This year's National Distance Learning Week 2022 Lunchtime Series (November 7-11) at UMBC created space for candid conversations about online learning. These conversations featured 11 panelists who represented faculty, staff, and students sharing their challenges, accomplishments, and lessons learned. 

Instructional Technology will continue hosting monthly candid conversations about online learning starting in spring 2023. Follow us on myUMBC for the latest information about dates, times, and guests.  

If you missed one of these candid conversations during National Distance Learning Week check out the session takeaways below or watch/listen to the recorded session.

• Panelists:Dr. Louise Murray, Director, Undergraduate Programs and Clinical Associate Professor in the Erickson School of Aging Studies; Mr. Gary Williams Jr., Senior Lecturer, Emergency Health Services Department and Clinical Coordinator, Paramedic Concentration; Dr. Eileen O'Brien, Director, College Teaching & Learning Science (CTLS) Post Master's Certificate Program; and, Dr. John Schumacher, Professor, Department of  Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health, Co-Director Doctoral Program in Gerontology.
• Key takeaways: Faculty shared their experiences in online course design and how the Quality Matters framework strengthened their design after taking a course through a formal course review. The rigor of the QM peer-review process also presented faculty with challenges in understanding, learning, and designing for new technologies and methods of designing learning. As they applied what they learned about effective online course design, faculty shared that students reported a clearer understanding of what was expected in the online course, where to find content, and how they were going to be assessed.

Tuesday, November 8th topic: How do we engage disconnected students? (session recording) 

• Panelists:Gary Rozanc, Assistant Professor Graphic Design, Department of Visual Arts (CAHSS); Nancy McAllister, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Science, Geography & Environmental Systems Department (CAHSS); and Dr. Sarah Bass, Lecturer of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry (CNMS). 
• Key takeaways: Faculty shared how their approach to engaging online students evolved from the start of the pandemic to more recent practices. During the fall of 2020, engaging students meant using multiple methods to help online students connect with one other, instructor, and content. In the fall of 2022 with a return to campus, our panelists reported rethinking how they use technology in-person. Today's students  enter college with more experience and comfort using technology and perhaps with a different motivation for learning. Panelists noted that how they taught pre-pandemic may not align with today's first-year students who are seeing the work they'll be doing in the future happening in asynchronous and remote formats. Our panelists asked, what does this mean to engagement in any class format and the ways students are choosing to learn post-pandemic?

Wednesday, November 9 topic: How do we counter the myths of online learning? (session recording) 

• Panelists: Thirandie Bambaradeniya, Director of Sustainability, Student Government Association (UMBC 23); Dr. Tara Carpenter, Principal Lecturer, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry; Dr. Toby Gouker, Acting Graduate Program Director, Engineering Management; and Dr. Delana Gregg, Director of Academic Learning Resources, Assessment, and Analysis. 
• Key takeaways: When it comes to the myth that online learning is easy, panelists were in agreement that online learning is not easier than in-person as it requires students to be even more disciplined in managing their time and asking for help. Debunking the myth that online students don't interact with each other or the instructor, our panelists noted that teaching online is often more intensive and intentional, as students cannot 'hide' in the back of the online classroom. When it comes to the myth that everyone cheats in an online course, panelists said faculty have since created multiple ways for students to be tested, including more formative or open-note assignments. In considering where UMBC could go with online learning, panelists noted that online learning has long been a useful tool for decades and in a post-pandemic time, it remains a viable choice for many students. They would encourage UMBC to consider how we can provide online learning effectively and continue to put services in place to help support our online learners.  

UMBC Instructional Technology

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:

• PIVOT |Academic Continuity |Keep On Teaching |Student Technology Resources

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 

• What's new in Ultra? |Known Issues 

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow theInstructional Technology &DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult withinstructional technology staff

View on myUMBC »

The photographer Lewis Hine secured a place in history as a documentarian of early 20th century life, including a transformational investigation into the conditions for child laborers. 

From 1908 through 1930, Hine worked closely with the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), an organization devoted to preventing the exploitation of children in the workplace. Hine criss-crossed the U.S., creating portraits of a diverse array of children working in fields and factories. 

