Educational Technology
Educational Technologies (EdTech) at the Office of Teaching and Learning
The Office of Teaching and Learning’s (OTL’s) Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) team helps instructors intentionally incorporate the institution’s available supported technologies into their course design and assessment practices in an effective manner.
OTL’s ITS team offers consultations, workshops, and webinars to our teaching and learning community that are focused on the effective use of educational technology (EdTech). They also research, test, and pilot new EdTech options.
The focus of the ITS team is on the effective, pedagogically-aligned implementation of educational technology. Although they are well-versed in the operation of the institution’s supported technologies, frontline how-to support is the responsibility of the School of Continuing Studies' CourseLink Support team.
Book a Consultation with an ITS
Interested in exploring EdTech further? Our ITS team is happy to connect with instructors looking to explore EdTech options that may support their teaching approaches and goals.
We encourage interested instructors to connect with our ITS team via email at: edtech@uoguelph.ca and include:
- The name(s) and code(s) of the course(s)
- A brief explanation of the challenge you are facing or your reason for connecting with the team
- Any technologies you are interested in exploring further (if known)
Supported Technologies
Currently, the University of Guelph has four supported educational technologies (and one [PEAR] that will be phased out after F26):
- CourseLink
- The institution's learning management system (LMS) powered by D2L Brightspace
- A foundational educational technology available for all courses with many embedded tools such as Dropbox, Discussions, Quizzes, etc.
- FeedbackFruits
- After a year-long pilot, FeedbackFruits was adopted by UofG and officially launched in Winter 2026.
- FeedbackFruits’ Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation tools serve as replacements for similar options that were previously available through UofG’s PEAR tool.
- Beyond Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation, FeedbackFruits also provides many other activity types or tools that can assist with feedback & assessment as well as collaboration & engagement. These tools are all fully integrated with the CourseLink LMS.
- FeedbackFruits also offers optional AI coaching and assistant features for both students and instructors.
- Gradescope
- Officially launched in Fall 2023, Gradescope was adopted as a CourseLink-integrated bubble sheet assessment replacement for Scantron at UofG.
- Gradescope also offers a variety of other assignment types that help improve the efficiency and effectiveness when assessing hand-written work.
- iClicker Cloud
- iClicker Cloud is a student response system that replaced the original hardware-based iClicker system, moving the process entirely online for both instructors and students.
- iClicker Cloud integrates with CourseLink’s grading system and provides an avenue for instructors to engage with their students during live lectures or classes through polling and quizzes.
- PEAR
- PEAR is an acronym for Peer Evaluation, Assessment, and Review.This tool was developed in 2008 by UofG to facilitate online peer review and group member evaluation with an integration with CourseLink.PEAR will no longer be available after the F26 semester when it will be sunset from service. Instructors are encouraged to transition any Peer Review or Group Assessment activities from PEAR to FeedbackFruits before the start of the W27 semester.
More information on these educational technologies can be found on the School of Continuing Studies’ Documentation & Support site under Supported Teaching and Learning Technologies.
2026 OTL EdTech Programming Recordings
Please note that he following recordings require single sign on at UofG to access. You may be prompted to login to view the recordings.
- Get to Know FeedbackFruits Series:
- CourseLink Basics for Beginners: Everything you need to know about the 6 main tools
In addition to the supported educational technologies listed above, other centrally supported technologies such as: MS Teams, Zoom, MS Forms, etc., may also be leveraged for teaching and learning. Please contact the ITS team for more information on these options.