The WeVu Story
Built at UBC in Vancouver by educators and learning technologists
We want to help learners everywhere get more practice and feedback.
WeVu has roots at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. At UBC the WeVu technology is still called the Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS). UBC has 12,000 student users of CLAS each year in Music, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Law, Arts and Sciences, Presentations, Teacher Training and more. CLAS was originally built for a research project in psychology on note-taking in lectures. With a UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement fund grant from 2014-2016, CLAS was rebuilt as a general purpose video sharing and annotation platform for education.
"Using CLAS for video sharing, teaching review and direct feedback has been a fantastic experience for my students."
In 2016, the CLAS management and technology group, Dr. Fred Cutler, Thomas Dang, and Ricardo Serrano decided to offer CLAS commercially. They worked with Entrepreneurship@UBC and the UBC University-Industry Liaison Office and launched ISIT Technology Inc. and the WeVu.Video service. WeVu began with a beta service in 2017 running on the public cloud. Early 2018 saw WeVu’s full launch.
WeVu flips educational video upside down. We think video is much more valuable for education if learners are doing the recording and instructors, coaches, or managers are the ones who watch and give feedback. We understand that modern research on learning shows that learners must be doing the things they are learning and getting feedback and coaching as they do so. We hope you agree!
The WeVu Leadership Team
Ricardo Serrano
Chief Operating Officer
Ricardo Serrano, P.Eng., is Chief Operating Officer. He is a civil engineer and former engineering company owner who has worked in information technology management for many years. He has been Director of IT for the UBC Faculty of Arts, managing a staff of 20 that purchases, develops, and deploys enterprise and office productivity software and network infrastructure for 1500 users in 30 academic and service units.
Thomas Dang
Chief Technology Officer
Thomas Quang Dang is Chief Technology Officer and Chief Software Architect. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction from UBC. He has worked as a software developer and team lead at a variety of technology companies. He has been the lead architect and product designer for the Collaborative Learning Annotation Software that ISIT Technology has acquired from UBC to be marketed as the WeVu.video service.
Dr. Fred Cutler
CEO
Dr. Fred Cutler is Chief Executive and Strategy Officer. He has been Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia where he has also served as Director of Undergraduate Programs in Political Science and Director of the Faculty of Arts Instructional Support and IT unit. He has taught at UBC for two decades and has contributed many years of leadership in educational technology. Fred holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