Hine’s body of work was revelatory and immensely impactful in the efforts to implement child labor laws in U.S., and continues to be a relevant resource for researchers working in the intersections of art, history, politics, and more. 

For nearly 50 years, UMBC Special Collections has been the caretaker of the Lewis Hine Collection, comprising some 5,400 photographs taken by Hine during his career. This year, the Special Collections team at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library received a Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support conservation of this groundbreaking collection. 

“Our set is particularly important because it’s an almost complete collection of the photographs Hine made for the NCLC. It is very rare to have this incredible collection as a whole body,” says Beth Saunders, head of special collections. “It’s one of our most important and most used collections, and it was in immediate danger.”

Preserving the work of Lewis Hine

For many decades, the photographs in the collection were protected in envelopes, held in place with adhesive strips. With age, the adhesive has begun to deteriorate, putting the collection at risk. 

“If the glue migrates and the photographs are stuck, you have the risk of tearing, discoloration, all the terrible things,” Saunders says. “They’re not mounted, so the versos—the backs—are visible. All of the original inscriptions, notations by Hine or other folks at NCLC, extended captions, those are all intact.” 

Part of the current preservation effort will include photographing the detail written on the backs of the photographs, which have until now never been officially digitized. 

“It was an opportunity to record the versos of the photographs. We needed to build a new overhead camera setup, and we’re very grateful that Melissa Cormier [M.F.A. ’17] with UMBC’s office of Research Graphics helped us to get that going,” says Saunders, who notes that while the behind-the-scenes work of preservation is unglamorous, the work requires a dedicated multidisciplinary team across the university community. 

“My colleagues, Lindsey Loeper [’04] and Susan Graham [’98] have just written an essay about the teaching exercises that they’ve developed out of the Hine collections,” Saunders says. “Lindsey runs our instruction program, and Susan is the mastermind of this project. She’s been the one troubleshooting, setting the standards, and training everybody to do the work.”

Learning from our past

Meredith Power, a graduate student in UMBC’s historical studies program who has been interning with the preservation project, notes the power Hine’s images still possess. 

“Some are heartbreaking, some are thought-provoking, while others made me stop short and smile as I pulled them from their storage folder to photograph them,” Power says. “From the bright, sad eyes of the young boys who spent their days underground opening and closing gates inside coal mines, to the cheerful joy on the face of a girl who sold eggs as she hugs her beloved hen, the collection still manages to evoke an emotional response. It’s that emotional connection, the shared sense of experiencing something.” 

Next year, the Special Collections department will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The Hine collection was among the inaugural collections for UMBC’s Special Collections, leading in turn to a specific focus on photography in the collection. 

In 1974, the Hine collection was acquired by the then new Special Collections program from the NCLC, facilitated by former Library Director Antonio Raimo and Jerry Stephany, a photographer in the visual arts department who had once worked at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester.  

“Jerry really saw the importance of a teaching collection of photography,” says Saunders. “The idea behind collecting this particular body of work was to show photography’s relationship to a variety of social issues and the way that photography can be used as a tool of visual communication across disciplines.”

Power, who is currently working towards an M.A. in UMBC’s historical studies program, researching solitary fourteenth-century religious Englishwomen, notes the interdisciplinary power of the Hine collection and the need to preserve it. 

“On the surface, photographs of early twentieth century American child laborers have very little in common with my own academic research,” Power says. “However, as we’ve all learned since COVID-19’s arrival, physical access to research or archival material is sometimes impossible. In those cases, digitized resources and online information about them are invaluable. This is just as true for materials related to medieval religious history as it is for those who are looking into U.S. child labor reform.”

A shared history

Today, UMBC Special Collections holds an estimated three million photographs stretching back to 1840, including the Baltimore Sun archive. 

“There is a strong emphasis on documentary photography, which kind of came out of the Hine collection,” says Saunders. “We’re also particularly strong in Maryland history, including the Maryland Traditions archive, the state folklore archive.” 

Additionally, Special Collections holds the collection of radical literature from the Alternative Press Center, an extensive collection of historic science fiction, the UMBC archive, and the new Eileen J. Garret Parapsychology Foundation Collection.

Can we ever trust our chatbots?
Towards trustable collaborative assistants