Wes (00:32.984) Hey John, it’s good to see you today. Thanks for joining us.

John Baker (00:40.689) Excellent.

John Baker (00:46.2) great to join you, Wes. Looking forward to the conversation here today.

Wes (00:49.41) Hey, I I mentioned, you know, in the intro that you’re a new member of the forum. We’re glad to have you as a collaboration partner. you’ve been at this for a long time since I wanna say D2L was founded in nineteen ninety-nine. Is that right?

John Baker (01:03.599) Yeah, that’s right. I was a third year university student at the time. You know, for me it’s always been about what’s the most important problem we could solve that would have the biggest impact on the world. I can’t think of anything more important than transforming the way the world learns because learning is at the heart of solving all the world’s challenges. and so we set out in our case to build a learning platform that could engage, that could inspire, that could break down barriers, and not just help people achieve their potential, but to help them achieve more than they’re ever even dreamed possible.

through these transform learning experiences. So, you know, been at it for almost twenty seven years. and yeah, excited for the future too.

Wes (01:38.784) Yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of amazing.

Well, I the thing that’s that’s very interesting to me is you created a pl this platform while you were a student. So I mean it’s like learner created, right?

John Baker (01:50.661) Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no. a lot of the features that we built in the early days were very much with the students in mind, including giving them a lot of transparency in terms of what was happening in the platform.

Wes (02:03.906) Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Well, let let’s start out with this. Can you think back in those twenty seven years? And is there an experience with a student or an experience as you’re setting this up that really sticks with you throughout the years and and informs what you do today?

John Baker (02:10.598) Mm-hmm.

John Baker (02:24.249) Yeah, well, there’s many. you know, I can think of one example where there was a student that spoke at her conference a few years back now, and she told her own personal journey. You know, when she was eight years old, she had a dream of becoming an Olympic athlete for the US. and her gene came to a crushing blow when she learned that she was going blind. And so in her case, she had a choice to she stay in the community and try this new experimental.

Wes (02:46.102) Oof.

John Baker (02:51.941) learning using one of our clients Gwynette online campus, or does she go to a school for the blind and and she made the choice of, you know, going to this experimental trying this online learning platform that was supposed to support her and it worked out. She became a Paralympic athlete for the US, she won medals and then she’s now studying at at college. So it’s you know those types of moments where your technology can break down a barrier

Wes (03:10.382) Well, that’s amazing.

John Baker (03:19.611) that would normally hold someone back from their dreams, is, you know, those are those are pretty magical moments.

Wes (03:24.77) Yeah, that’s a that’s a great story. That’s that’s one that’ll stick with you for a for a long time, seeing that kind of success. What kind of an athlete was she? Or is she swimmer?

John Baker (03:33.184) she was a swimmer. So in her case, McLean Hermes is if you want to look her up.

Wes (03:38.664) that’s cool. That’s great. Well, let’s talk. we’re here to talk a little bit of the future of higher ed and how AI impacts that. And we talk a lot at the forum about, you know, students first. It’s a student student first mentality. And I’m interested if you’ve seen some tangible ways that AI can reduce friction for learners today in just day-to-day learning experiences.

John Baker (03:52.272) Mm-hmm.

John Baker (04:08.497) Well, I I think the key with AI is making sure that we’re scaffolding the AI into these learning platforms in a way that’s gonna support a better learning experience. So we’re gonna graduate doctors and nurses and engineers that are better at the profession. And we want to avoid some of the risks around cognitive offloading. And so, you know, in our case, we think we can do this very successfully. you know, we’ve seen good evidence of that now with a lot of our clients where

We’re leveraging AI largely in the in the in the use case for for faculty to help them build better learning experiences for the learners. So how do we help faculty build better formative assessments, build more engagement, take you know, maybe a PowerPoint or a PDF and turn it into something much more inspiring, maybe with some flashcard exercises and some quick embedded inline assessment that helps the student understand if they’re on the right track and can hit that next button with confidence.

So making the job of faculty building really high quality learning experiences is already through a number of efficacy studies that we’ve already done with third parties, really having a big impact on increasing retention, driving better completion rates for some of these tough bottleneck courses, lifting grades. The time on tasks for students is actually coming down. So they’re scoring better on their exams, but they’re not having to spend as much time trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be learning.

Wes (05:26.709) Wow, that’s interesting.

John Baker (05:26.949) Great great metrics across the board. Yeah, no, it’s it’s really having a positive impact. We’re also seeing impact in terms of giving feedback to students or tutoring or all kinds of other areas within the system.

