initial drafts of board policy and administrative regulation. I’m sure it is the what we have drafted is going to be nowhere close to what it ends up, but at least we have a starting point at this point in time to put in front of the various governance groups down the line, so that we have something in place.
Tim Van Norman 6:05
Absolutely, and you’re right. It is very important work. It’s also important that we have somebody who is paying attention at the district level, as as all of our purchase requests go through district, and we can have that discussion, and we don’t always know what Saddleback is doing. Saddleback doesn’t always know what we’re doing, and to know that at least somebody is paying attention to both to all sides, Gerlie’s been really good. Gerlie’s aware whether Gerlie wants to know everything, she’s aware of what’s going on, and and that has been really great. It’s been a great partnership, as you said, in doing that. So with that, when I found out that you were were I don’t know nominated, volunteered, voluntold what the exact whatever it was to be involved in the CCC Digital Center, my initial thought was if you want to get something done, you give it to the busy person, and because I, you are very busy.
Gerlie Jeltema 7:09
That’s so funny. That’s exactly what Kim said!
Tim Van Norman 7:14
So first of all, what is the CCC Digital Center? You mentioned it before when we were talking about the fraudulent students. So, what is the digital center, and what is your role? And let’s let’s dig into that a little bit. So, what is it?
Gerlie Jeltema 7:30
iAwesome. Okay. So, let’s just give you a history lesson right now. On July 2220, 24, the California Community College’s Board of Governors passed a resolution to establish the digital center. The digital center actually was launched at the first Future Summit, which was September 2024. It was it was announced at the inaugural Future Summit, and it operates under the chancellor’s office, but it’s in partnership with Foothill Deansa Community College, and there are 1237, other districts that are founding partners for the Digital Center. You have Butte Glen Coast Community College, El Camino Community College District, Kern Community College District, Rancho San Diego Community College District, San Mateo Community College District, and South Orange County Community College District. So those are the founding partners for the CCC Digital Center, I’m gonna just keep referring to it as a digital center. If I’m not, it’s such a mouthful. Anyway, so what is the digital center about? Kind of think of it as you know how I talked about my group as being the innovation group or the innovation arm of our district. So very, very similarly, it is the innovation arm of the CCC. That’s, in a nutshell, you know, that’s really what it is. There are three pillars at its core. You know, innovation, transformation, and equity. So, transforming things through innovation, always with an equity lens, is the philosophy of the digital center, and it it has really, at this point in time, since since it started, it has served to bring AI and digital technologies to CCCs. It has had it’s been instrumental in some of the really important ed tech partnerships, you know, like Play Lab that has been made available to faculty members. Across multiple districts, that has been served up through the digital center nectar, and actually that’s through the foundation. I think the CCCs and the digital center. So I’m still struggling with which body actually started this, you know. But just kind of just think about some of these super important AI partnerships that we have available to it to us now, in some way, shape, or form, the digital center has helped form those partnerships, like Google Workspace for Education, AWS. We have access to AWS Curio for our students, and I know I’ve said this before. I don’t really know logistically how that becomes available to our students, so please don’t ask me that question right now. But it is available to our students. I will get the answers eventually. But those really super important industry partnerships with the California California Community Colleges have been through the digital center. So, if you have any questions about that, yeah.
