University at Buffalo (UB)
Empowering Instructors | Supporting Excellence
This gateway supports requests for procuring and deploying new technologies in UB Learns. Deploying new technologies must be done within university policies and processes under the appropriate oversight.
The University at Buffalo is a large and complicated organization where faculty and staff often have difficulty navigating the policies and processes surrounding the procurement and implementation of technology in their programs and courses. In an effort provide our students with innovative instructional experiences we turn to third-party web-apps and social media tools, but we often do not consider what is at risk if technologies we deploy during instruction are not UB vetted, tested, and approved.
This process can take 12 to 34 weeks: The steps below outline the process for integrating teaching technology into UB Learns. We recommend you begin planning a year before you intend to use a new teaching technology.
Many times a course or program employs specific teaching activities and methodologies but faculty are unsure of whether there is a best practice or technology that can meet those instructional goals.
Consult with teaching technology staff to Identify a technology that will meet instructional needs and select technologies that are available at UB. If UB implemented technologies will not support instructional goals get assistance navigating the process of procuring and implementing a new instructional technology.
The goal of this process is to incorporate review and approval by the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Financial Management and the Vice President Chief Information Office (VPCIO) prior to the purchase. The end result of the review process is to provide a recommendation or approval regarding the purchase of the software, service or application.
* Note: UB does not accept vendor hyperlinks or click-through terms: A clickwrap agreement, also known as a click-through, shrink-wrap, or sign-in-wrap, is an online agreement in which the user signifies his or her acceptance by clicking a button or checking a box that states “I agree.” The purpose of a clickwrap agreement is to digitally capture the acceptance of a contract. Click-through agreements permit companies to engage in a contract with customers without negotiating with each user individually.
Purchases requiriing State Comprtroller or UB Contracting and Legal review could add an additional 12 to 24 weeks to the pre-purchase and procurement process.
When a technology receives approval from each of the pre-purchase reviews: student/course fee; digital and functional accessibility; data security, and legal reviews, the CATT UB Learns administrative team will work with you and the vendor to complete the learning technology integration with UB Learns.
The time required to complete integrations is dependent on the nature of the learning technology and whether integration with a test environment is required prior to integration with the production environment.