{"id":13636,"date":"2020-03-13T20:07:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T20:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/?p=13636"},"modified":"2020-03-13T20:07:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T20:07:14","slug":"think-twice-about-that-free-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2020\/03\/13\/think-twice-about-that-free-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Twice About That Free Offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Case Study in Marketing: The Danger of “Free” (Especially for Public Employees)<\/strong><\/p>\n

My dear faculty friends.\u00a0 Many of you are on marketing email lists of a number of educational technology companies.\u00a0 They’ve given you good value for trading your email address for many different incentives at conferences or for webinars or for whitepapers.\u00a0 They are now descending upon you with “free” offers that might not be as good as they seem in the first place.<\/p>\n

Now you are getting exciting announcements that they are offering you free access to their predictive learning or course management platform or free publisher content.\u00a0 Think twice.\u00a0 This falls in the free like a puppy category, and it could put you in a great amount of risk.<\/p>\n

We are making every effort to provide you with the basic tools you need to meet the needs of your students, and although these other tools may seem to be THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM IN THE UNIVERSE, they still need to go through all of the contract and data handling review that any software or service requires.<\/p>\n

North Carolina has some particular laws with relation to the retention of student course data and any software we use is required to be properly vetted.\u00a0 And even “free” click-throughs are contracts that you aren’t authorized to enter into on behalf of the university. (See the software policy<\/a>).\u00a0 Unfortunately for most of these free products, by the time we are able to get them through the process and have their lawyers and our lawyers align the agreements and check all of their data retention policies, we’ll probably be outside of the window of this particular set of circumstances.<\/p>\n

If you absolutely have to move the ball forward we can start the process of getting the software reviewed<\/a>, but, if I were you, I’d dig into the tools we have before I even considered putting content into a platform that at most will be “free” for 6 months and then will be asking for money.\u00a0 (For example one of the huge offenders is offering a wonderful platform that when it goes to paid costs on average $10 a student a year, and we don’t have a mechanism for paying for that particular service.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Case Study in Marketing: The Danger of “Free” (Especially for Public Employees) My dear faculty friends.\u00a0 Many of you are on marketing email lists of a number of educational […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-edtech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2016\/10\/27\/chrisman-and-wade-present-on-using-sway-to-teach-multi-literacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":13636,"position":0},"title":"Chrisman and Wade Present on Using Sway to Teach Multi-Literacy","author":"Jonathan Wade","date":"October 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In a continuing effort to the link technological tools and systems we already have in place to practical course activities and student learning outcomes, John Chrisman, an instructor of English, has been working with Jonathan Wade, the Senior Educational Technologist in the Coulter Faculty Commons to use Microsoft Sway, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14065,"url":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2020\/03\/27\/microsoft-resources-for-teaching-with-office-365\/","url_meta":{"origin":13636,"position":1},"title":"Microsoft Resources for Teaching with Office 365","author":"Eli Collins-Brown","date":"March 27, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As more schools begin to make the transition to distance learning and online classrooms, we want to help. 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All WCU faculty and staff have access to Panopto, a desktop recording and video hosting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":415,"url":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2016\/07\/19\/dive-deep-into-microsoft-for-education\/","url_meta":{"origin":13636,"position":4},"title":"Dive Deep Into Microsoft For Education","author":"Jonathan Wade","date":"July 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Microsoft has opened a new collaborative learning portal for educators. It is much improved from the training modules to which we used to have access. You can use the Office365 sign in and access a number of free resources. Stop by and the CFC can tell you more about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":375,"url":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2016\/07\/01\/update-on-google-cardboard-virtual-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":13636,"position":5},"title":"Update on Google Cardboard Virtual Reality","author":"Jonathan Wade","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"If you have been paying any attention to the promises and prospects of virtual reality as an educational tool, I have no doubt that you have at least heard of Google Cardboard. Google Cardboard is an outgrowth of genius (free-form development) time for a number of Google employees. 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