4 learning tech problems that get left behind in digital transformation, and how to fix them

The last few years have seen universities embrace digital transformation. Students and staff expect more from their institutions, and it’s more important than ever to help you keep a competitive edge when it comes to attracting and retaining students and staff. 

But in the excitement of digital uptake, many high stakes processes have been forgotten. At All the Ducks, we’ve been building tech for universities for the last 10 years. We’ve built a host of bespoke solutions to fix problems from course administration, teaching, grade calculation and more. 

Keep reading to learn the 4 biggest tech problems that universities have left behind, and the solutions we’ve built to fix them. 

1. Communicating course outlines 

When it comes to providing course outlines, it’s often an outdated, highly manual process. And with clunky, outdated user experience, the course outlines are often not always consistent or easy for students to understand either. 

We’ve built LTI tools for clients that render the course outline data from the Curriculum Management System using a template. It’s automatic and easy for the course coordinator to use, and crucially, it helps the university meet curriculum policies. So your students can know exactly what they need to learn, and academic staff can get on with teaching.

2. LMS course setup and lifecycle

Modern LMSs come with a myriad of Learning and Teaching tools that are great for delivering the course content and ensuring the students are learning. There are also a huge number of LTI tools to supplement this functionality where they are lacking. However, setting up courses at the beginning of the semester is a manual and tedious process.

In our experience, institutions usually tackle this one of two ways. Either the course coordinator is responsible for the setup, or it’s deferred to academic support staff. We’ve digitally transformed both approaches at various institutions. Where the institution chooses coordinator lead setup, we have built wizards which guide the instructor through the decisions that need to be made. Alternatively, where the process is driven by academic support staff, we’ve built dashboards for tracking the setup workflow for all courses within a session.

We’ve developed a platform that guides the instructor through each stage of course set-up: so they can easily create a new module, use a template, or copy a previous module. This helps support staff to work their way through the list of hundreds of courses each session - keeping track of everything with a user-friendly workflow. It also makes it easier to make adjustments for students with varying learning needs. So your staff can set up courses accurately and easily in a way that supports learning from day 1. 

3. Calculating final grades

The tools used for this super important process - which often informs university rankings, student experience, and goes on students’ resumes - is still often stuck in the 90s with Excel spreadsheets. By calculating grades with spreadsheets, there’s a high risk of final grades being calculated inaccurately - due to human error, a mistake in a formula, and process not being documented. 

We built Grade Matter to pull grading into the present. This is a platform that makes it easy for staff to see each student’s grades, and progress through marking securely and efficiently. It flags potential inconsistencies or inaccuracies, so they can be caught and fixed early. And it documents decisions made regarding any changes including borderline grades, or reviewed marks. All of this enables your institution to calculate grades accurately and efficiently, supporting your staff’s experience, your students’ work, and the integrity of your institution. 

4. Publishing courses 

When it comes to publishing courses, universities have a lot of obligations and policies that need to be met. From copyright, to IP, to privacy, academic, quality, accessibility and more. University staff have normally been asked to ensure compliance manually and individually. This is prone to human error, and increases the chances of taught courses being non-compliant, putting your university at risk.

We’ve built tools which provide a checklist that must be completed before a course can be published. This asks academic staff to agree to a series of statements confirming that the content adheres to each required policy, making it easy for them to understand and complete.

If you’d like to learn more about any of our products, or talk more about our digital transformation services, book a call with our CEO, Shane.