Wes (05:37.976) So you’ve built this in, you’ve used AI as b I mean, building it into the LMS, so you can you can use it seamlessly.

John Baker (05:44.847) Yeah.

Exactly. And there’s there’s actually a a recent article that just came out in one of the journals that really speaks to this. cog you know, the cognitive offload is there if you’re just using an AI on the side. Think just you know, students using it to support their work outside of the learning platform. But in the learning platform it actually has an increase in cognitive ability for the students because and it makes sense because we’re we’re leveraging these technologies to scaffold better learning experiences which engage, inspire and help students really

Wes (06:02.818) Right.

John Baker (06:17.071) get through the material in a in a much more efficient, more engaging way, which helps them achieve better results. And so you there are good ways of doing the you know, AI and there’s there’s bad ways of doing it. And we we definitely have been spending the last fifteen years trying to figure out how to harness this technology in a way that’s gonna really have a positive impact on students.

Wes (06:36.28) So John, when we talk about personalized education in in the future, how does AI accelerate that?

John Baker (06:39.845) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

John Baker (06:44.623) Well, I I’d I’d I’d argue there’s two key things when when we talk about personalization. So there’s the traditional individualizing the adaptive learning pathways for students. So if a student is struggling with something, here’s some remediation pathways that automatically open up that are predicted to have a better outcome for that individual student to help them get back on the right track, or maybe some enrichment pathways that open up. So we spent a lot of time doing that work and it does have a big positive impact on student experience. There’s no question about that. But there’s a second piece to this, which is

Wes (06:53.485) Right.

Wes (07:02.168) Right.

John Baker (07:13.753) I I don’t think personalization is meant to be individualization, not not by itself. I think personalization at the heart is about building better human connections. So better connections between students and other students, or students and professor, or students in the profession they’re pursuing, or the big questions in their field. You know, if we can really harness these AIs in a way that’s gonna help those students feel better connected, help them get inspired, help them with their problem solving, their creativity, their you know, their profession they’re pursuing, that’s when we get this right.

And it’s not just about that, you know, individualized pathway which is traditionally thought of as for personalization.

Wes (07:49.036) Yeah, that’s not that’s not very intuitive to think about personalization as better human connections through AI. Tell us a little bit how that can happen.

John Baker (07:52.451) No.

John Baker (07:56.817) Yeah.

John Baker (08:00.657) Well, it can just be little things, like when something you should pay attention to is in the platform, we just alert you like, hey, John, noticed you might be interested in this particular article that was just posted. So you like just being able to at mention someone’s name and all of a sudden they’re now their attention is now drawn to it, or better collaboration suites within the system or communication. but one of the best ways of doing personalization is around feedback. So we have all kinds of intelligent agents in the system that

watch what students are doing, can understand if they’re off on the wrong track and can send them a little nudge. Hey, I noticed you did poorly on the last two assignments. Don’t worry. Most students struggle. It’s part of learning. here’s some support for the next assignment. Like pay attention to the following three things. And if you ever need help, here’s my here’s my information. Here’s a picture of my cat. You know, stuff like that that enables that personalization at scale, but then it frees up time for the instructor to be able to give feedback to the student.

And feedback for me is is something separate and apart from assessment. And quite often people intertwine these two things. And with feedback, you can actually be very personal. You can say, well, congrats on the football game. That was a fantastic outcome. you know, on now on the last assignment I said to you I wanted to see improvements in these three areas. I saw it on this assignment. On the next assignment, I’m gonna be looking for the following. And you know, so the students don’t just submit something and forget. They’re they’re getting that personalized attention, that feedback.

And it will give them a reason to persist. Even if they’re struggling, all of a sudden I’ve got a a professor that cares. that is engaging in with me. And and and I think, you know, those are just a few examples of of where it could have a big impact for students.

Wes (09:36.579) Yeah.

Wes (09:44.706) You’ve seen this in your own data, right? That persistence is increased when these tools are leveraged.

John Baker (09:47.786) yeah.

John Baker (09:52.793) Yeah, exactly. It like you know, we our argument is I I don’t care if our competitors give away their software for free, we’re gonna save institutions way more when it comes to retention of students. Quite often we’ll see a client the first year see about a five or six or eight percent increase in student retention because of these strategies now being deployed across their campuses. And so it has a huge measurable impact. And think what that means for the student. You know, if if they can progress, you know, and finish their four year program on time.

and successfully. That has a huge ripple effect for their life downstream. So yeah, we care deeply about this.