Brent Warner 11:11
So, so this is basically when we see things that are like, hey, this is happening at you know Miramisa and at Irvine and at you know whatever San Francisco City or whatever college it is, right? If it’s if it’s happening statewide and we’re get we’re being given access to a tool, then it’s kind of running through or it it kind of run through that body then at the CCC Digital Center to make sure that like not sorry I have to be a little bit careful here. If it’s ubiquitously being shared across everything, right? So if we kind of see it all the way, for everybody has access to it, and I know that there’s a lot of people that kind of want more of that, right? Where it’s like, why don’t we just have, you know, like a really clear thing that’s coming from the state, and then yeah, we need our little individual pop-up things here and there, but I know that like it kind of gives us a lot more power to have some of these tools run through, or sorry, I guess being offered through the state because the size of the California Community College Districts gives us kind of some real leverage power when we talk to these organizations. Is that is that accurate to say,
Gerlie Jeltema 12:22
that’s partially accurate. I want to make sure that I give credit to other other bodies within the CCCs as well, because through the foundation, you know we are able to use the power of volume to negotiate better rates for ed technologies for are the CCCs, you know, and a lot of the contracts that we may have, like with Element 451, that runs through the foundation. It’s not necessary. It’s not through the digital center. It’s run. It’s through the the foundation. So I am not the expert as to where the lines are there. I just know that more and more we are seeing the digital center be that ed technology arm For creating sandboxes and negotiating partnerships, so you know the foundation also does contracts with you know facility vendors and logistics vendors, and you know that those types. That’s outside of the digital center. The digital center is really just focused on digital innovation. So I want to just make sure that there’s that distinction. But right now, the the some some of the partnerships that we have are a little blurry for me. So I don’t want to serve as an expert as far as that’s concerned. I can speak to just some of the projects that the digital center has been involved with. It has been folded under them. The CCC start, if you guys are familiar with that, that is our move from all of the California community colleges, the students apply for admissions using CCC Apply. That is being replaced with CCC Start, and I believe there is at least five different colleges that have successfully cut over from CCC Apply to CCC Start, and that is running through, you know, the Digital Center overarching. Just some other projects that the Digital Center has already. They’re working on the career passport, which is kind of like. And you know, like an e-wallet for a student that says, “Hey, Brent, as a student, this cradle to grave. This is your identity within the California community colleges. There’s there’s just a lot of projects that the digital digital center has. Some that have not been published yet. The published ones they have website. I can send you the link to that, so you guys can take a look at it. You know, I can’t speak with authority as because I’m not involved with those projects. But how did I get involved? So last June, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the AWS Executive Brief, and what that was was a kind of like a summit. It had representatives from the founding partners of the Digital Center and AWS, and what this was about was kind of just a brainstorming session. What they AWS wanted to find out, what are the projects, what are the ideas that the digital center may have for work that it might take on for its students or faculty or staff within the next year, and out of that executive brief came the idea of an automated transcript evaluation tool. There were numerous other projects that that were discussed, and we kind of did some rapid prototyping using AWS Curio, which is an amazing tool, by the way, and the group selected as a capstone project this transcript evaluation tool. So what came out of that was a workshop that was specific to the subject matter experts would when it comes to transfer transcript evaluation. So just think of it this way: you’ve got a student, let’s call her Sherry, who graduated high school, went to three different kind of had fits and starts. You know, went to Golden West, went to Cal State Long Beach, thinking that they were going to go to the university system directly, and went to Long Beach City College, and then maybe you know went to work full time for a little bit and got some certifications, and then realized that Sherry realized that you know what I’m 27 year old years old. I want to actually get a nursing degree from Cal State Long Beach, so I have all this other coursework from other institutions, which ones of them are actually can apply towards the work that I wanted the the educational goal that I have. So this transcript evaluation tool is to reduce that friction for somebody like Sherry. So Sherry will have a self-service, you know, site that she could go to, and if she happens to have some of her digital transcripts, you know, as a scam transcript or she’s requested in the past, she can upload those transcripts. She can also go ahead and enter information that says, “Hey, I’ve taken statistics 100, or you know, not not necessarily have the proof right then and there, but provide coursework that she has done in the past, including transcripts that she has available to her, and submit it for an automated evaluation. She specifies that her goal is to get a nursing degree at Cal State Long Beach, but she’s going to do that via an RN at at Saddleback College. Okay, so what this tool will do is look at articulation agreements and evaluate the transcripts that she has submitted and see if any of those actually count towards the degree that she wants to get. And one of the the things that why why is this different from what we’ve had in the past, so if you think about the evaluation process as an entry point, it’s it’s very knowledge worker resource intensive. Somebody has to know what they’re looking at, right? But if you have a tool that is able to look at. Structured data. Look at course descriptions. Look at the fact that they’re about three units each, you know, from one class from one institution to another, and look at the learning objectives for those courses potentially because they that this system has access to published catalogs, right? If ETH can say with a 60% certainty that these courses are equivalent. Then, when you insert the human in the loop, your actual evaluator, and it can show them, you know, the course descriptions from both institutions. You know, you’re not starting from zero.
