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!
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:
Based on higher than expected turnout for last week’s prototype of the Planning Instructional Technology for Online Teaching (PIVOT) Live webinars, DoIT is offering a monthly repeat of the five 60-minute webinars in five days approach on the following dates (up to 100 people can participate, but registration via myUMBC is required).
July 20 to 24 at 10 a.m. (canceled)
The PIVOT webinars will include the following topics:
Organizing & Designing an Online Course
Active Learning Strategies
Engaging Students & Building Online Community
Reconceptualizing Online Assessments
Supporting Students and Monitoring Progress
As a reminder, last week’s webinars on these topics were recorded and available on the original announcement and DoIT’s Academic Continuity site (a PIVOT site is also under development). The recordings will also be paired with key instructional technology FAQs to form the basis of PIVOT Solo, which is designed as a totally asynchronous, self-paced to enable a more deliberate approach to online teaching than was the case in Spring 2020.
Last week’s turnout for the first prototype of the PIVOT webinars included the following:
We had 1,030 registrations with 764 attendees for one or more sessions (72 people attended all 5 sessions and accounted for 360 attendees).
There were 263 unique participants during the week, 122 of whom are teaching this summer, which was our most pressing need.
To date, we've received 100 survey responses from the 263, and 77% rated the webinars as helpful, 8% not-helpful.
As discipline-specific or cohort-based plans develop within Colleges, DoIT will use the PIVOT webinars & PIVOT Solo “playlists” to support such groups, which will inform the synchronous and asynchronous approach of PIVOT + that was previously announced.
In addition to new monthly offerings of PIVOT during the summer, DoIT’s Instructional Technology team has also announced focused training in Blackboard Essentials, Collaborate, Panopto, and VoiceThread, which were popular topics throughout the week. To learn more, visit DoIT’s training site at doit.umbc.edu/training.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources
Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
Request a consult with instructional technology staff
As UMBC prepares to offer all SU2020 courses in an online format, DoIT’s Instructional Technology team is pleased to introduce Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT), a new professional development program for instructors who wish to take a more deliberate and holistic approach to preparing their courses for remote, synchronous and asynchronous, online instruction. PIVOTconsists of five 60-minute webinars over five days with recorded replays available later that same day. Prototype versions of the live PIVOT webinars will occur daily from May 4 to 8 at noon (up to 225 people can participate, but registration via myUMBC is required).
PIVOT topics will focus on helping instructors achieve competency in areas related to pedagogy, course design and development as well as technical and administrative skills:
Engaging Students & Building Online Community (5/6) - view recorded session here
Reconceptualizing Online Assessments (5/7) - view the recorded session here
Supporting Students and Monitoring Progress (5/8) - view the recorded session here
The first phase of PIVOT is the live webinars open to all instructors, including graduate students, especially those teaching in the Summer [view proposed agenda]. Throughout the summer, PIVOT webinars will be available and part of college-based models with experienced online instructor colleagues who can help provide support or customize content, pending feedback on the early prototype of topics and formats.
In addition to the PIVOT live webinar series, two additional tracks to support faculty are currently under development: PIVOT+ will be a facilitated, cohort-based online workshop available to faculty who are preparing for FA2020 courses. PIVOT Solo will provide a self-directed experience using the PIVOT webinar recordings (available after the PIVOT protype week), complemented by DoIT’s Academic Continuity and the Faculty Development Center’s (FDC) Keep on Teaching sites, as well as select FAQs for a robust reference collection or “playlist.” Also, the FDC will provide multiple opportunities after PIVOT offerings for faculty to reflect and refine lessons gleaned from the initial training.
Inspired by nearly 90 faculty participating in the Alternate Delivery Program (ADP), which focuses on redesigning select courses for winter and summer delivery in online or hybrid format, PIVOT is grounded in the evidence-based principles for how people learn and shares many of the best practices of teaching in face-to-face classrooms, but leverages those principles and adapts the practices to the online environment. Like the ADP, PIVOT leverages the highly-regarded Quality Matters (QM) standards for effective online course design, and is ideal for participants who found themselves thrust into online teaching this Spring, but would like to be more proactive and intentional about their future online course design and instruction.
Beyond responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, PIVOT leverages the University’s prior investment in instructional technology and supports UMBC’s vision of “redefining excellence in higher education through an inclusive culture that connects innovative teaching and learning.”
For additional information, please contact the following:
Dr. Philip Rous, Provost rous@umbc.edu
Dr. Sarah Shin, Associate Provost shin@umbc.edu
Dr. John Fritz, Associate Vice President, Instructional Technology fritz@umbc.edu
Dr. Sherri Braxton, Senior Director of Instructional Technology sbraxton@umbc.edu
Dr. Mariann Hawken, eLearning Manager mariannhawken@umbc.edu
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources
Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups