SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.
This week's spotlight course is Facing Virtual Team Challenges.
Facing Virtual Team Challenges (27 min)
Virtual teams can face the same difficulties as other teams, but also have unique challenges. In this course, you'll learn how to handle challenges facing your team, and how to evaluate your own style.
TO LOGIN:
Using Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, Login to SkillPortusing your FULL UMBC email address for both the username and password boxes.
Once logged in, simply type the name of the course in the search bar.
Need Login Assistance? Email hrtraining@umbc.edu to set up your account and to help with login difficulties. UMBC faculty and staff accounts are set up within 1 month of hire.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit our UMBC SkillSoft page for information on UMBC’s curated role and topic-based certificate tracks as well as professional industry certifications that align with SkillSoft courses.
UPDATE: Bb Annotate has been staged back for deployment — US East Cost is slated for June 3rd.
Available for summer courses, Blackboard’s new inline grading tool, allows instructors, teaching assistants, and graders to embed feedback, such as comments, highlights, and even drawings, directly on a converted view of student assignments in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF file formats. Bb Annotate’s enhanced commenting tools offer faculty a robust feature set to provide valuable feedback to students about their progress in a course.
The current interface for the inline grading tool is powered by a third-party conversion tool from Box. This version of the feedback tool was rolled out about two years ago. Recognizing the limited functionality of the Box-based tool, Blackboard initiated the development of a new tool last summer. Bb Annotate is the product of extensive research into faculty grading needs.
Available for both Original and Ultra courses, Bb Annotate offers expanded toos to provide customizable feedback to students. Features include a sidebar summary view, highlighting, freehand drawing and shapes, various color selections, a reusable comment bank across courses, and much more. This overview video shares some of the exciting changes:
View this webinar recording, Getting Started with Bb Annotate.
Please check the FAQ collection after May 20 to learn more about specific functionality. Instructional Technology staff are updating documentation and linking to Bb resources.
No planned downtime is expected on May 25, 2020 when Bb Annotate is enabled for UMBC. The file migration will begin in the background and could take some time to complete depending on the number of annotated files that need to be migrated. However, the current inline grading tools will remain available and all pre-existing grading comments will be migrated and visible in Bb Annotate. Please review additional information about the transition to Bb Annotate on this FAQ.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
Request a consult with instructional technology staff
Hello Retrievers!
This is an important message about the ENTR URA research opportunity from the Director of Undergraduate Research and Prestigious Scholarships
There are many changes happening to student research as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and campus closure. The URA selection committee has some advice to encourage you to apply for a URA and start to plan your research, even if there are some unknowns for the summer and fall semesters.
1. We have moved the application deadline back to May 15, 2020 in order to give students some extra time to prepare their research proposals.
2. Some research that was scheduled to start this summer may be delayed until the fall or spring semester- that’s ok! The URA is good for the entire year, June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2121. You can complete the research at any point during that time frame.
3. Our expectations for a final product are fluid and relaxed. If the research plan doesn’t work out exactly as you proposed, that’s ok- it’s the nature of doing research.
4. Be creative in the ways you think about your project. You may have to focus instead on doing a thorough literature review, using a pre-formed data set to analyze, or looking at case studies, rather than collecting in-person data, or conducting research in a lab.
5. Methods such as lab benchwork, participant observations, focus groups, travel-related, in-person interviews, or other real-time collection methods may need some re-thinking. How can you collect data via online interviews, the internet, or other technological interventions?
6. Creative arts projects may incorporate some kind of online delivery method. We are hoping to be back on campus for URCAD 2021, but consider how VoiceThread might be used to display your creative work.
*Remember:*
URAs provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research, scholarship, or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work.
Deadline: May 15, 2020
Applications require a research proposal and mentor statement of support.
Speciality URAs will be awarded to Social Scientists and Entrepreneurs- see below for more details. ur.umbc.edu/ura
]]>Hello Retrievers!
This is an important message about the ENTR URA research opportunity from the Director of Undergraduate Research and Prestigious Scholarships
There are many changes happening to student research as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and campus closure. The URA selection committee has some advice to encourage you to apply for a URA and start to plan your research, even if there are some unknowns for the summer and fall semesters.
