Collaboration Fuels Digital Transformation at Washington University

Gerry Bayne: Welcome to the CNI Interviews podcast. I'm Gerry Bayne for EDUCAUSE, and I'm highlighting conversations from the Coalition for Networked Information 2025 spring meeting. The CNI meeting is a venue for technology leaders in higher education, library administration, digital publishing and research to share and broaden their knowledge of digital information issues. In this episode, we look at how Washington University in St. Louis is structuring campus-wide innovation through a close collaboration between the WashU libraries and a new initiative called the Digital Intellgence and Innovation Accelerator known as DI2 for short. I'm joined in conversation with Kelly Walker-Moseley, Director of Industry Relations for the Digital Intelligence and Innovation Accelerator along with Mimi Calter, Vice Provost and University Librarian both at Washington University in St. Louis. I started by asking Kelly Walker-Moseley about the impetus for the accelerator.

Kelly Walker-Moseley: The Digital Intelligence and Innovation Accelerator, which is a mouthful, which is why we say DI2, we are the hub for trying to accelerate research. And our primary mission is to empower researchers and the faculty and students and give them the tools and the infrastructure and education or support that they need in order to take their ideas and elevate them.

Mimi Calter: And taking a step even further back, I think this context that helps is that Wash U is in the relatively early implementation phases of a new strategic plan and setting up the pillars of the strategic plan. Digital transformation is one of the pillars of the strategic plan, and DI2is a sort of implementation vehicle for that vision within the strategic plan. So, the DI2 program was stood up as part of a university strategic plan that is a number of different pillars and a number of different areas of activity. We are very excited to be establishing a new school of public health. There are a number of initiatives around student success. There are a lot of initiatives around community engagement, and within all of that is this focus on digital transformation and effectively using technology.

Kelly Walker-Moseley: So, I think there's a couple different pieces that I would call DI2 consists of. So you have the partnerships and establishing those relationships. We try to act as a conduit between teams. We also do have a software development arm, so people can come to us with an idea and we can take that and actually make an application. We can work with them for data visualization. We can offer some support if they need assistance in helping to mine through their data and work through the compute tooling that's there, we can offer those types of consultations to them. So also that's a component of what I would call digital transformation. And to me it's really looking at what those opportunities are for us.

Gerry Bayne: So the collaboration between DI2 and Wash U libraries has been central to advancing digital transformation on your campus. What strategies have been most effective in fostering this partnership and what lessons could other institutions learn from your experience?

Mimi Calter: So the answer that I have is really somewhat old school, but regular and open communication is really key, and that communication has to happen at different levels. From the beginning of the instantiation of the DI2 team, I had regular meetings with the leadership team and my role as the library leader, but peers across our organizations also met regularly. So it's great to have Kelly here and Kelly has been talking to her peers within the library organization. I think we really also have benefited from the fact that both DI2 and the libraries came in with a really expansive idea of what a partnership means and what a partnership could be. I think we have been able to brainstorm new ideas. We've been able to take things in new directions because we are both really committed to integrating innovation and being innovative and not worried too much about breaking with tradition or establishing new approaches.

Mimi Calter: And I think this is true of any partnership, but you need to come in with a certain amount of respect for the skill that the other team brings to the table. And I have really appreciated that coming from the library's team, there can be a tendency to be concerned that libraries are, in terms of partnerships, libraries can feel slighted, and we really have not. This has been a place where the libraries have come in and brought a definite skillset to the table, been able to be part of a team that is looking to advance innovation within the university. So that's all very basic old school stuff, but I do think it has led to some real success in the partnership.

