The Academic Toolbox Renewal Initiative is now in full swing!

The University of Toronto’s enterprise education technology ecosystem (our ‘Academic Technology Toolbox’) has grown organically over the past several years. At times services and solutions have been added in an ad hoc way. At other points, the University has gone through a formal acquisition process. What we haven’t done yet, however, is take a holistic approach to the ‘Academic Technology Toolbox’ in its entirety.

Most of our current technologies are up for renewal next year (2015), which provides us with a rare  opportunity to consider  our overall ‘Academic Toolbox’ ecosystem. We have a unique occasion to create a flexible but integrated environment that supports the teaching and learning needs of our students, instructors, departments and divisions.

The goal of the initiative is to create a strong foundation upon which instructors, departments and divisions can make flexible, sound choices about educational technologies, while ensuring basic enterprise needs are met (like protecting private data and intellectual property, among others).

Think of it, if you will, like a Swiss Army Knife. If we create a proper case, and publish the criteria for how a tool is added to it, then instructors, departments and divisions can make informed decisions and recommendations about the tools and functionalities they need.

http://toolboxrenewal.act.utoronto.ca

On this site, we’ve published an evolving set of UofT Academic Technology Toolbox Criteria, based on numerous conversations and feedback over the past two years.

We need your feedback and input. Do the criteria that have been proposed so far make sense to you? Are there any missing that you think should be there? Are there any that you see there that you think shouldn’t be there?