EDIT: I’ve decided to pursue the ITP2Go idea. The consumer advocacy project has exploded/imploded into an idea beyond my capabilities to harness it for this class/semester. I will definitely continue to research it, and consider it a high interest area of mine, but ITP2Go is much more attainable and tangible for now.
ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community
One of the most valuable things of ITP is the community. However, it can be difficult to take part in the whole experience for various reasons, and I don’t feel as though this need to “be around” should be so definitive. Enter the idea of ITP2Go (or Whatever2Go), which would serve as a portal utility into the world of ITP without requiring a human presence. The tool could keep up with event calendars, blog entries, classroom schedules, impromptu events, staging space status, class syllabi, etc, in order to provide a transparent overview of the goings-on and immersive experience of being on the floor without being on the floor. Perhaps there could even be a class-level drilldown of the tool that could allow students to glance into one another’s work and progress, which could open the door for collaboration opportunities, online conversational spaces, and student involvement at a higher level than before.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1L0wC9ws7bVw2Mbu4cwiGPkAqngBW8GlTp7CIoIicVNM/edit?usp=sharing
I have a couple of ideas, neither 100% formed, but we’re getting there. I originally began the class wanting to build something, but over the course of the class, I came to realize that there are a lot of tools out there. I’m not convinced that adding another one to the pool is the approach I want to take currently. But, here they are, as fleshed out as possble for now!
Empowering the higher education market: creating the informed consumer
Return on investment is a rather ambiguous term, which is frequently thrown around during conversations concerning large financial transactions as a basis for justification, or confidence building for the person letting go of their money. It’s rather curious to me that higher education, one of the largest personal financial investments one will undergo in life factors this term into its sales pitch so rarely. Perhaps there is an industry notion that the investor is more responsible for the “outcomes” than the institution, however if that is really the case then what is the justification for the cost differentials and exorbitant amounts? Part of the effort to make changes to this very set-in-stone way of doing business in the educational industry will be to be armed with the data necessary to advocate efforts towards change. The data exists, is public, and is actually fairly readily available, however it is dense, murky, and seemingly nonsensical for those without a statistician’s aptitude. I would like to explore various ways to overcome this issue. How can the data be represented in a universally accessible way? What data should be focused on and what should be lowered in importance? What is useful to the effort of empowering the consumer?
