https://anchor.fm/hitechpod/episodes/64--Absence-in-Online-Courses--AirTable-e1lmo0d

This Week's App: Airtable

What is Airtable?

Airtable is a cloud-based data and collaboration tool. Now I know what you are thinking that sounds super exciting…….ok maybe not but we promise that this tool has great uses in education and can change your life. Airtable allows you easily collect and track information, and then easily track and display that information to others. Imagine being able to bring student feedback, grades, work, and data all into one place.

The key to Airtable is that it allows you to flex, display and automate data all without being a computer expert. Essentially it is excel on steroids!

What can it be used for?

At first glance, Airtable doesn't jump out as an educational tool, but it certainly has it uses. Here are some of the ways we have seen it used in education:

• Field Experience Timesheets - At the institution Josh works at, the education department needed a solution for tracking students’ field experience hours across multiple internship courses. To solve this they decided to use Airtable. They set up a form that could be linked in all the courses and designed it so that students could submit what happened that week, the hours they did, who their advisor is, and allowed them to upload a signed pdf document. This then funneled into custom Advisor dashboards that allowed them to see each of their advisees and their total hours in internship.
• Resource or Book Database - Justin who joined us in Ep 46 and Ep 55 set up his own library database with teaching and learning resources that Faculty could search and then use to check out the books from him. He was able to set up QR codes on each book to track who took them and when they were returned. While this was specific to his needs, you could use it to set up a resource database for your students to share resources, articles, or links and then embed that in your course or send the link to your students.
• Training Registration & Tracking - Josh used Airtable to set up their office's training registration and tracking system. Faculty were able to go to their site to see a live list of all offered training, sign up through a form that allowed them to select what training they were attending, then Airtable rolled up how many were registered for each training and could auto cancel training that did not meet the minimum registration threshold. On top of all that, they are able to use this tool to visualize training attendance over multiple years.

These are just a few of the uses we have seen or done, but there are limitless ways to use Airtable. We know institutions that use it as their student information system and people who have created portfolios through it. Josh’s team has even built out an activity catalog and an educational tool database in Airtable.

How do I get started?

Airtable is a freemium tool which means they do have several features blocked behind a paywall. You can learn more at their Pricing Page. That said, there is a lot you can do with a free account so we recommend signing up for one here. It should be noted that our first two examples above were done with totally free Airtable accounts.

The other great thing about Airtable is that they have a bunch of tutorials and resources for learning how to use the tool. We recommend starting with Your guide to building in Airtable first as it will walk you through everything you need to know about building a table and using it.