Technology Summaries

Technology summaries are the results from a rapid investigation 'Hot Team' process. The 'Hot Team' process is a way to rapidly investigate a new technology, service, or teaching technique and understand how it can be used to enhance teaching and learning. A team of 3-4 people with diverse perspectives and meet 4-5 times over the course of a month to produce answers to key questions and considerations.


  • Shift the focus from the end product to the process of learning.
  • Foreground the real-world applications of course content.
  • Introduce students to the inquiry cycle.
  • Encourage students to reflect on and develop a personal connection to content.
  • Foster critical thinking and communication skills.
  • Integrate with project- or problem-based learning.

  • Decenter grades and prioritize feedback and reflection
  • Foster student agency and authentic learning
  • Reduce grade-related stress and better promote student well-being

  • Increase student engagement with pre-class videos.
  • Generate rich formative assessment data.
  • Help students to identify key concepts and track their understanding of these concepts.

  • Facilitate visual communication.
  • Enable students and instructors to aggregate, display and comment on related content (media, files, links, text) in-real time or asynchronously.
  • Helps faculty to structure collaborative, learning and research exercises.
  • Review electronic student submissions.
  • Directly provide personalized, detailed feedback on the assignment.
  • Create a dialogue between instructors and students about student work.



  • Forms of experiential learning
  • Invite students to explore concepts, practice skills, relate to others, see multiple perspectives.
  • Engage students in complex problem-solving activities within course topics.
  • Stimulates the imagination of students through interaction with objects.
  • Promotes the concept of discovery as a learning tool.
  • Engages students to construct their own knowledge with instructors taking on the role of facilitators.

  • Invites faculty and students to rethink the traditional classroom experience.
  • Leverages technologies to introduce course concepts before class with students.
  • Allow educators to use class time to guide each student through active applications of the course principles

  • Provide computer-aided assistance to reduce the time and challenges of the grading process
  • Enable instructors in focusing on providing detailed, richer feedback.
  • Provide easy to access in-depth statistical reporting about grades.

  • Save time effectively collecting attendance without the use of time-consuming role calls or paper-based sign-in sheets.
  • Encourage students to attend class and empowers them to keep track of their attendance.
  • Use reporting features that communicate statistical data on student patterns and behaviors.  
  • Better understand and enrich the learning process using computational methods.
  • Measure, collect, analyze, and report data about learners and their contexts.
  • Apply and inform educational theory, practice and/or policy.

 



  • Wirelessly share a computer or mobile device screen to a TV, computer monitor, or projector display.
  • Eliminate the need to worry about what type of connection a device requires by providing a "BYOD" system that handles many popular protocols.
  • Allow more than one user to share their screens at a time.
  • Provide electronic versions of the print, or supplementary interactive, online course content. 
  • Capture student engagement and analytics provide real-time feedback to assigned online activities.
  • Read and add highlights, notes, and bookmark course materials across multiple devices.

  • Broadcast digital resources and learning activities directly to personal devices.
  • Capture audience attention and manage immediate reactions.
  • Provide real-time feedback and guide instruction.

  • Use video technology to prevent/deter cheating during online exams;
  • Allows a faculty person to monitor student’s test taking behavior;
  • Assures an institution that students are not cheating;
  • Levels the playing field” for students.

  • Type, write, and draw notes on devices just as they would using pen and paper.
  • Store information digitally, usually in a cloud-based storage system.
  • Collaborate and share notes with others instantaneously, often in real-time.
  • Add files, multimedia, and live recordings to notes.
  • Explore and give form to conceptual ideas and models.
  • Enhance research and development projects.
  • Engage in hands-on, autonomous activities and foster creative inquiry.


  • Engages students by allowing constant discussion on related topics and collaboration on projects.
  • Allows the integration of widely-used and readily available third-party applications.
  • Lets new users access historical information, including documents and images.
  • Permits learners and instructors alike to build on the strengths of previous teams.
  • Create, edit, review and test content for education and training
  • Develop interactive, stand-alone modules with built-in assessments
  • Provide mobile friendly access to online courses through a learning management system (LMS)

  • Communicate across an array of mediums.
  • Differentiate between numerous variables, communicate concepts, predict trends past, present and future.
  • Aggregate and analyze data that can be applied to research, teaching and development.
  • Provide audience beyond a passive but more active learning environment.

  • Create, edit, and review interactive multimodal presentations
  • Present data visually or create a mashup of readings, images, videos and more in a single interactive digital object
  • Provide students with an engaging way to analyze and present data
  • Teach course content to online students in an interactive and engaging way