Hot Teams

The TLT hot team process is the first step in helping the unit decide what new technologies or approaches into which we should invest time and energy. The hot team concept was born out of the need to quickly evaluate an emerging technology or approach and to assess its viability for use in an educational setting. In a general sense, we are also interested in creating a set of resources that we as educational technologists and instructional designers can share with our primary audiences: faculty, staff, students, peers, and project sponsors.

Each hot team can be assembled based on a recommendation from a member of the staff, from an organizational need, from outside interests, or for the purpose of informing ourselves. Hot teams are typically made up of five people with a timeline of no more than three weeks. Anyone inside or outside TLT can propose a hot team and we encourage people from outside TLT to participate.

All hot teams are composed of a set of people with diverse backgrounds; instructional designers, multimedia specialists, technologists, communicators, faculty, etc. can participate. Having multiple perspectives always yields strong results. Each hot team is assigned a team leader whose responsibility it is to organize the team around the project. The team is given a formal charge and a set of questions to answer. Typically, the outcomes are shared in the form of a short white paper.

Below are links to white papers from completed hot team investigations. Take a moment and explore what we have learned.