Vote for WGU’s Proposals for SXSW EDU 2027
Explore our proposals and help bring these conversations to Austin by casting your vote.
PanelPicker® is the official online platform for SXSW that serves as an open call for proposals, where educators, thought leaders, and industry professionals can submit their session ideas for consideration for the SXSW EDU program.
In preparation for the conference in March 2027, WGU has submitted proposals for 14 sessions that reflect many of the conversations we're leading every day around AI, personalized learning, workforce partnerships, competency-based education and the evolving relationship between higher education and employment.
Explore our proposals below and help bring these conversations to Austin by casting your vote. You'll also have the opportunity to leave comments on the sessions you're most excited to see.
Community voting is open through Sunday, August 23. Public votes account for 30% of the final selection process, making every vote an important opportunity to help elevate WGU's voice on one of education's biggest stages.
Step 1: Sign in with your SXSW ID account, or create a SXSW ID account which is quick, easy and free.
Step 2: Once signed in, use this voting link to easily vote for WGU’s proposals all on a single page by simply clicking the heart button next to our 14 proposals on the list!
Check out pitch videos for each of these proposals on our SXSW EDU playlist on YouTube.
What If We Reinvented the Transcript?
Presenters:
- Taylor Hansen, Principal, Achievement Wallet Strategy & Ecosystem, WGU
- Kymberly Lavigne-Hinkley, Senior Director, Goodwill Industries International
- Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Director, SHRM Foundation
- Sytease Geib, Program Manager, National Governors Association
Every college already knows what its students have learned. The challenge is helping students understand and communicate what they can do. As AI reshapes hiring, higher education has an opportunity to rethink the student record. This panel explores how learner-owned records, digital wallets, verified skills, and skills intelligence can transform transcripts into living records that help learners showcase their capabilities, strengthen career navigation, and better connect education with the future of work, without replacing the degree.
Synthetic Students, Real Lessons: Building Safe Agentic AI
Presenters:
- Sherry Jones, Strategist, WGU
- Nishanshi Shukla, AI Ethicist, WGU
- Giorgia Rematska, Senior Machine Learning Architect, Quantiphi Inc.
This workshop will detail the process of developing a Synthetic Students Agentic AI Ecosystem that enables content personalization for individual students. The foundation of this ecosystem is synthetic student data of English Language Learners and an ontology, which governs knowledge graphs and agentic behavioral policies that enable the development of responsible AI agents. We use ELL synthetic data to represent learner diversity and protect privacy. We will cover how to (1) evaluate synthetic data, (2) create an ontology, and (3) program AI agents that enforce the ontology.
Continuous Assessment That Knows What It’s Measuring
Presenter:
- Rob Clark, Senior Director, Program Experience Strategy, WGU
Every assessment makes claims about what students know—but how many can actually explain what each question measures? This credibility gap grows as institutions shift toward competency-based education and skills-based learning. This session explores WGU's Continuous Assessment Prototype, which replaces traditional "read, then test" models with authentic learning experiences and continuous evidence gathering. Learn how cognitive task analysis and AI can create more transparent, defensible, and meaningful assessment—and what live data is teaching us as the prototype evolves.
The Product Playbook for Better Courses
Presenters:
- Rob Clark, Senior Director, Program Experience Strategy, Western Governors University
- Dave Schell, Founder, Zoux
- Fox Piacenti, Full Stack Business Developer, OpenCraft
Students compare online courses with every digital experience they have, not just other universities. What can higher ed learn from product design? This panel explores how a university strategist, design studio, open-source engineering team, and product team piloted highly engaging online courses informed by analyses of 325+ learning experiences and four design pillars: outcome-oriented, curriculum-rich, experiential, and scalable. Hear what it takes to build like a product company inside a university and leave with practical principles for building courses students want to complete.
The Map, Guide & Tribe: Designing Better Learning Journeys
Presenter:
- Ryan Gialames, Director, Product & Technology, WGU Labs
Higher education asks students to navigate one of the most complex journeys of their lives—often with disconnected systems and fragmented support. What if AI could make that journey more human, not less? This session introduces the Map, Guide & Tribe framework: helping learners know where they're headed, what to do next, and who can help them succeed. Attendees will leave with a practical model for designing AI-enabled experiences that strengthen navigation, guidance, and belonging without replacing the human relationships students need most.
AI, Instruction, Assessment, and the Science of Nothing
Presenters:
- Dr. Jeff Borden, Executive Dean, School of Education, WGU
- Dr. Ravinder Dayal, Dean of Graduate Education, WGU
- Dr. Benjamin Forsyth, Dean of Undergraduate Education, WGU
We know more about the brain, social media, learning science, and AI than ever, yet most effective practices are dismissed, ignored, or unknown to most practitioners. A lot is riding on whether we can do right by our students (K-20) as we teach, assess, model, and blend experiences. This workshop will give practitioners practical, hands-on opportunities to try/see/hear/experience various science-based (empirical) methodologies for teaching better, assessing more deeply, and leveraging new tools/platforms in ways that actually make sense.
Can AI Bridge the Classroom-to-Career Gap?
