Find educational tools easily and securely via the new Educational Applications Collaboration Platform
SPEA is an efficiently designed platform where all information on educational tools is gathered centrally. Together with nine institutions, we conducted a pilot to test SPEA. The insights from this pilot have been summarised in a fact sheet.
Central place with secure applications
As an education professional, you can access the platform for:
- A clear overview of educational applications available within your institution, including possible alternatives.
- Safe applications whose privacy and security risks have been mapped.
- Knowledge sharing between institutions, so that you can exchange experiences and insights about the use of applications with others.
The platform saves time and money because it offers different processes for purchasing and managing educational applications. So you no longer need to do extensive preliminary research on suitable applications and can more easily keep this up to date.
Collaboration with educational institutions
"There is a great need for a reliable platform where education professionals can share experience and information about applications with each other," says Pytrik Dijkstra, project leader of SPEA. To meet this need, after a proof of concept in 2022, we started a pilot with SPEA together with nine universities of applied sciences and universities in 2023. From SURF, we provided functional descriptions, technical knowledge and information on privacy. Institutions supplemented this with specific information for their own employees.
The pilot not only focused on making information findable, but also on other important processes. Think of assessing new applications, support with their use, privacy and security, educational guidance, licensing and procurement. Institutions can flexibly customise the platform to fit their needs and existing systems.
Screenshot of the Educational Applications Collaboration Platform (SPEA)
Extensive testing and evaluation
In the final phase of the pilot, lecturers and education support staff tested the platform and shared their feedback. One of the participating lecturers commented, "It is useful to read what an application can be used for and for what purpose."
Information managers are also involved in the evaluation of SPEA. For example, they look at how education can be best supported with the right IT resources and make recommendations on which applications can and cannot be used.
From pilot to service: join in!
All participants in the pilot have indicated that they want to start using SPEA as soon as the platform is ready. "The pilot was successful because we not only looked at the technology, but also at how to deploy such a service in education," says Sjoerd Roorda, content manager of SPEA. That is why we are now working together with MBO Digitaal and Npuls on a plan for the further development of SPEA as a full-fledged service. The experiences from the pilot and beta phase play an important role in this.
Would you like to contribute to making education more accessible and innovative and also participate in the beta phase of SPEA? Then contact the project team at spea@surf.nl.