Brent Warner 20:39
Yeah,
Gerlie Jeltema 20:40
it’s so much faster, you know. And and the best part about this is, if you’ve got courses that are already known to be articulated because they have the same common course numbering, that’s 100% equivalent, you know. But if you’ve got courses that, you know, Robert Melendez at IVC has said is equivalent to this course already. You know, between IVC and Golden West, let’s say. Then the next person that looks at both courses will see, hey, Robert Melendez two months ago said these courses are equivalent, and so now you’re putting humans in the loop and machine learning to basically train this transcript evaluation tool to increase confidence each time. The next time that they encounter the same set of courses, it’s no longer at 60% equivalency. It’s now going to be maybe 62% and again, you know, it just increases if it is validated by that counselor who is a knowledge source. You know, if in the process right now a faculty member has to review the course descriptions and be the one that actually says yes, these are equivalent courses. Then we we’re building this with idea that we should have provenance. We need to know what made that decision that these courses are actually equivalent. We need to be able to trace it back, right? So that that’s part of this tool that I am-that is my involvement, Brent and Tim. Very, very long story there. So I have been asked to assist with this project in prototyping this project and building this proof of concept to life.
Brent Warner 22:40
Well, can I hear what I’m hearing, Gerlie? Is this is so crazy because like the end tool, like what you’re actually going to end up building, totally sounds like one of those things where everybody’s like, yes, of course this should exist, right? It should it should be in there already, and it should and it’s like as you’re describing it, you’re like, yeah. Do you realize how much work it takes to coordinate across 115 colleges and all of their split districts and their approaches, and then the relationships between them and the Cal States and the UCs, and not only that, but like not to mention what it means to go out of state, like all these different things, right? And so it’s like, so I can imagine that like people are gonna see this and they’re gonna go, oh, that’s really nice. That helps me a lot. And it’s like not close to the amount of recognizing how much effort it actually takes to create something like that. But this is also where these types of groups and or you know departments and and groups are really important. And I think it’s easy for people to dismiss and go. It’s just another, you know, think tank or you know whatever else. Like however it might be described, but it’s like no, this takes so much work to get something concrete. Takes you know collaboration across all sorts of different people. Not to mention what you’re talking about is going into things like you know enrollment services, actual classroom experiences, working with administration. So it’s like every it’s like got little tentacles out in every little part of everything. It’s a ton of work, and it gives me a better it gives me a better sense of what’s going on with that, because it’s like, oh, okay. You start to see that’s really truly big projects that people say, wouldn’t it be nice if this existed? And you’re one of the people out there going, yes, let’s do it, which is pretty impressive.
Gerlie Jeltema 24:35
Yeah, you know the the scope of this. We really need to make sure we we show success, you know, early on, so that we can build on it, and we you don’t ever want to boil the ocean because this is something that can get extremely massive. I mean, you’ve got when we talk about articulating for. Transfer, you know, you’ve got assist data that you now have to be able to consume and integrate and verify against, right? And just think about the fact that requirements change for a program. So when somebody says, “I want to get a degree from Cal State Long Beach, you know, a nursing degree from Cal State Long Beach, when did they start the program? What were the requirements at the time that they started the program? Because we need to be this system, whatever this is, you know, needs to hold the student to the requirements at that time that they declare that this is what they that they want, and you know what? Everybody has a right to change their mind. So if you think about it, kind of like just a mortgage calculator, when you’re thinking about buying a home and you go online and you say, hey, you know, Wells Fargo.com, what kind of loan do I qualify for? And these are all my parameters, and it spits out, you know, some numbers for you, right? You know how much of a loan you can have, and and what is your interest rates. So it’s kind of the same concept. I, I as a student, Sherry, can go. Here are the classes I’ve already taken. Down the line, you know, who’s to say that any credit for prior learning I’ve done that’s not from an actual accredited institution may not count? You know, my my AP scores, the military work that may