Primary speaker:
Mike Serafin, Head, Digital Engagement and Research Services, UTM Library
Additional speakers:
Simone Laughton, Head, UTM Library & Instructional Technologies, UTM Library
Akshat Mishra, Senior Manager Information Security, UTM I&ITS
Description:
When faculty choose technologies outside the U of T Academic Toolbox to support course assignments, they enter a complex landscape where academic innovation and institutional digital trust can come into tension. Without adequate guidance, these choices can expose students to unexamined privacy and security risks, yet overly restrictive responses can inhibit the kind of human-centred, technology-enhanced learning that defines a modern university.
This presentation explores how collaborative partnerships between faculty, academic technology staff, the library and IT can transform this challenge into an opportunity to strengthen digital trust across the institution. Drawing on U of T's risk assessment processes, data classification standards and data governance frameworks, we show how faculty can make more informed, responsible decisions when adopting emerging technologies and how support teams can elevate these conversations beyond compliance toward genuine partnership.
We present several use cases in which instructors incorporated tools such as a video creation platform and virtual reality environment into their courses, illustrating the privacy and security considerations surfaced through risk assessments and the collaborative solutions developed with IT, the library and academic technology staff.
Faculty, academic technologists, IT professionals, librarians and administrators will leave with concrete strategies for navigating technology choices outside institutional defaults, a clearer understanding of U of T's data governance tools, and ideas for building the kind of ongoing faculty-IT dialogue that makes digital trust a shared commitment rather than a policy checkbox.
