@kkeairns eLearning Blog

Unizin – a higher education digital learning consortium

I learned about Unizin from a colleague at Colorado State University (CSU), CSU is one of the founding members of the Unizin consortium. I still haven’t figured out what the “zin” in Unizin stands for but according to the Unizin website:

“the Unizin Consortium is universities coming together in a strategic way to exert greater control and influence over the digital learning landscape. It enables each institution, its faculty, and students to draw on an evolving set of tools to support digital learning for residential, flipped classroom, online courses/degrees, badged experiences for Alumni, or even MOOCs if desired. Unizin supports the differing missions and strategies of universities.”

In addition to CSU, Indiana University, the University of Florida, and the University of Michigan, are founding members and investors in this membership-based higher education consortium. I’m still not clear about what Unizin is and how they will operate, but here are a few things it is not:

• LMS – although all members are using a single LMS vendor, Canvas
• MOOC – it will not offer courses, content or degrees in its own name

Unizin is affiliated with Internet 2 which will serve as Unizin’s financial home. To learn more about the Unizin Consortium, review the links below:

• Unizin Website
• Unizin Unveiled – Inside Higher Ed
• 4 Universities Ban Together to Share & Protect Digital Resources – Chronicle Wired Campus
• “Unizin – Only on Canvas” – Inside Higher Ed

It will be interesting to see where this leads and which institutions will join the consortium.