Salesforce’s highly-anticipated Dreamforce 2024 conference is finally here, and the Cloud for Good team joined education leaders and industry peers for Dreamforce’s education keynote. The keynote explored the significant shift in education technology, emphasized the transformative roles that AI and data play in supporting students, staff, and alumni and achieving educational goals in a whole new way, and how to unify data, gain powerful actionable insights, and increase productivity with Salesforce Education Cloud, its CRM, and AI and data tools. Here are the main objectives from the keynote and its key insights into Education innovation:
Connecting Data and a New Era of AI
The keynote’s first presenter, Salesforce’s Sr. Director of Product Marketing Brad Schleicher, set the tone for the keynote’s focus. Autonomous agents powered by AI—embodied by Salesforce’s Agentforce, which was discussed at Dreamforce’s Main Keynote—represent what Salesforce has dubbed a new era of AI and is its latest innovation into generative AI, which is poised to support and revolutionize the education industry.
Conversations about AI among educators and institution leaders have shifted from concerns of students using AI tools to plagiarize to optimism and excitement for AI, data, and CRM technologies’ potential to help institutions innovate and achieve ambitious goals. Education leaders have now become more enthusiastic about the future of AI, using AI tools responsibly and in a trusted way, and regarding AI tools as AI partners—not just assistants.
A dominant theme was how AI—specifically purpose-built AI—can address critical education use cases to deliver impactful experiences across an institution. Data, another major theme of the keynote, was identified as a fundamental starting point for how institutions can adopt and use AI to transform, scale, and paint more complete pictures of their students and constituents, because data is essential to provide AI with the context it needs to work effectively. While that data can provide rich, deep insights into who a student or constituent is and drive actions and strategic decisions, a common challenge institutions face is their data being trapped in what Schleicher described as ‘islands of trapped data.” This, however, is what Schleicher said Salesforce’s AI, CRM, and data technologies can help solve for the education space.
Key education use cases of AI and data included enhancing student and alumni experiences, leveraging connected data to power rich insights about students and alumni, scaling educational staff efforts, automating tasks, meeting new expectations for more personalized student experiences, providing easy, increased access to student support services and resources throughout the student lifecycle, forming deeper, more intentional relationships with students, alumni, and constituents, and improving enrollment, student success and well-being, graduation rates, and philanthropic giving to the institution.
Education Trailblazers
Several higher education leaders took the stage during the keynote to share their institutions’ focuses on AI, data, and actions, and how using Salesforce at their schools is supporting learners and constituents at every stage of the student and constituent journeys. One of Cloud for Good’s own customers, Old Dominion University (ODU), joined the stage to share their insights around how Education Cloud is transforming their institution and student experiences.
Dr. Chrysa Malogianni and Dr. Lisa Kivin talked about how ODU is very intentional about meeting students where they are at and staying true to their student ethos and values, while also adapting to change and embracing Salesforce’s abilities to connect data and leverage AI. With ambitious goals of doubling their student enrollment and creating a wholistic view of students at ODU, Malogianni and Kivin spoke on how, before the institution’s transformation journey with Salesforce, they were rich in student data but were poor in actionable insights, and dealt with their own islands of trapped data across the university. With Salesforce’s Education Cloud, ODU has set the best practices in the education space for using AI and data to be agile, data-driven, provide seamless, personalized experiences for students, and improve operational efficiency and experiences for staff that save time.
New Salesforce Product Innovations
The last major component of the education keynote was the announcement of several exciting product innovations, like purpose-built embedded generative AI, for Education Cloud and other Salesforce solutions for the education industry, which we got to see in action through demos by Vanessa Wright, Salesforce’s Sr. Director for Product Management.
Data Cloud for Education
The first upcoming product innovation announced was Data Cloud for Education, an education-specific version of Data Cloud that will bring purpose-built AI into the flow of work across an institution, help unify insights across the education journey, and enable staff to know their constituents better. Data Cloud for Education will include Education Specific Domains (DMO’s) and Engagement Visualization Metrics, which will launch in Winter 2025. All these features set Data Cloud for Education up to revolutionize how institutions interact with their data and constituents.
Next Generation Student Information System Capabilities
The Cloud for Good team was especially excited about the announcement of Next Generation Student Information System Capabilities for Education Cloud. This feature, which was received with overwhelming acclaim at its announcement, comes with Learning Program Builder and Intelligent Degree Planning, which are currently in General Availability, and Course Registration and Hold & Blocks, which will launch in Summer 2025. Agentforce will be a key component of this upcoming solution, helping power a connected and seamless university experience for students and institution staff through AI agents. In particular, Degree Planning templates will take the guesswork out of student graduation planning and requirements to help make the entire course planning process more visual, intuitive, intelligent, and even fun while setting students up for success.
Additional Education Clouds Announcements
Other exciting Education Cloud product announcements were shared during the keynote.
Education Cloud for Advancement & Alumni Relations will receive Donor Briefs, which will help fundraisers see how the student and alumni journeys and experiences connect and analyze donor behavior, Einstein Mentoring summaries for quickly matching and connecting students with mentors, and Alumni Engagement Insights to understand the impact of alumni.
Education Cloud for Recruitment & Admissions will receive Service Agent and Recruitment Inquiry and Opportunity Management, which will help respond to prospect students quickly, improve staff productivity, and manage the entire recruitment and admissions funnel under one view.
Lastly, Education Cloud for Student Success will receive the ability to track, analyze, and respond to student wellbeing over time, identify and filter for at-risk students, deliver faster student support, save time for staff, and empower advisors with Watchlists, Pulse Checks, and Einstein Student Summaries. With Pulse checks, students can enter and submit feedback on how they are feeling and doing, which is then sent to advisors and student support staff. Watchlists help advisors and support staff filter for at-risk Einstein Student Summaries, which are auto-generated summaries, can help advisors and support staff understand students best, really meet their needs and them where they are at, and be used for preparing important student success appointments.
It is exciting to see just on the first day of Dreamforce 2024 that AI and connected data will lead key technology innovations in the education industry. The announcement of the upcoming Next Generation Student Information System Capabilities and its AI-powered tools will be a gamechanger for institutions seeking to improve and transform student success outcomes, and Data Cloud for Education will play a huge role in eliminating the islands of trapped data that is common among institutions. The demonstrations given during the keynote of Salesforce’s upcoming product innovations for Education Cloud, Agentforce for Education, Next Generation Student Information System Capabilities, and other AI, Data, and Action tools show incredible promise for the education space, and we at Cloud for Good can’t wait to be a part of the digital transformations thatwill usher in for higher education.
Contact Cloud for Good to discuss how Salesforce Education Cloud can help you get the most out of your institution’s technology.
