About Us
We're here for the hard work.
Our Purpose
To change higher education by reconstructing it one brick and bit at a time.
It's time to build for change - not just respond to it. Rapid technological, social, and economic shifts are forcing us to reconsider higher education's value and structure. Student's needs are outpacing and outgrowing our existing education models. It's our ambition to reconstruct higher education so that it can adapt to changing demographics and ensure that every student has an exceptional educational experience.
Innovation is hard work. We never stop working hard. Complex, systemic change can't be achieved by one-time initiatives. It happens through continuous, persistent efforts. It's not always grandiose or impressive, but that's how change happens: it happens by building small, real things.
We created the Academic Innovation + Intelligence Lab (A.I.I., or "A double i") to handle the details of innovation and implementation. Our cross-unit group drives steady, continuous change by creating and implementing viable interventions. We use careful research, deep data, and calculated interventions to clear a path for students to succeed. We investigate processes, explore new pedagogical approaches, test new technologies, and share our insights nationwide. Unified, we reduce the inequities that prevent us from delivering the best outcomes for every student.
Our Goals
To drive continuous academic innovation by driving internal, local change and taking interventions to scale.
Our Process
A pressure-tested structure that scales.
Rooted in Design Thinking, our process allows us to find insight, iterate ideas, and building solutions in a repeatable, flexible way. It's our Old Faithful: we've taught it to thousands of students and professionals, disseminated it across sectors and industry verticals, utilized in our work, and refined it for the last 20+ years. And we know there's still room for improvement.
6 Phases with plenty of wiggle room. Every project starts with investigating the problem you're trying to solve, then diving into deep rabbit holes of research, analyzing data to find insight, ideating and refining solutions, and finding selecting one to take to full form. But the journey isn't necessarily linear. Sometimes phases are repeated or revisited. They're not formulas; they're more like modules to pass through as we go.
Equally important to our work is the Double Diamond, two cycles of divergence and convergence that helps you decide what you're solving for and how you're solving for it. We use these two frameworks in conjunction to guide all the work we do.
Framing
Observation
Analysis
Ideation
Refinement
Implementation
Our Team
Established academics, seasoned professionals, and students.
Our integrated design groups evaluate and refine educational operations to remove barriers in students' journeys to graduation. We don't know it all. That's why we look to others for perspective and insight. We recruit undergraduate and graduate students to participate, lead, and help us learn. We invite faculty fellows and advisors to bring subject matter expertise to every endeavor we initiate. For us, working across units is the default, not the exception.
We are a group of devoted, seasoned academic administrators, faculty, students, and industry professionals who seek partnerships and understanding from the people we serve. We are experts in taking on-the-ground innovations to scale. We enjoy tackling thorny systemic issues that are difficult to solve. We're open and seek insight from all with whom we work. Above all, we're happiest when asking questions rather than giving answers.
Jim Agutter
Lab Director
Senior Associate Dean of Faculty
Success & Academic Innovation
agutterja@design.utah.edu
Dr. Lindsay Coco
UIA Fellow
Special Assistant to the Vice Provost for Student Success
lindsay.coco@utah.edu
Rayna Wiles
Lab Administrator
Head of Design Strategy, Office of Undergraduate Studies
rayna@design.utah.edu
Dr. Chase Hagood
Lab Advisor
Vice Provost for Student Success
Dean of Undergraduate Studies
t.chase.hagood@utah.edu
Tressa Parkes
Student Journey Specialist
Student Liaison and Technical
Specialists from Chatbot
tressa.parker@utah.edu
Joshua Smith
Lab Fellow
Software Engineer for the Academic Recovery Project & Developer for UBot
josh.b.smith@utah.edu
Morgan Doane
Spark Fellow
Designer & Prototyper for the Teaching Excellence Framework
u0829879@utah.edu
Dr. Wendy Hobson-Rohrer
Lab Advisor
Associate Vice President for Health Sciences Education
wendy.hobson@hsc.utah.edu
Anne Cook
Lab Advisor
Director, Martha Bradley Evans Center for Teaching Excellence
Professor, Educational Psychology
anne.cook@utah.edu
Our Projects
We optimize educational operations.
UBot
An AI-powered pathway to help students explore majors, resources, and opportunities.
UIA NEW TECH AI
UGuide
An AI-powered pathway to help students explore majors, resources, and opportunities.
AI New Tech
Teaching Excellence Framework
Driving more adaptive and responsive teaching through AI-powered insightful, aggregrated feedback.
New Tech Data AI
MAPS
Sharing critical trends on student demographics and institutional performance.
UIA Data
The Academic Recovery Project
Investigating, testing, & driving academic recovery for students in graduation-critical classes.
UIA Pedagogy