UTS assessment software licensed to digital agency

ReView^TM, a cutting edge web-based assessment tool for student work developed at the University of Technology, Sydney, (UTS) has been licensed to digital agency acidgreen.

Created by senior lecturer Darrall Thompson at the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, and programmer Mike Howard, the software was licensed through UniQuest, UTS’s research commercialisation partner.

The five year licence agreement with acidgreen means the technology will become widely available to the global education market, backed by solid and experienced service and support for users.

Darrall Thompson said the software’s methodology reflects best practice teaching and learning theory, and translates it into a user-friendly tool that provides meaningful assessment of students.

“Assessing students on graduate attributes is part of an international shift away from assessing delivery of knowledge and reflects the requirements of industry and employers,” Mr Thompson said.

“ReView focuses students’ attention away from marks and onto their performance. It also focuses teachers’ attention onto the development of specific assessment criteria and their alignment with learning goals, learning activities and attribute development.”

ReView has the tick of approval from renowned academic Mark Freeman, Discipline Scholar leading the academic standards agenda for Business, Management and Economics for the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.

“Here’s an innovation that has been developed by educators with a real passion for improving teaching and learning outcomes, who also want to respond to what industry has been crying out for – a means of measuring a graduate capabilities. I applaud UTS for supporting the development of this tool and confidence in its ability to add value to traditional student assessment,” Associate Professor Freeman said.

Several universities in Australia are currently using ReView and the list is growing. An enterprise version of ReView™ has been embraced by the UTS teaching and learning community and a web-based version has been used and evaluated by the University of NSW, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney, the University of Southern Queensland and Massey University in New Zealand.

Around the same time that UniQuest began its search for an industry partner with the capability and desire to extend their software development portfolio by taking on ReView, acidgreen was providing consultancy expertise to the UTS IT department, where Senior Business Analyst Ken Manley saw a natural fit between acidgreen and the ReView commercial product. Negotiations to licence the software strengthened the relationship between the award-winning agency and UTS.

Managing Director of acidgreen Mike Larcher said the company has been growing and refining its product and service portfolio for the education sector.

“Our subsidiary, acidgreen Education, plans to capitalise on our recent involvement with universities. We see ReView as a means of building solutions, specific to surveying, assessing and feedback, that will give us a competitive edge in the education market,” he said.

UniQuest Managing Director, David Henderson, said the commercial opportunities for ReView are excellent.

“ReView has gained significant traction within the education space because of its ability to respond to the growing requirements around assurance of learning standards,” Mr Henderson said.

“The market for this software begins with 4000 universities across the world and continues with high schools, trade and technical colleges and e-learning environments. The information technology spend in US universities alone is expected to grow to $62 billion by 2010, where an estimated 30% will be on teaching and learning tools such as ReView,” Mr Henderson said.

“Partnering with acidgreen promotes collaboration and demonstrates how university researchers can contribute to innovation adoption on a global scale within a commercial framework.”

ReView is one of many UTS research-based innovations UniQuest has added to its extensive portfolio since the commercialisation collaboration agreement was signed in 2008. UniQuest’s UTS-based Managers of Innovation and Commercial Development work closely with the researchers in their respective faculties to accelerate the transfer of new ideas into market-ready products and services.