Wes (10:28.888) So I the way that I see this is, you know, student first, and it has a huge impact for those students who are they’re they’re more persistent, they they finish their degrees, they actually get through. So that’s the the first area that we can celebrate. The second is it’s great for the institutions themselves. Like keeping students moving, seeing them go through the system and and succeed is great. The the third one.

that doesn’t get talked about a lot is really good for the system generally to be able, I mean there’s nothing worse than a student for students and for the system, than students who attend for a while, incur debt, and then don’t complete and don’t have a credential that helps them in the workforce. So this this way to invest and to help students initially actually is really

John Baker (11:19.791) Yeah, exactly.

Wes (11:27.362) Beneficial to the system itself.

John Baker (11:30.061) absol absolutely. I I think you know, anytime you can have this kind of a measured impact on the quality of the experience, it has a human impact. It has that ability for that student to now build a great life, a big a great career. you know, and ideally it encourages them to recognize that, hey, my university was a fantastic learning experience. Maybe I’ll come back and do some upskilling, you know, to help me advance in my career. because we’ve built a better system, because we’ve built a better learning model.

Wes (11:59.468) Right. Well, John, I really appreciate your time today. I’m gonna I’m going to leave you with this last question and we’ll conclude. Tell me how you feel about the future of higher education with regard to the AI impact on education that that is we’re feeling right now and that is coming.

John Baker (12:19.727) Well, I I’ve been in the space long enough. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but where I’ve ushered in internet into many classrooms, helped them with mobile transition, because in the early days no one thought they would ever learn on a mobile device. So I need to think back to that now. cloud was a b another big transition, but AI is bigger. AI is gonna be more transformative because it is getting at the heart of the real transformation. You know, we’re gonna change how we learn, we’re gonna change how we assess.

We’re gonna change how we actually tutor. And so this is a big, big transformative moment for higher education. And so there needs to be significant investment. So there’s investment into the research. So how does the scholarship of teaching and learning change now with the advent of AI? Because it’s significant. you know, these new tools are in the hands of students already. So it’s not like you can put the genie back in the bottle and pretend they’re not there.

And so the the natural tendency for a lot of institutions will be kind of go back to the way things used to be, you know, twenty years ago. That’s not right. That’s not the way w way forward. So we need to now retool, rebuild. And so there’s strategies like formative assessment, which might be a good, you know, stop along the way that we’re really leaning into, but there’s there’s more to work to be done on that research. Curriculum change, upskilling of the workforce, you know, the adoption of AI technologies into the institutions. There’s a lot of capacity building.

Wes (13:21.891) Yeah.

John Baker (13:42.327) And research that’s got to be done to support all this. And so, you know, for me, you know, I I keep coming back to the the main point here, which is like the work that our university and college clients are doing right now today has never mattered more. Because learning is how we get through this transition, through the disruption that gets created, and also seize the opportunities that gets created. And it’s also at the same time, like if people are displaced, like they got to go back to upskill.

Wes (14:02.295) Absolutely.

John Baker (14:09.177) And so we need to invest in our institutions right now to sort of, you know, leverage these technologies in new ways to help support society at large. And so the work that’s being done right now has never mattered more and you know we’re trying to do our best to partner very closely with our educational clients to help them through this next phase of adoption.

Wes (14:29.442) Great, great concluding remarks there, John. We’re so happy to have you on as a collaboration partner. And that experience that you just outlined, going through the internet, going through mobile devices and cloud and now to AI, it’s really remarkable. You’ve got you bring that experience to all of this that will really help our institutions and the system. So we appreciate you having having you as a partner and we appreciate your input on today’s podcast.

John Baker (14:58.555) Thank you very much, Wes. None of us can do this alone. The journey matters. Thank you for the collaboration. Thank you for the partnership. All the best.

Wes (15:04.684) You got it. Thanks. Talk to you soon.

Wes Smith: Darren, thanks for joining us today.

Darren Person (02:46.011) Sounds good. Looking forward

Darren Person (02:58.171) Les, great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.

Wes Smith (03:01.069) Hey, this is a topic that is very interesting to a lot of people, and that is, how do you balance innovation and education? How do you put students first in that? So a lot of people in ed tech are talking about this. Can you start us off with your argument about starting with students?

Darren Person (03:22.031) Yeah. So look, I think I’m a dad, right? So I have two kids, one that’s in the middle of their higher education and one that’s literally about to just start his higher education as well. So I get this really interesting perspective of also seeing education as part of it and seeing the perspective and the lens from the student side of the house firsthand as I watched them go through and learn in today’s world.

but also come from a background, both my in-laws were educators. So I kind of get this interesting view between two sides of the house. And of course I was a student, hopefully not too long ago at these days, but I was a student not that long ago. So I have an appreciation for the perspective of that. And especially now with AI being so prominent in students’ lives and in a lot of ways being pushed at them from many different angles, it’s really important that we take

a really responsible view, especially sitting in a company like an EdTech company like Cengage, and really making sure that we’re building the right solutions for both students and faculty to really help bridge that gap.

