By MARTY LEVINE
“If you are an instructor, we are here for you,” Cressida Magaro told the Aug. 14 faculty orientation session on “Teaching and Learning Support for Pitt Faculty.”
Magaro, senior manager for learning environments at the University Center for Teaching and Learning, and Josie Rush, senior teaching consultant in the center’s Pedagogy, Practice and Assessment unit, detailed the center’s instructional tools, technologies and programs. They include:
Teaching consultants who can help faculty design courses (and refine the syllabus), plan to use technology effectively, employ particular pedagogies, make instructional videos, understand teaching assessment results and even apply for teaching grants.
A media creation lab in Alumni Hall, Room B25, that has do-it-yourself resources for recording podcasts, conducting interviews and creating instructional videos for use in classes, as well as a lightboard for constructing visual demonstrations — with full training and support available for the inexperienced.
A classroom and learning environments unit, with its learning space design team, offers services such as classroom technology training and consultations, a classroom support helpline, equipment to loan or rent, media conversion and digitization, hybrid video conferencing and lecture capture. “We understand that the spaces where we teach are integral to the learning process,” Rush said, so this group can help with everything from technology to the needs of a visiting speaker.
The Open Lab in Hillman Library, Room 132 provides access to such technologies as virtual reality, 360-degree video, 3D printing, vinyl cutting, and laser cutting and engraving. Its VR capabilities, Rush said, can help instructors let students “explore a space without leaving the city.”
Its Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching (OMET) covers course assessments, commonly known as OMETs, which are pre-course, mid-term and post-course student opinions-of-teaching surveys. Recordings of workshops on designing and using teaching survey results are available on the center’s Panopto channel. The OMETs have standard questions but faculty can add questions for customized surveys. Rush said that she regularly does this for her own pre-course and mid-term OMETs and “that means I am getting student feedback when I still have a chance to do something with it” for the current class.
The learning sciences and artificial intelligence hub offers generative AI resources for faculty, covering the basics as well as specific topics concerning teaching with generative AI and how to maintain academic integrity. The center also conducts discussions of and workshops about AI, covering how to integrate it into teaching or rationales for limiting its use.
The Center for Mentoring offers workshops and a Mentor Academy for training and earning a mentoring credential, supporting mentor and mentee relationships.
Educational software consulting — about the technology offered to everyone, University-wide — is especially focused on Pitt’s learning management system Canvas and the 60 or so other pieces of software integrated with it. “We do constrain the number of technologies we deploy here” since that simplifies the experience for instructors and students,” Magaro noted.
The Teaching Center also has an “enhancing belonging” emphasis for “supporting students with different experiences and learning needs, helping students connect to course content and one another, creating a welcoming atmosphere and connecting students to university resources,” Rush said.
Its faculty learning communities offer instructor-run groups that meet two or three times per term to focus on their teaching experiences and questions. According to Rush, the three most common topics are new faculty essentials, large enrollment courses and accessibility. “It’s really about sharing ideas,” she said.
The center conducts live and asynchronous workshops throughout the year on Pitt’s popular technology offerings and other subjects. Magaro highlighted upcoming tech training sessions, each running 11 a.m. to noon on their scheduled date, including:
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Aug. 27, Introduction to Canvas Part 1 (includes everything from uploading materials to managing course rosters) and Aug. 28, Introduction to Canvas Part 2 (from handling quizzes to online accessibility and using your grade book).
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Sept. 3, Active Learning with Top Hat, introduces this very popular software that allows students to respond to instructor questions during a lecture, among other capabilities.
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Sept. 4, Peerceptiv Peer Assessment, is especially for those teaching larger enrollment courses, Magaro said: “If you don’t have a literal army of TAs” and you want students to do a lot of writing, this software — developed by Pitt scientists at the Learning Research and Development Center — is for you. “It works your students through a complete peer assessment process,” she said. “It makes sure that they are taking it seriously” versus going through the motions and scoring peer papers with all fives or all ones on all aspects of their work. It even asks students to review their reviewers on how much the resulting feedback was helpful. It also allows for group evaluations and evaluations of each other by team members on a project, as well as evaluations of one-on-one live presentations.
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Sept. 8, Better Grading with Gradescope, covers a piece of software that is “hugely popular with disciplines where paper and pencil work is still important.” such as chemistry or economics, Magaro said. It allows instructors to electronically grade a stack of handwritten papers, reading scanned copies and conducting electronic grading based on a rubric. It can also handle bubble sheets.
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In addition, she recommended the workshop on Sept. 9 (Lucid and Canvas), about Lucid’s digital whiteboard for “ideation, mind mapping and diagramming,” as well as the Sept. 10 workshop, Creating Interactive Course Elements with HSP, which aids in the creation of videos with quizzes embedded, flash cards and other interactive course elements.
The Teaching Center’s annual Assessment and Teaching Conference, part of its assessment of teaching initiative, offers consultations and resources to help academic units and faculty assess, interpret and improve teaching.
“If you have an instructional goal, and you are wondering if there is an instructional technology that will better help you reach your educational goal, that is what we are here for,” Magaro added.
The center also can provide a custom workshop for your school or program, as needed. “We really thrive on these one-on-one interactions with folks,” she said.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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