have done. I mean, it just expands tremendously. You know, can that go ahead and be taken into account into the work that I that I want to do or the coursework that that’s needed for this class, and it’s not just front end that we’re trying to reduce the friction for the students’ experience. You know, graduating them, reducing that friction for them, saying, “Hey, you know what? You’ve meet you’ve met these general education requirements a lot lot sooner. You know, so the the there it’s kind of you know at that both at the front end of the student life cycle and at the tail end of the student life cycle when we’re trying to go ahead and get them out the door and launched. If if this is something that produces that friction, it’s super exciting. I mean, you could tell I’m excited about this, right? So I I love that that there was actually a lot of energy. A lot of people said yes. That’s what we need. You know, when when we spoke about the different projects, so
Tim Van Norman 27:43
that’s amazing. And wow, you are going to be busy. When it I originally heard about that, I’m like, well, why doesn’t the college do it themselves? You know, or a district. That, but the more you’ve talked about it, the more wow, no, this has to be at the whole state level, at least, if not even further, because it is such a massive project and there’s so many different variables, it can’t be done locally. That’s just we’ve been trying to do it locally for. I mean, that’s been the history as we do it ourselves, and this is much going to be a much better way of doing it. So, thank you for working on that. It’s amazing the different options, the different things that you’re pulling in. I want to thank you for coming today. This has been a pleasure having you and you know learning about different things. I knew parts of everything you talked about, but wow, I I I didn’t know what all I was asking when when we asked you to come. (laughter)
Brent Warner 28:44
It’s like oh my god, yeah. We we need way more time to be able to break all this down in in depth. But this is a really good understanding of everything. So thank you so much for joining us, Gerlie.
Gerlie Jeltema 28:55
I’m so excited for the future, you know, and I’m very, very grateful for the chance to speak with you guys and just hang out with you guys. I’ve known you for both for quite a while and just have this conversation and for giving me this like forum to share my excitement about things. So thank you.
Brent Warner 29:16
Awesome,
Tim Van Norman 29:16
thank you. Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com.
Brent Warner 29:26
As always, we do want your feedback, so please go to thehigheredtechpodcast.com and let us know your thoughts.
Tim Van Norman 29:32
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. If
Brent Warner 29:46
If you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner. 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 29:59
So I’m Tim VanNorman
Brent Warner 30:00
And I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care, everybody.
We’re back with part two of the conversation with Gerlie Jeltema, the the long title director of IT Enterprise Systems at South Orange County Community College District, and the conversation around her work and what she does with the CCC Digital Center. This is the Higher Ed Tech Podcast, Season Eight, Episode Seven. right, we are back with Gerlie Geltima. This is part two of the interview, Gerlie. We did not really even get to talking about all the things that we wanted to talk about. There’s a lot going on here, so thank you for being willing to stick around and keep sharing with us. We definitely want to talk about the CCC Digital Center, but I know that Tim has a couple of questions about the District AI Task Force, which is also kind of a continuation. We’re talking a little bit about AI, of course, with your job. There’s always AI conversations going on, and so let’s start with Tim. I know you wanted to move into it just a little bit of district AI task force conversation.
Tim Van Norman 1:10
Gerlie, you’ve been involved in our AI task force at IVC, I think, since the very first time, the first date that we were there. It’s been great having you. We love having the fact that somebody from district is also involved in our in ours, and I know that you’re yes, absolutely, and and you’re involved in Saddlebacks at the same time. That that lends a lot of credibility, and also means that as we’re talking, we know that you’re paying attention to it, and you correct us when we’re wrong. And I appreciate that. Hopefully, we’re not wrong very often, but it can happen. But I know a lot of what you’ve been working on really, really recently has been AI policies. We did an AI website and stuff like that at the district level. Those I know are really important to have at a district level. What brought you into all of this part of it? Because I know you know. I’m sorry, but governance and stuff like that isn’t normally what people really want to be involved in, especially when they’re talking AI, but it is so important.