Wes Smith (04:30.085) There are so many AI tools out there. And I don’t know if your text chains look like mine, but I have a few text chains with different friend groups. And every now and then, I’ll get a text. This happened to me a couple nights ago. A friend said, hey, have you guys tried this tool? It’s crazy. Look what it does. It makes this and this and this. And then a conversation goes on about, oh, yeah, and I use this. And have you guys ever taken a look at this?

Anyway, it’s kind of interesting how AI is impacting our lives, but there’s a difference between impacting our lives with just new capabilities and complexity versus in higher education actually improving learning. So how do you address that issue?

Darren Person (05:21.647) Yeah, I know it’s really important question. think the clearest signal, I think is pretty simple. I think the foundational question is, is the AI helping the student build understanding or is it just handing over an answer? Right. And if you really think about it, like in education, you know, impact does not mean the student getting means they got there faster. Right. It actually means that the student can explain the concept. They can apply it in a new context.

They can even transfer that learning later. And I think that’s the real difference between assistance and then actual learning. So when you think about AI in this context, we need to think about how we use it to break down problems, like create curiosity, encourage things like persistence and like keep the student in the work. Cause if the student just reaches the answer on their own, you know, is that really a good signal?

It’s more about how AI becomes basically helping the student really be confident in understanding how they got to the answer, not the answer itself. I think that’s the hugest opportunity.

Wes Smith (06:35.289) You know, that’s I think the difference between these kind of these conversations with with that I think everybody we’re all having these conversations that is hey Did you see this look what look what you can do? Look how quick you can do it and you know, you all of those conversations don’t take into Consideration are you actually learning more? Are you retaining more? It’s not a higher-ed use. It’s more like we get to the answer faster in some of these but

Your point is in higher education, the whole point is learning and students have to be able to learn, but we’re not really set to validate that kind of learning as well as we could be. What do institutions need to do in the future with AI in mind to create that environment of learning and measuring learning as opposed to measuring getting to an answer faster?

Darren Person (07:31.899) Yeah, look, candidly, right? If an AI tool adds friction for faculty or makes learning harder to validate, it’s not ready, right? A helpful feature that creates more workload or confusion is not really helpful, right? one of the things that, and look, coming from an ed tech company, so things that we’ve been trying to do is to be very intentional. And that’s including tools that we’ve been building like our student assistant.

It’s about being grounded in the course context, tuned to the discipline, built around the vetted materials. So we know that the quality of the content and that the answers and the guidance that students are going to get are actually factual versus hallucinations. It’s also designed to guide. Like our student assistant was specifically designed to never give the student the answer two years ago.

We started with that as the premise. So it’s about creating that conversation. What questions are the students answering? We’re already seeing things like four to five times higher engagement and roughly a 20 % uplift in end of course grades. But it’s because of that conversation and guiding and the pedagogy being built into the student assistant versus a generic chat bot that’s just quickly about getting you

the answer that you want.

Wes Smith (08:58.253) Right, right. That’s important and it has to be the case in higher education. It’ll be interesting to see a transition between how students use that to learn now and then the tools that are just built for getting to an answer faster. Those are two different things, but in a higher ed context, one is certainly preferable above the other.

Darren Person (09:14.949) That’s right.

Darren Person (09:21.401) Yeah, and it’s the foundations of the, you know, hopefully of the premise, right? Like I had a, I had, was giving a, I was on a panel not that long ago at a conference and I had a student stand up and ask the question like, Hey, you know, I could learn all of this stuff by not going to school and reading a book. And I brought it back to like, why I think college and education is important. And it’s

It’s not just about reading the materials and digesting materials, but it’s the overall experience. It is the connection with your faculty member. It is the connection with other students. It’s those projects that you do together where you learn real life experiences that you’re not just going to get out of just reading a book or taking something purely in a virtual environment. It’s those interactions that are really important and being in the university as part of your maturing process as well.

And you’ll get that in other areas too, especially in the workforce as part of that, but you want to go in as prepared as you possibly can.