Kelly Walker-Moseley: And I would add for us, we see the libraries of having that deep knowledge of the university, especially because we are a new team, predominantly made up of individuals who are new to WashU. We have depended on the libraries to be that hub of information and that front door for getting us into all of the other departments and working with the different schools. So I think for us, they've been, it's a natural partnership for us. So we're using, I shouldn't say using, but we're building upon the relationships that they already have, and we're able to then expand upon them and figure out how can we work on things together. I think the other thing that we've done from, just to answer the question of what could we do, one of the things that I think has been very successful is we co-host coffee hours generally about once a week on the campus. And the library is nice enough to host us, and we have coffee and we bring in various researchers who may be talking about whatever topic they are studying or how they approach things. It's given us an opportunity to have that open conversation in hearing from different individuals and hearing what works well, what maybe doesn't work well, and where we can learn. And we've taken several of the things that DI2 is working on actually originated from those coffee hours.

Gerry Bayne: The DI2 accelerator award for open educational resources aims to encourage faculty to develop freely available digital course materials. How do you envision this initiative impacting students and learning outcomes at Washington University?

Kelly Walker-Moseley: So I think for us, by supporting the faculty in implementing that digital first kind of open resources, that is DI2. So that is one of our predominant goals is to help advance digital technology. But we're not just introducing it to reduce barriers and access, it's also opening the door for more interactive conversations, more inclusive conversation, any more personalized experience for those students. So while our primary goal is to elevate research on the campus, it's also helping the students.

Mimi Calter: And I will say that just in terms of envisioning student impact, we have seen student demand for this. The deeper engagement with open educational resources comes on the library side after a long series of engagement with textbook affordability issues. We've been running a program for years where we're sort of assisting students in finding alternate ways of accessing the more traditional, more expensive paid resources, some of which we do make accessible to the libraries, others of which we can't. So there's a bigger conversation there, but we really do see the growth of OERs, and this is definitely an area where we're seeing student engagement. And the student Senate had a OER related proposal that came down a couple of months back. There's a response to student need here. We have also had, as part of the process some engagement, this is a way of leveraging campus relationships. We've been working with the Center for Teaching and Learning as well as part of the sort of advertising and discussion of the program. So that has made it an even more collaborative effort as we've moved this project forward.

Gerry Bayne: Open educational resources offer benefits such as cost savings and increased accessibility. What challenges have you encountered in promoting OER adoption among faculty, and how are you addressing those challenges?

Mimi Calter: So let me start by saying that I completely agree that OERs offer a host of benefits and especially around cost savings. But accessibility is a great one, and that's honestly why the libraries have been so happy to be able to promote them through this accelerator award. So the challenge, it pains me to say it, but I think it's true. The single biggest challenge that I continue to see in working with OERs is a lack of understanding on the part of faculty as to what OERs are. If I can get to the point where I am talking about the value of OERs, I've pretty much already won the conversation. We're still at the point where there's just not a lot of recognition about what the OERs are At my level, I'm a vice provost. I meet regularly with the provost and have these kinds of conversations at the senior leadership level.

Mimi Calter: I think it is particularly challenging for me to make sure that there's an understanding and recognition of the benefit of this work at that senior level. But I will say as I had a really engaged conversation with the executive vice provost who has primary responsibility for implementation of the strategic plan, who was involved in some meetings around open scholarship writ large, and we got to talking about OERs and how OERs could have an impact, and her eyes were open. She was really excited about the opportunities that this presented, but we're still needing to get past that recognition of what it is. The other challenge is, of course, the fact that pedagogically, using OERs requires a change of pedagogy and just recognizing for faculty that is work. It is valuable work, it is good work that they have to do. And that's really the goal of the Accelerator Award program is recognition of the fact that it will take effort for you to move away from a commercially produced textbook and adapt your syllabus to accommodate this kind of work.

Kelly Walker-Moseley: I think the OER, the Accelerator Award has really been helpful because one of the other pieces that we have within the DI2 team is a little bit more robust marketing team. I shouldn't call it a team, but we have a small contingent of being able to take that. And so we can now talk about the great work that the faculty are doing and what all of the goodness that comes out of it, and we're able to then market that out so it becomes more public knowledge.