The University of North Carolina system has built a Yelp-like review site for teaching tools, where it is asking professors to review and comment on how useful various digital services were in their classrooms.
Though the process will not be quite as simple as awarding five stars, Matthew Z. Rascoff, the system vice president for technology-based learning and innovation who is leading the project, said professors would use a research-based rubric to describe which tools had helped increase student learning and which aren’t worth the time or money. Technology vendors will also be able to use the site to view feedback on products.
The online platform, known as the UNC Learning Technology Commons, opened to vendor applications last week and will end its first round of applications in mid-March. After a rolling review of the first cycle of applications within the next few weeks, faculty members on the university’s 17 campuses will have access to the commons. There they will be able to virtually discuss, review, and share ideas on which instructional technologies work and how educators in diverse disciplines can use tools to engage students in the classroom.
The hope, said Mr. Rascoff, is to reduce the unnecessary bureaucracy and effort that each campus goes through to purchase new technologies — and to streamline the process of obtaining the right tools by asking the faculty to weigh in.
“Our premise is that faculty are the ones who are in closest contact with students, with student outcomes and the tools, and can speak to usability and user experience,” Mr. Rascoff said.
Instead of narrowly focused proposals from vendors, the university is asking companies to send in a short application about the products or services they sell and sign off on UNC’s terms and conditions. If vendors are approved, they will create company profiles where they can upload photographs, graphics, videos, and a description of products.
The commons will have a “consumer-type approach,” Mr. Rascoff added, meaning administrators will be able to look to it for insight on which technologies have had positive outcomes in the classroom.
While faculty members will be able to weigh in on what they like, positive reviews don’t mean automatic contracts with those companies. Mr. Rascoff stressed that no money would be exchanged in the commons, and it would still be up to individual campuses to decide which technologies they buy.
Advantages for Professors
The idea for the commons came out of a conversation at a summer event that included an associate professor and program director in the program in instructional systems technology at UNC-Charlotte. While talking with Mr. Rascoff and colleagues from other campuses, the professor, Florence Martin, said she realized that there was little communication across the university system about effective instructional technology and a lot of duplication of efforts.
The biggest advantage of the learning-technology commons, Ms. Martin said, is that she will be able to connect with professors in similar disciplines on other campuses and more easily find tools to use in her classroom.
“Colleagues can share experiences with others and learn from them,” she said. “That will be really meaningful.”
Mr. Rascoff said he hoped the commons would also make UNC more appealing to ed-tech companies, which will now be able to get feedback on how well their product is working and how they can adapt it to better fit the needs of educators.
While the commons has been unveiled, it’s sitting empty for the time being. So far, Mr. Rascoff has received about a dozen applications from vendors, but he is waiting for more to come in before the doors will open to professors in the next few weeks.
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