Gerlie Jeltema 2:29
Let me just say that when I said yes, pick me, pick me, pick me, you know, to head the the AI task force, mr. Cuy, I was thinking fun things because you know innovation. I’m like, yes, I want to try new tools. Yes, can I have some money so I can try new tools? You know, and very, very, very quickly it turned into, who we probably need some guardrails for this. We need some guidance. We need some structure. We need some sort of governance. You know, and it’s it’s important work, like you said, Tim. You know, I I heard saying at the future summit this year that I will keep going back to because it’s super relevant. I don’t even remember. I think one of the speakers actually said it. He said that don’t mistake hesitancy for a skills gap when it comes to AI. You have to really think about it from a discernment and judgment perspective, you know, and I have to remember that every single time I feel like we’re bound and we can’t just have fun, you know. So it’s fun with boundaries is is really what it boils down to, and the model that we have for both the college AI task forces and the district AI task forces not having any sort of hierarchical nature in in the relationships. It’s really just sharing out, and it’s a part. It’s kind of like a three way partnership of the different AI task forces, I think, has worked really, really well. The colleges having your tri chair models and having representatives in the important area make sure that the voices are balanced, and so that’s really awesome. And on God, I sounded like an eighth grade kid. They’re really awesome, and on the district side, it really helps to have representation that kind of just pulls it back and say, “Hey, listen, you know, at the forefront we have to make sure we have humans in the loop and.” We abide by academic freedom, the principles of academic freedom. So, and there’s also, hey, we have classified staff. What does this mean for them if we are creating guidelines for them? So, the work that we are doing now, although it is not sexy, is extremely important. I love the fact that you know we were able to go ahead and publish employee do’s and don’ts guidelines. We are in the process of drafting, reviewing the initial drafts of board policy and administrative regulation. I’m sure it is the what we have drafted is going to be nowhere close to what it ends up, but at least we have a starting point at this point in time to put in front of the various governance groups down the line, so that we have something in place.
Tim Van Norman 6:05
Absolutely, and you’re right. It is very important work. It’s also important that we have somebody who is paying attention at the district level, as as all of our purchase requests go through district, and we can have that discussion, and we don’t always know what Saddleback is doing. Saddleback doesn’t always know what we’re doing, and to know that at least somebody is paying attention to both to all sides, Gerlie’s been really good. Gerlie’s aware whether Gerlie wants to know everything, she’s aware of what’s going on, and and that has been really great. It’s been a great partnership, as you said, in doing that. So with that, when I found out that you were were I don’t know nominated, volunteered, voluntold what the exact whatever it was to be involved in the CCC Digital Center, my initial thought was if you want to get something done, you give it to the busy person, and because I, you are very busy.
Gerlie Jeltema 7:09
That’s so funny. That’s exactly what Kim said!
Tim Van Norman 7:14
So first of all, what is the CCC Digital Center? You mentioned it before when we were talking about the fraudulent students. So, what is the digital center, and what is your role? And let’s let’s dig into that a little bit. So, what is it?
Gerlie Jeltema 7:30
iAwesome. Okay. So, let’s just give you a history lesson right now. On July 2220, 24, the California Community College’s Board of Governors passed a resolution to establish the digital center. The digital center actually was launched at the first Future Summit, which was September 2024. It was it was announced at the inaugural Future Summit, and it operates under the chancellor’s office, but it’s in partnership with Foothill Deansa Community College, and there are 1237, other districts that are founding partners for the Digital Center. You have Butte Glen Coast Community College, El Camino Community College District, Kern Community College District, Rancho San Diego Community College District, San Mateo Community College District, and South Orange County Community College District. So those are the founding partners for the CCC Digital Center, I’m gonna just keep referring to it as a digital center. If I’m not, it’s such a mouthful. Anyway, so what is the digital center about? Kind of think of it as you know how I talked about my group as being the innovation group or the innovation arm of our district. So very, very similarly, it is the innovation arm of the CCC. That’s, in a nutshell, you know, that’s really what it is. There are three pillars at its core. You know, innovation, transformation, and equity. So, transforming things through innovation, always with an equity lens, is the philosophy of the digital center, and it it has really, at this point in time, since since it started, it has served to bring AI and digital technologies to CCCs. It has had it’s been instrumental in some of the really important ed tech partnerships, you know, like Play Lab that has been made available to faculty members. Across multiple districts, that has been served up through the digital center nectar, and actually that’s through the foundation. I think the CCCs and the digital center. So I’m still struggling with which body actually started this, you know. But just kind of just think about some of these super important AI partnerships that we have available to it to us now, in some way, shape, or form, the digital center has helped form those partnerships, like Google Workspace for Education, AWS. We have access to AWS Curio for our students, and I know I’ve said this before. I don’t really know logistically how that becomes available to our students, so please don’t ask me that question right now. But it is available to our students. I will get the answers eventually. But those really super important industry partnerships with the California California Community Colleges have been through the digital center. So, if you have any questions about that, yeah.
