Now available to the campus community and beyond, PIVOT Solo contains lessons on five key topics including course organization, active learning, community building, assessment, and supporting students. PIVOT Solo is designed to be a flexible, self-directed experience, allowing faculty to determine what knowledge they want to refresh or enhance. It is important to note that completion of any or all of PIVOT Solo will not result in eligibility for the professional development stipend that accompanies participation in PIVOT Live and PIVOT+.
The recordings from the PIVOT Live 5 hour webinar series are also available; these are the recordings of the live sessions that can be viewed in their entirety to meet the requirements of the Hrabowski stipend for adjunct faculty.
Additionally, faculty can access recordings of previous training sessions on a number of instructional technologies topics and tools in our recording archives including Blackboard, Collaborate, Panopto, and VoiceThread.
Finally, faculty may want to take advantage of the Course Workload Estimator, which will assist in determining how long it may take a student to complete various course activities, and the many other resources we've provided on the site to help support their online course development and delivery.
Check out this new professional development resource today!
Upcoming Quality Matters Workshops
USM OnTrack has pre-purchased a pool of online teaching professional development workshops from Quality Matters on beginning to advanced topics, including designing for learner engagement, flipping the online course, setting expectations with students, active learning strategies, accessibility, and online assessment. There is no cost for any USM faculty or staff member to attend these workshops, but each workshop does have a 30-person limit, so we encourage you to promote these as soon as possible. We will be monitoring registrations as will add additional sessions if we see high demand.
Below are the workshop titles for the final two weeks, along with registration information. NOTE: We have added a number of additional sessions for high-demand topics; please encourage faculty to come back to our web page to see if a session that was previously full is now available.
Week of August 17 | ||
Monday, August 17, 2020 (NEW!) |
9:00-11:00 |
Rethinking Assessments for Application and Engagement |
Monday, August 17, 2020 (NEW!) |
1:00-3:00 |
Rethinking Assessments for Application and Engagement |
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 |
9:00-11:00 |
Flipped Approach for Synchronous Online |
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 |
1:00-3:00 |
Setting Expectations and Learner Support: Helping Learners be Successful |
Wednesday, August 19, 2020 |
9:00-11:00 |
Communicating New Policies for Online Courses |
Wednesday, August 19, 2020 (NEW!) |
1:00-3:00 |
Creating Discussion Board Rubrics |
Thursday, August 20, 2020 |
1:00-3:00 |
Creating Discussion Board Rubrics |
Week of August 24 | ||
Wednesday August 26, 2020 |
1:00-3:00 |
Creating Accessible Word Docs |
Thursday, August 27, 2020 |
9:00-11:00 |
Providing Accessible Web Content |
2-Step Instructions for Self-Registering for USM OnTrack QM Workshops
Over the last week UMBC has experienced a large increase in the use of DocuSign as we gear up for the Fall semester.
Today's talk is In uncertain times, think like a mother by Yifat Susskind. There's a simple and powerful way to confront the world's most pressing crises, says women's rights activist Yifat Susskind: think like a mother. As she puts it: "When you think like a mother, you prioritize the needs of the many, not the whims of the few." Follow along as she shares moving stories of people around the world who embody this mindset -- and shows how it can also help you see beyond suffering and act to build a better world.
Over the summer, DoIT’s instructional technology team delivered four cohorts of PIVOT+ training to 275 UMBC faculty. Leveraging peer mentors and daily webinars focused on effective pedagogy for online teaching, the PIVOT+ program offered new opportunities for faculty to reflect on teaching and connect with each other as they prepared courses for fall.
Now available to the campus community and beyond, PIVOT Solo contains lessons on five key topics including course organization, active learning, community building, assessment, and supporting students. Choose one or all lessons, or just some content within a single lesson. PIVOT Solo is designed to be a flexible, self-directed experience, allowing faculty to determine what knowledge they want to refresh or enhance.
PIVOT Solo follows the PIVOT Live webinar series, which generated enormous interest. More than 1,000 registrations were recorded for the first five PIVOT Live sessions. More than 250 PIVOT Live participants were unique during the week, nearly half of which were teaching online during the summer. To date, over380 unique faculty have either attended the synchronous sessions or viewed the recorded PIVOT LIVE webinar series.
It is important to note that completion of any or all of PIVOT Solo will not result in eligibility for the professional development stipend that accompanies participation in PIVOT Live and PIVOT+.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
Downtime
On Saturday, August 15, Panopto will be making a number of updates to their Cloud infrastructure to improve performance and scalability. These updates will require up to 3 hours of downtime, with a target start time of 9:00 PM EDT.
During the downtime, users will not be able to access videos on our Panopto site, and any attempts to upload from recording clients will result in a "Server unable to connect" message.
TLS 1.0/1.1 support end of life
TLS is the cryptographic protocol. Older versions of TLS, specifically 1.0 and 1.1 are no longer considered to be secure and Panopto will discontinue support of them on August 19th, 2020.
Please submit an RT ticket if you have any questions or concerns.
The start of semester is always busy, but especially during a global pandemic. We got through Spring 20, but since every student will likely have at least one online or hybrid Fall 20 course, the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) strongly recommends that all students check they have the necessary technology setup to be successful. To help, DoIT is hosting 12 Sprint sessions for 10-minute, virtual walk-in consults or pop-up support groups on key topics that include the following:
Checking Your Blackboard Collaborate Audio Connection (essential)
Using Virtual Computing Lab & Software (recommended)
Using myUMBC Groups & Webex Teams for Student Clubs & Organizations (8/26, 8/31, 9/2 and 9/9 only).
The Sprints will occur across four weeks from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the following dates:
Tues. 8/25, Wed., 8/26, Thurs., 8/27 (1st day of classes)
Due to the short format, these virtual support sessions are designed for quick consults, not deep dives or customized training sessions. Also, you will likely be in a virtual room with several people who also are interested in the same topic, and being helped by a DoIT support staff member. Often, you can learn by listening to this Q&A, but if you want a personalized consult, please use my.umbc.edu/help to open a Request Tracker (RT) ticket.
About the Sprint
The sprints will take place in a Blackboard Collaborate virtual conference room. Use the link for each event up to 15 minutes before the start time. While you can just “show up,” advance registration -- by indicating you are “Going” through the myUMBC event link above -- is appreciated and can help DoIT gauge how many support staff are needed in each breakout room. However, if you require live closed captioning, advance registration is required.
Prior to the session
If this is your first time joining one of our live sessions, please review the Getting Started Guide. You will also find additional helpful information for using Blackboard Collaborate at our extensive FAQs.
For the best experience, we recommend using Google Chrome or a recent browser update. Closing any unnecessary browser tabs will help conserve your bandwidth. After joining the session, please configure your audio.
* Note: As announced to all incoming students on 7/22/20, since UMBC requires all students to have a computer and Internet access, financial aid may be used to meet this requirement. To learn more, students should contact their financial aid counselor at financialaid.umbc.edu/contact.
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OLC Ideate Labs for Online STEM: Innovating STEM Education 2020
With COVID pandemic, virtual labs are now a requirement rather than a "nice to have". There are many technologies and strategies that can complement and substitute for face-to-face STEM labs that are no longer viable due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To help higher education institutions and faculty successfully respond to this new requirement. MERLOT and OLC will be offering for FREE, a 3-day OLC Ideate Labs for Online STEM: Innovating STEM Education 2020 conference on August 19-21, 2020 on strategies for teaching STEM labs online with various technologies. This free virtual expo will showcase a wide range of virtual and distance labs designed to support online STEM education, offered by both commercial and open educational resource (OER) providers.