I'm a recent college grad and creating a new learning, collaboration, and social studying platform. We just launched our product (http://www.chalkup.co) and we really would like to get as much feedback from professors and students as possible. We're trying to solve problems for our users as best as we can. Do you have any suggestions how someone like me could approach a professor or researcher like yourself in order to get this critical feedback?
The best way: Be as direct and clear as possible. Most professors (and researchers) had a heavy work load so going around the topic or "wasting" time will be counterproductive. :)
Hello, I looked at it and think is great!!!!!, I don’t really know how this works normally on your country, I am from Cuba and our educational system is a bit different than in other parts of the world, so this is only my personal experience, I have a grad student working on a similar application and the steps we follow were:
-First, we approach an education center to present and test the application (The department of Informatics Engineering at our University)
-Make a socialization workshop with as many professors as possible to present the application (This way you can make contact with interested professors an create a group willing to implement a real course on your site for a set time)
-Get feedback from a pedagogic point of view and the system as an application (We used a survey for professors and students after a 6 months course, measuring how the course flows, accessibility of the system, etc.)
-Publish your results on journals, events and congress is the best way to share it.
-Be sure of one thing, the work on it only started, we are already working on a 3rd version of the site and got 17 steady courses running on it.
Hope this help you
The key is to describe what's unique about it - a short white paper on key differentiating features is what I'd want to see myself. Addressing known challenges for distance teaching and distance learners would help convince me to try any new tools - e.g. how do I offer async instruction, but still get feedback from students on my recorded lectures (e.g. can they hit like/dislike and understand/confusing during audio and slides like a clicker), or what is it that adds value of incumbents like desire2learn, blackboard, moodle, etc.
Hi Justin, I realize it has been a while since this question has been discussed but I would be curious to hear how the business is faring. I checked out the new product (learning platform). It is neat and looks like be a good option, especially for smaller schools so they can just take advantage of the Cloud... Professors and students are good to talk to; but another important group of people you would want to talk to are learning technology professionals... They usually work for an office or center in their respective schools or universities, with names like Office/Center for Technology and Learning... These people are influential in platform decisions and are also often the people who design the courses and layouts, and teachers do minor modifications. Some of the places where you can find teachers, students, and learning technology specialists and designers would be learning technology conferences, exhibitions, fairs, and expos. The other way is to use every possible social media and professional internet venue, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, ResearchGate, SlideShare, Google+, and so on. Anyhow, best luck with your venture! Sincerely hope that your entrepreneurial efforts will pay off.
Emre
Dr. Emre Erturk
Hi Dr. Emre Erturk, Thanks so much for your response. The feedback for Chalkup has been going really well so far. We're now being used in over 2,000 schools/institutions around the world. Our big advantage is how easy we made it to collaborate, for both courses and research groups. So, we've tried to make it as easy as possible for professors to turn on instantly.
I've tried to talk to every type of group! From IT professionals, to professors, to tech focused online professors, consultants and K-12 teachers and students. But, I've found it really important to continue looking for this feedback wherever I can find it. Great tip for looking for people who focus on Technology and Learning at universities.
We're working so hard to make this the absolute best collaborative learning platform, and I'm really happy to say that so much of our development has been due to direct feedback from the educators and students who use it everyday.
Thanks again for your response!
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