Before you add a new tool to your course-

Adopting a new tool or technology into a class, regardless of the course format, can be a lot of work for a course instructor. A new tool may mean adapting or replacing assessments, creating optional grading schemes, or adapting the flow of the course itself. With some reflection and considerations you can be better prepared to integrate a new technology into the course. The original guide was based on a checklist created by Dave Cormier and adapted by our very own Joel MacDonald.

Before adopting a new tool, consider asking yourself these questions:

Is there a cost to students?

There’s a number of different models that tools use, whether they are free-to-use, paid, or freemium. Some education specific tools will have an instructor plan that provides access for students, though these tend to have caps on the number of students who can access it. Additionally you may want to consider whether there are ads to off-set the cost. Even professional oriented software like Doodle is not immune and they have inundated their website with ads to incentivize the use of their premium plan, so when adopting a tool you will want to keep apace with updates and changes to the experience.

Sometimes enterprise licenses may be available, in this case conversations with ITSS might help guide you through the most appropriate approach to getting students access to the platform and their expertise may help raise concerns you may have missed.

What is your plan for account creation?

This might be something that can be quick, especially for services that allow access using tools like Open Authentication (OAuth) where you can seamlessly create an account by linking an existing service. However, be sure to pay attention to the permissions given to the service when linking your valuable accounts. For example, you likely don’t want a service to be able to send email or create posts on your behalf.

However, especially if an account is for social or even open participation a bit more time may need to be allocated to setting up accounts. Accounts that are discoverable to the public or even designed for public interactions (such as a Tiktok account) may need some discussion about the vulnerability of such a potential audience and the risks associated.

Are accounts tied to a singular device?

Sometimes you may have a licensed software that limits how many devices can be used simulatenously, or how many users may use the tool simultaneously. These limits are going to restrict how the tool can be used and may require additional infrastructure around scheduling student use of the tool or some deliberate pedagogical approaches to work around such limits.

What are the prerequisite knowledge and skills?

Learning a new tool means a learning curve and the skill level of students will vary. Sometimes tools are simple, for example a polling tool may not need much introduction. However, more specialized tools may require more direct guidance for students, or even more support such as additional office hours, online guides, or scaffolded activities.

While a tool may help students accomplish great things in a particular course and could prove to be a valuable tool for them in the future you should be mindful of the cost-benefit of integrating the tool and whether a proper on-boarding will absorb too much valuable class time or may be overly burdensome if that learning is off-loaded outside of class (especially if students find themselves learning other platforms in their other courses).

What etiquette and expectations need to be communicated?

As with any assessment or activity, clear communication of expectations is paramount for success of all students. Designing your communication and incorporating exemplars are great practices.

If the tool is going to allow students to engage with each other, or even with a broader audience, you will want to ensure to advise students about the expected conduct and risks.

How does the tool interact with your learning targets?

When putting a new tool to students, the better it can relate to the purpose of the course, the easier it is for students to buy into its use. The bigger the disconnect and the steeper the learning curve to use the tool could limit student performance.

Is this going to be part of a summative assessment, formative assessment, or a learning activity?

Likewise with how a tool is embedded in the material of your course, how the course is woven into the grading scheme of the course can play a significant role as well. There’s interplay here with the difficulty in learning to use the tool, the more value an assessment involving the tool has, the more anxiety students will have about learning the tool. Scaffolding and having a plan around technical and learning support here may be crucial for success.

How will you organize, receive, or engage with student work?

A tool may help students engage in powerful conversations or create amazing products but if you are assessing the students on their work you will need to have a plan for how to best capture this work. Some platforms are built around their algorithm and may be difficult for you to trace back conversations. Some platforms have expiring video, etc. Having a strategy for how to you will assess the work and what metrics students may need to provide can help avoid the loss of effort from you and your students.

How accessible is the student work?

In Moodle students may feel confident knowing their work is either privately shared with the course instructor or presented to the class. With a new tool, this may not be the case and students may have their work out there publicly. Knowing whether student work is publicly discoverable, or could even potentially go viral is important and should be conveyed to students early on if you decide to proceed with the tool. Additionally there may be need to allow students some choice or options, even opting for a different activity depending on risk.

Are there other reasons a student may need to opt out?

Some tools, particularly emergent technologies tend to come with a level of scrutiny that you may need to be aware of. The environmental impact of processing power for GenerativeAI or the computational demands of blockchain based tools may elicit conscientious concerns. Likewise for concerns around copyright infringement, dataset training, and other such concerns. Investigating the discussions around the technology of your tool and potentially having alternatives may be an important design consideration.

Does the account or use of the tool forfeit student property rights?

Understanding what the rights held and given via a tool’s terms of service is important. Are students alright uploading photos to the platform if the platform retains rights to use their photos for advertising? Does a platform where students can upload their songs retain the ability to monetize that student’s song? If the students are not interacting with the platform, but you upload student work to the platform are you risking infringing the student’s copyright to their work?

Are students able to delete their work or account?

When the class is done and the student has chosen to end their use of the tool, can they delete their account. If they can, does the work they’ve submitted get deleted or is it retained and the account merely deactivated? Understanding whether a student can erase public contributions is important to let students engage in the learning process.

Is anyone else using the tool?

If another course instructor has experience with the tool, they can help speak to the process of adoption and how things went for the students. Using their experience they might be able to highlight unexpected challenges or innovative things students have accomplished with the tool. If that other instructor is in your department there may be students who are experienced with the tool in your course that can help serve as mentors. Also you may want to reach out to the Teaching and Learning Centre to let us know about your plans with the tool, with that information we may be able to connect you to other instructors using the tool, or connect others to you in the future. Additionally it might be a tool we can