Teaching Center Expands Instructional Continuity Resources

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Expert Offers Tips for Teaching Online

Cynthia Golden, associate vice provost and executive director of Pitt’s Center for Teaching and Learning, has advice for faculty members as they use this week to shift their courses online.

Beginning March 15, the University Center for Teaching and Learning expanded its resources on instructional continuity in order to better assist faculty with the transition to remote and alternative learning methods. 

Topics such as moving materials online, conducting live and recorded lectures, facilitating discussion from a distance and academic integrity and cheating are among those to be covered during a robust schedule of remote office hours and virtual workshops.

Remote office hours

Starting Sunday, March 15, The Teaching Center began offering a series of remote office hours. Sessions will be structured as either open-topic or broad-topic Q&A discussions.

Remote office hours will be delivered remotely via Zoom. Teaching consultants and educational technologists will be available to answer instructors’ questions on a first-come, first-served basis. 

View the remote office hours schedule and topic details on the Teaching Center website.

Virtual workshops

Workshops are just-in-time, focused discussions on a specific topic related to teaching remotely. All workshops will be conducted via Zoom, are approximately one hour, and all times are Eastern Daylight Time.

Topics include the essentials for remote teaching, guidance for live and recorded lecturing in the online environment, facilitating discussion from a distance, using the web conferencing software Zoom and how to develop a communications plan for remote and online learning.

The full schedule and workshop descriptions are available on the Teaching Center’s website.

Zoom video conferencing

Zoom Video Conferencing is now available to all University faculty, staff and students. You can access your enterprise account by visiting Pitt’s Zoom webpage and authenticating with your University credentials.

Zoom is compatible with CourseWeb/Blackboard and the Teaching Center anticipates that it will be compatible with Canvas very soon.

The Zoom Help Center contains a variety of resources to help users get started with using this video conferencing tool. Faculty and staff are encouraged to check out the assistance for features like audio and video sharing, scheduling class meetings, and for a general overview of how you can use the tool to conduct synchronous meeting sessions. The Teaching Center has a Getting Started with Zoom page as an additional resource repository.

The Teaching Center’s website is updated regularly with new content to assist faculty members as they continue instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visit the website for information on assessment, communicating with students, teaching online, technology tools and news and updates.

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