Brent Warner 11:11
So, so this is basically when we see things that are like, hey, this is happening at you know Miramisa and at Irvine and at you know whatever San Francisco City or whatever college it is, right? If it’s if it’s happening statewide and we’re get we’re being given access to a tool, then it’s kind of running through or it it kind of run through that body then at the CCC Digital Center to make sure that like not sorry I have to be a little bit careful here. If it’s ubiquitously being shared across everything, right? So if we kind of see it all the way, for everybody has access to it, and I know that there’s a lot of people that kind of want more of that, right? Where it’s like, why don’t we just have, you know, like a really clear thing that’s coming from the state, and then yeah, we need our little individual pop-up things here and there, but I know that like it kind of gives us a lot more power to have some of these tools run through, or sorry, I guess being offered through the state because the size of the California Community College Districts gives us kind of some real leverage power when we talk to these organizations. Is that is that accurate to say,
Gerlie Jeltema 12:22
that’s partially accurate. I want to make sure that I give credit to other other bodies within the CCCs as well, because through the foundation, you know we are able to use the power of volume to negotiate better rates for ed technologies for are the CCCs, you know, and a lot of the contracts that we may have, like with Element 451, that runs through the foundation. It’s not necessary. It’s not through the digital center. It’s run. It’s through the the foundation. So I am not the expert as to where the lines are there. I just know that more and more we are seeing the digital center be that ed technology arm For creating sandboxes and negotiating partnerships, so you know the foundation also does contracts with you know facility vendors and logistics vendors, and you know that those types. That’s outside of the digital center. The digital center is really just focused on digital innovation. So I want to just make sure that there’s that distinction. But right now, the the some some of the partnerships that we have are a little blurry for me. So I don’t want to serve as an expert as far as that’s concerned. I can speak to just some of the projects that the digital center has been involved with. It has been folded under them. The CCC start, if you guys are familiar with that, that is our move from all of the California community colleges, the students apply for admissions using CCC Apply. That is being replaced with CCC Start, and I believe there is at least five different colleges that have successfully cut over from CCC Apply to CCC Start, and that is running through, you know, the Digital Center overarching. Just some other projects that the Digital Center has already. They’re working on the career passport, which is kind of like. And you know, like an e-wallet for a student that says, “Hey, Brent, as a student, this cradle to grave. This is your identity within the California community colleges. There’s there’s just a lot of projects that the digital digital center has. Some that have not been published yet. The published ones they have website. I can send you the link to that, so you guys can take a look at it. You know, I can’t speak with authority as because I’m not involved with those projects. But how did I get involved? So last June, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the AWS Executive Brief, and what that was was a kind of like a summit. It had representatives from the founding partners of the Digital Center and AWS, and what this was about was kind of just a brainstorming session. What they AWS wanted to find out, what are the projects, what are the ideas that the digital center may have for work that it might take on for its students or faculty or staff within the next year, and out of that executive brief came the idea of an automated transcript evaluation tool. There were numerous other projects that that were discussed, and we kind of did some rapid prototyping using AWS Curio, which is an amazing tool, by the way, and the group selected as a capstone project this transcript evaluation tool. So what came out of that was a workshop that was specific to the subject matter experts would when it comes to transfer transcript evaluation. So just think of it this way: you’ve got a student, let’s call her Sherry, who graduated high school, went to three different kind of had fits and starts. You know, went to Golden West, went to Cal State Long Beach, thinking that they were going to go to the university system directly, and went to Long Beach City College, and then maybe you know went to work full time for a little bit and got some certifications, and then realized that Sherry realized that you know what I’m 27 year old years old. I want to actually get a nursing degree from Cal State Long Beach, so I have all this other coursework from other institutions, which ones of them are actually can apply towards the work that I wanted the the educational goal that I have. So this transcript evaluation tool is to reduce that