Academic Technology Advisory Committee
The Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) guides technology decisions to support the University's academic mission for teaching, learning, research, and scholarship.
ATAC membership is role-based to ensure representation across all academic areas. Members meet regularly to evaluate academic-related technology software and products requested by the Brandeis community, as well as policy and standards related to academic technology, including the learning management system.
Responsibilities
- Make and receive recommendations, inquiries and proposals concerning the application of technology to teaching, learning, research and scholarship. Provide a channel for concerns and suggestions from the community.
- Make decisions regarding proposals related to academic technology applications, policies, and standards, including the learning management system (currently Moodle).
- Coordinate with other IT Governance working groups, compile an inventory of academic technology products in use across campus.
- Discuss and seek to resolve issues which span departmental or divisional boundaries. Escalate issues and funding requests when necessary to the Technology Prioritization Committee when appropriate.
- Provide direction to prevent, where appropriate, unnecessary redundancy or non-sustainable implementations and their resulting inefficiencies and risks.
- When necessary, solicit information and assistance from other campus offices as needed.
Committee Membership
- University Librarian (chair); Matthew Sheehy
- Arts and Sciences, Division Head of Social Sciences; Charles Golden
- Arts and Sciences, Division Head of Sciences; Bulbul Chakraborty
- Arts and Sciences, Division Head of the Humanities; Jonathan Decter
- Arts and Sciences, Division Head of the Creative Arts; Charles McClendon
- Vice Provost for Research; Steven Karel
- International Business School, Faculty Representative; Arnold Kamis
- Heller School, Faculty Representative; Joel Gershenfeld
- Rabb School, Faculty Representative; Lynne Rosansky
- Program Director, Center for Teaching and Learning; Marty Samuels
- ITS Leadership Representative; Steve Knowles
Academic Technology Request Process
Requests for new academic software technology products to be evaluated or purchased should be submitted using the Academic Technology Request Form. Representatives from the library will reach out to all who submit a request to be sure the committee understand the needs and to initiate the process for the ATAC to make decisions on requests.
Academic Technology Approved Requests
The following products have been evaluated by the Academic Technology Advisory Committee.
Available
- Atlas TI *
- ATLAS
- Aurora
- ChemDraw *
- Feedback Studio by TurnItIn *
- Gradescope by TurnItIn *
- Kaltura
- LinkedIn Learning *
- MacMillan Achieve
- MacMillan Launchpad
- MacMillan SaplingPlus
- Mathematica *
- Matlab *
- Overleaf *
- Piazza Basic
- Prism — Graphpad
- PsychLearn
- Shinyapps.io
- Signal Vine
- SPSS Statistics *
- Stata *
- Symposium
- Voicethread *
(* up for renewal)
Under Review
- BioRender
- ChemOffice
- Google Formlimiter Add-on
- Outlook/Todoist Plugin
Products evaluated but not implemented enterprise-wide
- ALEKS
- Beyond Labz
- Canva
- Covidence
- Delve Tool
- Digital Inspiration
- Doodle Premium
- Feedback Fruits Pilot
- GoAceIt
- Google Chat Features
- MAXQDA
- Nearpods
- Nimbus Learning
- Otter.ai
- Padlet
- Piazza Enterprise
- Poll Everywhere
- Proctorio
- ProctorU
- Rayyan
- RedCap
- Shovel
- Spatial Chat
- Tableau (site-wide licenses not available)
- TreeAge
- Walden: The Game
- Zulip
Questions? For additional information regarding these products, please contact library@brandeis.edu.
The Academic Technology Advisory Committee Meeting Agendas and Minutes are posted to Box (Brandeis login required). If you have questions, please contact the chair of the committee.