LT Considerations
The Learning Technology Innovation Centre is committed to careful consideration of learner and instructor impacts when adopting or incorporating any technology into UBC’s LT ecosystem. For any new tool, we complete information security and privacy impact assessments, and are guided by UBC’s purchasing policy (UBC Policy FM2). We also look beyond the application’s feature set and functionality, and evaluate the tool in terms of teaching and learning related risks across a range of domains.
LTIC Learning Technology Evaluation – Teaching-and-learning-centric assessment of software, features, and applications.
This table highlights some of the considerations we include when adopting new tools. As new ways to examine tools and their impacts arise, we augment this list. We frequently solicit feedback on these considerations from Associate Deans Academic and Students, and from students and faculty in our community. If you would like to provide feedback or ask any questions about how these are considered in practice, please do not hesitate to reach out to lt.hub@ubc.ca.
In addition to the considerations below, we assess every tool for feature set, and fit to purpose, as well as basic cost of the tool. Every new system and project is also reviewed to ensure adherence to UBC’s privacy and security standards, and before adoption, all tools undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment and a Security Threat Risk Assessment in alignment with UBC Policy.
| Risk Categories | Examples of Learning Technology Specific Risk Considerations in addition to cybersecurity, privacy, feature set, and fit to purpose |
|---|---|
| Vendor-related Risks | Experience and reputation of the vendor, environmental practices, frequency of and prior notice updates, opportunities for opt-out, ethical standards and practices, transparency of practice. |
| Cost Risks | Assessment of disruption and potential increase costs over time, shifting balance of costs across tools in the ecosystem, affordability. |
| Ecosystem Risks | Integration with Canvas and other key tools, the cost and complexity of sunsetting and migrating off of the tool, including costs to faculty and student workload, operational costs, and material costs. |
| Instructor Risks | Impact on workload or responsibilities, training requirements and associate costs, IP ownership, data residency and sovereignty, use and retention, data deletion, and incorporation of AI training or AI features. |
| Student Risks | Impacts to the experience of instruction for our diverse range of learners including those with accessibility requirements, usability of the tools, affordability, accessibility, data residency, collection, use, retention of student information, sovereignty, potential bias of AI based features, and technological equity (bandwidth requirements/device requirements). |