friction for somebody like Sherry. So Sherry will have a self-service, you know, site that she could go to, and if she happens to have some of her digital transcripts, you know, as a scam transcript or she’s requested in the past, she can upload those transcripts. She can also go ahead and enter information that says, “Hey, I’ve taken statistics 100, or you know, not not necessarily have the proof right then and there, but provide coursework that she has done in the past, including transcripts that she has available to her, and submit it for an automated evaluation. She specifies that her goal is to get a nursing degree at Cal State Long Beach, but she’s going to do that via an RN at at Saddleback College. Okay, so what this tool will do is look at articulation agreements and evaluate the transcripts that she has submitted and see if any of those actually count towards the degree that she wants to get. And one of the the things that why why is this different from what we’ve had in the past, so if you think about the evaluation process as an entry point, it’s it’s very knowledge worker resource intensive. Somebody has to know what they’re looking at, right? But if you have a tool that is able to look at. Structured data. Look at course descriptions. Look at the fact that they’re about three units each, you know, from one class from one institution to another, and look at the learning objectives for those courses potentially because they that this system has access to published catalogs, right? If ETH can say with a 60% certainty that these courses are equivalent. Then, when you insert the human in the loop, your actual evaluator, and it can show them, you know, the course descriptions from both institutions. You know, you’re not starting from zero.
Brent Warner 20:39
Yeah,
Gerlie Jeltema 20:40
it’s so much faster, you know. And and the best part about this is, if you’ve got courses that are already known to be articulated because they have the same common course numbering, that’s 100% equivalent, you know. But if you’ve got courses that, you know, Robert Melendez at IVC has said is equivalent to this course already. You know, between IVC and Golden West, let’s say. Then the next person that looks at both courses will see, hey, Robert Melendez two months ago said these courses are equivalent, and so now you’re putting humans in the loop and machine learning to basically train this transcript evaluation tool to increase confidence each time. The next time that they encounter the same set of courses, it’s no longer at 60% equivalency. It’s now going to be maybe 62% and again, you know, it just increases if it is validated by that counselor who is a knowledge source. You know, if in the process right now a faculty member has to review the course descriptions and be the one that actually says yes, these are equivalent courses. Then we we’re building this with idea that we should have provenance. We need to know what made that decision that these courses are actually equivalent. We need to be able to trace it back, right? So that that’s part of this tool that I am-that is my involvement, Brent and Tim. Very, very long story there. So I have been asked to assist with this project in prototyping this project and building this proof of concept to life.
Brent Warner 22:40
Well, can I hear what I’m hearing, Gerlie? Is this is so crazy because like the end tool, like what you’re actually going to end up building, totally sounds like one of those things where everybody’s like, yes, of course this should exist, right? It should it should be in there already, and it should and it’s like as you’re describing it, you’re like, yeah. Do you realize how much work it takes to coordinate across 115 colleges and all of their split districts and their approaches, and then the relationships between them and the Cal States and the UCs, and not only that, but like not to mention what it means to go out of state, like all these different things, right? And so it’s like, so I can imagine that like people are gonna see this and they’re gonna go, oh, that’s really nice. That helps me a lot. And it’s like not close to the amount of recognizing how much effort it actually takes to create something like that. But this is also where these types of groups and or you know departments and and groups are really important. And I think it’s easy for people to dismiss and go. It’s just another, you know, think tank or you know whatever else. Like however it might be described, but it’s like no, this takes so much work to get something concrete. Takes you know collaboration across all sorts of different people. Not to mention what you’re talking about is going into things like you know enrollment services, actual classroom experiences, working with administration. So it’s like every it’s like got little tentacles out in every little part of everything. It’s a ton of work, and it gives me a better it gives me a better sense of what’s going on with that, because it’s like, oh, okay. You start to see that’s really truly big projects that people say, wouldn’t it be nice if this existed? And you’re one of the people out there going, yes, let’s do it, which is pretty impressive.