Wes Smith (10:25.455) So I like the direction that this conversation is going. Our audience, have a lot of higher ed institution leaders that listen in. Can you help us understand what is a meaningful collaboration between technology creators, ed tech partners, and institutions? How can presidents help shape AI adoption rather than just reacting to the product that

that EdTech puts in front of them.

Darren Person (10:57.209) Yeah, I think the first thing that I would say is that education is not a plug and play environment. And I think we, lot of organizations and especially some of the new technology is starting to be treated like we could just slap this in and make it work. So you can’t just drop in a general purpose AI tool into a course and assume that learning will magically improve, right? It just hasn’t happened.

I would say more meaningful collaboration starts with the pedagogy. You’ve said this to me as well. And some really core questions like, what are the learning objectives? What does good teaching look like in this course? Where do students struggle? Where should AI help? We can go on and on. And by the way, where should AI stay out of the way? That’s your question to ask too. It’s not just about where we infuse it, but where doesn’t it belong?

That’s also why I think the partnership model that you mentioned really, really matters so much, right? Institutions and technology partners, we need to co-design with faculty and test in real courses, look at the evidence, iterate based on what actually improves understanding. We’ve been spending a lot of time, we have panels of teachers who work with us to make sure that the way our student assistants are asking questions, that is what’s gonna give you the insights.

And I think we’ve seen this already, right? Like a cautionary tale is homework helper, right? Like there are these tools that have been launched into market by more consumer-based organizations. sure, maybe the technology may have helped the student move faster, but it then made it much harder for educators to validate real learning. And when you really think about that, that actually increases faculty workload and undermines trust.

That’s the opposite of what ed tech companies have been trying to do for the last 40, 50 years in this sector.

Wes Smith (12:51.715) Yeah, yeah, had Darren, we’ve had some conversations prior to this one. And in one of those conversations, you mentioned to me tools that will improve the ability for faculty to be able to construct courses, curriculum, and then deploy based on kind of the feedback, the regular feedback that they can receive from students using some of this technology. Tell us a little bit about the upside.

for faculty when they use technology that’s designed to assist them in instruction.

Darren Person (13:28.293) Yeah, no, this is probably the most important one. So when I think about education and learning, in a lot of ways, it’s like, how do we use technology? And in this case today, we’re talking about AI. Tomorrow it will be something else. But how do we use this technology to bridge that human connection between the faculty and the student? And I think that’s the more important part. And if you go into the workflow, on the student side, they’re really trying to learn the material and understand what

it means and how that’s going to apply to them in ultimately their future job, career, et cetera. For faculty members, they’re being asked to do more with less, right? As this technology rolls out, hey, more classes, more courses, more sections, more students. And that over time has driven this divide, right? The teacher has been pulled away from the students where the technology as we’re starting to look at deploying it is really about

gathering all of those insights and being able to support the teacher no longer in just helping them get the homework assignments graded, but actually identify problems that individual students have, driving more of that personalized learning. But it’s also about personalized teaching, right? It’s not just about making sure the student is getting the right question at the right time, but also that the teacher now is better informed across their entire course on how they can help each individual student.

and be able to bridge that connection where in lot of classes, just because of the scale and the volume, it’s nearly impossible for an educator to be able to make that human connection with every single student, right? They have to kind of select and pick. And a lot of times it’s the other way. It’s the student who basically reaches out to the faculty member and makes that connection first that way. Let’s be honest, a lot of young kids aren’t comfortable, you know, picking up the phone and being like, Hey, I got a bad grade on this test. I could use extra help. Can you help me? They’d be more comfortable if a teacher saw that.

recognized it and was able to reach out to them and say, hey, I see you’re having some issues with XYZ topic. Here’s some ideas and recommendations. That caring connection, I think, is what really helps drive education. We all have stories about a teacher who took an interest in us. And I think that really is foundations of education.

Wes Smith (15:43.437) Absolutely. Darren, love the way that you’ve grounded this conversation in how learning actually happens and not just around the technology, what the technology can do, but how it should support students and faculty. I think that that’s a great way to ground the conversation.

Darren Person (16:01.453) I it. I love this conversation. It’s such an important one. And I think the more we can stay focused together, like this isn’t about it’s not one company, it’s all of us partnering together. And I think if we keep putting the customer, both the people who have to deliver the education, as well as the people who are receiving the education, I think if we keep them at the center of everything that we do, I think that will help us drive the outcome versus moving away and moving to the outer edges of the technologies for the sake of technology.

Wes Smith (16:31.397) Well said, well said. Thanks for joining us today, Darren.

Darren Person (16:34.501) Thanks so much, Russ. Again, thanks for having me.

Wes Smith (16:36.645) You bet. OK.