Presenters:
- Paul Bingham, Senior Vice President and Executive Dean, School of Technology, WGU
- Dr. Tami Goetz, Director, Utah STEM Action Center
Higher education helps students gain knowledge, while the workforce rewards those who can apply it. Bridging this gap is a challenge for educators designing authentic workplace experiences in online courses. This session explores how strategy and AI tools help create immersive learning where students demonstrate technical decision-making, receive meaningful feedback, and showcase their skills. Through lessons learned from Western Governors University's Applied Experience Program, discover strategies for designing scalable experiential learning to prepare students for today's workforce.
From Service to Success: Empowering Military Learners
Presenters:
- Jeff Harley, Director of Military Engagement, WGU
- Russell Lowery-Hart, Chancellor, Austin Community College
- Richard Rhodes, President, Texas A&M University–Central Texas
- Laura Koerner, Chair, Texas Veterans Commission
What if the barrier for military learners isn't a lack of ability, but a system that fails to recognize it? Nearly one million military learners have shown that they lead under pressure, solve complex problems, and adapt in the world's most demanding environments. Yet too often, these skills go unrecognized in higher education, delaying degrees and limiting career advancement. This panel brings together leaders from education and policy to examine what's preventing military experience from translating into college credit and how to design pathways to connect military talent to the workforce.
Can Coaching Change an Entire University?
Presenters:
- Malika Clinkscales, Vice President, University Mentor Strategy & Operations, WGU
- Ruth Bauer, President, InsideTrack
- T. Chase Hagood, Vice Provost, Student Success, University of Utah
Higher education has long recognized the value of personalized student support, but creating a true coaching culture across an institution requires far more than training mentors. It demands new leadership practices, shared expectations, and sustained organizational change. Drawing on lessons from one of the nation's largest evidence-based coaching initiatives, leaders from higher education and student success will share strategies for building adoption, measuring impact, and scaling coaching in ways that strengthen employees, improve student outcomes, and preserve authentic human connection.
Employer-Validated Certificates for Workforce-Ready Skills
Presenters:
- Chris Lee, President, WGU Academy
- Jenny Yeung, Senior Program Manager, Career Choice, Amazon
- Dr. Ninfa Escobar, Chief Learning Officer, City of Houston
Certificate programs work best — from employers and employees alike — when they're built and validated together. This session explores how employers are helping design and validate certificate pathways so the credential reflects the skills it claims to, while also giving employees something recognized for their own career growth. Panelists share how employer input shapes not just curriculum, but the validation and quality signals that make a certificate credible in the first place — creating pathways that serve hiring needs without leaving employee advancement as an afterthought.
Can Higher Ed Keep Up with Work in an AI Economy?
Presenters:
Stacey Ludwig Johnson, Executive Director, Work-Based Pathways, WGU
John Suk, Director of National Strategic Marketing & Technical Business Development, Craft Education
Krysti Specht, Director, Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning, Jobs for the Future
Apprenticeships are gaining momentum, but scaling them requires far more than launching a new program. Employers need new operating models, stronger partnerships, and learning embedded directly into work. This panel explores how higher education and employers can co-design apprenticeship pathways that respond to workforce change, accelerate talent development, and prepare learners for careers in an AI-driven economy.
Texas Builds the Future of Adult Higher Education
Presenters:
Courtney Hills McBeth, Chief Academic Officer and Provost, WGU
Michael Collins, Senior Vice President at Jobs for the Future
Charla Long, President of Competency-Based Education Network
Dr. Brandon Griggs, Assistant Commissioner for Academic and Health Affairs at Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Texas is testing a different path for adult learners who need a new degree in order to find and keep jobs in today's AI-driven economy. More than 43 million Americans have some college credit but no degree. Competency-based education (CBE) measures what people know and can do - not how long they've spent in a classroom – and allows students to demonstrate their skills while simultaneously earning their degree. Join leaders in higher education, workforce, and policy as they examine CBE for closing talent gaps and use Texas as a national blueprint for the future of education and economy.
Job-Ready in the Age of AI: A Skills-First Playbook
Presenters:
- Bonnie Budd, Senior Manager, Design & Development, WGU
- Eryn Berger, Director, Continuing Education, Texas State University
- Amy Shackelford, Head of Education, CodeSignal
- Elizabeth Zulick, Senior Vice Chancellor, Education Innovation, Northeastern University
Artificial intelligence is redefining what it means to be job-ready, faster than degrees can keep up. This panel brings together higher education leaders rethinking how they prepare students for the workforce by putting skills first. They share how their institutions benchmark what students can actually do, use AI-driven practice and real-world simulations to build confidence, and translate learning into employer-recognized signals of readiness. The panel explores how a skills-first approach can close opportunity gaps and turn AI-era disruption into a more equitable path to careers.
The Pipeline Ghosted Everyone. Let's Fix It.
Presenters:
- Stacey Ludwig Johnson, Executive Director of Work-Based Pathways, WGU
- Carlos Ignacio Zavala, Vice President, Whiteboard Advisors
- Doug Donovan, Chief Executive Officer, Interplay Learning
- Amanda Kocon, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer, Edmentum
K-12, college, and the workforce all claim to want a clear path from classroom to career. In practice, students fall through the cracks because the systems barely speak to each other. Employers chase talent, districts and colleges want outcomes, and students are left to figure out the handoff in between. This panel brings together voices from K-12, higher-ed, and workforce to name where the continuum breaks down, and to show working examples of states and institutions closing the gap instead of just discussing it.