Gerlie Jeltema 24:35
Yeah, you know the the scope of this. We really need to make sure we we show success, you know, early on, so that we can build on it, and we you don’t ever want to boil the ocean because this is something that can get extremely massive. I mean, you’ve got when we talk about articulating for. Transfer, you know, you’ve got assist data that you now have to be able to consume and integrate and verify against, right? And just think about the fact that requirements change for a program. So when somebody says, “I want to get a degree from Cal State Long Beach, you know, a nursing degree from Cal State Long Beach, when did they start the program? What were the requirements at the time that they started the program? Because we need to be this system, whatever this is, you know, needs to hold the student to the requirements at that time that they declare that this is what they that they want, and you know what? Everybody has a right to change their mind. So if you think about it, kind of like just a mortgage calculator, when you’re thinking about buying a home and you go online and you say, hey, you know, Wells Fargo.com, what kind of loan do I qualify for? And these are all my parameters, and it spits out, you know, some numbers for you, right? You know how much of a loan you can have, and and what is your interest rates. So it’s kind of the same concept. I, I as a student, Sherry, can go. Here are the classes I’ve already taken. Down the line, you know, who’s to say that any credit for prior learning I’ve done that’s not from an actual accredited institution may not count? You know, my my AP scores, the military work that may have done. I mean, it just expands tremendously. You know, can that go ahead and be taken into account into the work that I that I want to do or the coursework that that’s needed for this class, and it’s not just front end that we’re trying to reduce the friction for the students’ experience. You know, graduating them, reducing that friction for them, saying, “Hey, you know what? You’ve meet you’ve met these general education requirements a lot lot sooner. You know, so the the there it’s kind of you know at that both at the front end of the student life cycle and at the tail end of the student life cycle when we’re trying to go ahead and get them out the door and launched. If if this is something that produces that friction, it’s super exciting. I mean, you could tell I’m excited about this, right? So I I love that that there was actually a lot of energy. A lot of people said yes. That’s what we need. You know, when when we spoke about the different projects, so
Tim Van Norman 27:43
that’s amazing. And wow, you are going to be busy. When it I originally heard about that, I’m like, well, why doesn’t the college do it themselves? You know, or a district. That, but the more you’ve talked about it, the more wow, no, this has to be at the whole state level, at least, if not even further, because it is such a massive project and there’s so many different variables, it can’t be done locally. That’s just we’ve been trying to do it locally for. I mean, that’s been the history as we do it ourselves, and this is much going to be a much better way of doing it. So, thank you for working on that. It’s amazing the different options, the different things that you’re pulling in. I want to thank you for coming today. This has been a pleasure having you and you know learning about different things. I knew parts of everything you talked about, but wow, I I I didn’t know what all I was asking when when we asked you to come. (laughter)
Brent Warner 28:44
It’s like oh my god, yeah. We we need way more time to be able to break all this down in in depth. But this is a really good understanding of everything. So thank you so much for joining us, Gerlie.
Gerlie Jeltema 28:55
I’m so excited for the future, you know, and I’m very, very grateful for the chance to speak with you guys and just hang out with you guys. I’ve known you for both for quite a while and just have this conversation and for giving me this like forum to share my excitement about things. So thank you.
Brent Warner 29:16
Awesome,
Tim Van Norman 29:16
thank you. Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com.
Brent Warner 29:26
As always, we do want your feedback, so please go to thehigheredtechpodcast.com and let us know your thoughts.
Tim Van Norman 29:32
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. If
Brent Warner 29:46
If you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner. 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 29:59
So I’m Tim VanNorman
Brent Warner 30:00
And I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care, everybody.