1. We have moved the application deadline back to May 15, 2020 in order to give students some extra time to prepare their research proposals.
2. Some research that was scheduled to start this summer may be delayed until the fall or spring semester- that’s ok! The URA is good for the entire year, June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2121. You can complete the research at any point during that time frame.
3. Our expectations for a final product are fluid and relaxed. If the research plan doesn’t work out exactly as you proposed, that’s ok- it’s the nature of doing research.
4. Be creative in the ways you think about your project. You may have to focus instead on doing a thorough literature review, using a pre-formed data set to analyze, or looking at case studies, rather than collecting in-person data, or conducting research in a lab.
5. Methods such as lab benchwork, participant observations, focus groups, travel-related, in-person interviews, or other real-time collection methods may need some re-thinking. How can you collect data via online interviews, the internet, or other technological interventions?
6. Creative arts projects may incorporate some kind of online delivery method. We are hoping to be back on campus for URCAD 2021, but consider how VoiceThread might be used to display your creative work.
*Remember:*
URAs provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research, scholarship, or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work.
Deadline: May 15, 2020
Applications require a research proposal and mentor statement of support.
Speciality URAs will be awarded to Social Scientists and Entrepreneurs- see below for more details. ur.umbc.edu/ura
]]>The Esperanza Center is hosting virtual ESOL sessions for community members in the Summer 2020. This is a great opportunity to stay involved with the community and learn valuable skills while at home!
Participating students can enroll in the Community Service & Learning Practicum 096 through The Shriver Center! Please see the info below and email elgrose1@umbc.edu to enroll and for more details!
Opportunity info!
We invite you to sign up now to volunteer for our next online adult ESOL session, May 18-June 25 (only training first week). The major change is that you will be paired with one student for the whole 5-week session. Please read on for the details.
Adult ESOL Online May/June Session Details:
Trainings: May 18-21 (Attendance at one online training required for new and returning volunteers)
Session: May 26 – June 25, 2020 (5 weeks)
Schedule:
Monday, Wednesday 10am-11:30am
Tuesday, Thursday 6:30pm-8:00pm
(Volunteers, choose one or more of these 4 days when you sign up)
Cost to students: $20
Location: Zoom
Technology expectations:
Volunteers must have a computer, stable internet connection, and the ability to use the following features of Zoom during your teaching: share screen, annotate, and chat. If, after the training, you are not fully comfortable with using these features, we invite you to wait until we’re back in person to continue volunteer-teaching.
Class length:
Classes will be 90 minutes long instead of 1 hour, based on feedback from some students and volunteers.
Please use this link to sign up to volunteer.
]]>
The UMBC Division of Information Technology is still receiving notification of a widespread job scam.
The subject is: UMBC COVID-19 INFORMATION.
From: Michael Corel <corelmichael199@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 11, 2020 at 9:18 AM
Subject: UMBC COVID-19 INFORMATION
To:
Dear students,
University of Maryland, Baltimore County health professionals have been closely monitoring the spread of COVID-19 over the past two months.Therefore the university is organizing an online part time job to sustain the students living.I'm happy to inform you that our reputable company CORESTAFF SERVICES Inc®,is currently running a student empowerment program.
KINDLY EMAIL BACK WITH YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS IF INTERESTED IN THIS JOB POSITION.
Kind Regards
Michael Corel
HR Manager/Consultant
CORESTAFF SERVICES Inc®
A reply confirms that your UMBC email address is active. That is an invitation to get more spam. You are also asked to provide your personal address. That’s two addresses for spamming. You may then be asked to fill out a form with personal information which can then be added to your email address. That means, at least, that the spam can be targeted to you. If you provide information such as your birthdate, address, or social security number, the information can also be used for identity theft.
Even if you are tempted to send the scammer a hostile, insulting message,
You will not hurt the scammer’s feelings. You will simply provide information about yourself directly or indirectly.
What does an Eco-Ambassador do?