The spring semester has begun! Most of you have a semester of remote work under your belt, so now’s a great time to consider what you can do to make things easier should you choose to learn at a distance. Here are five tips and tricks for acing remote classes.
Just as the current academic year began, continuing to adapt to the pandemic remains a necessity for the start of the new calendar year too. Fortunately, Pitt Information Technology has quite a few resources to help students, faculty, and staff stay engaged and productive while remaining physically distant. Though not all are new, with so many changes taking place in 2020, there may be some you haven’t heard about.
It’s a new year, and with it comes annual resolutions. Maybe you’ve vowed to study harder, increase your fitness level, or to lose weight and get more organized? But have you thought about resolving to make better use of technology? If not, I say it’s not too late. Here are my top 4 for 2021.
“Second verse, same as the first.” That was in a lot of my old summer camp songs, and the phrase has been coming to my mind a lot lately. This spring will look a lot like the fall, with the University offering hybrid and virtual instruction. Fortunately for instructors eager to prepare, Lecture Capture (Panopto) makes pre-recording presentations easy.
The nature of being a higher education and research institution means that universities have a lot of information to manage—everything from grades and tuition payments, to employment records and research data. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of the information we collect is essential and, in many cases, required by law.
Techies are a unique bunch. They love their acronyms—and they couldn’t care less if their alphabet soup means something totally different to everyone else. When they talk about WAPs, they’re talking about something that’s the gateway to much of the knowledge you gain and entertainment you consume. During a typical year, it’s used by more than 7,800 students living in more than 30 buildings across campus. It’s available 24/7 and has 12,500 active devices connected to it on the average day.
As with nearly everything else this year, Pitt’s academic calendar is different for 2020-21. Students are facing an extended staycation, with lots of free time on their hands. Many faculty and staff will also have a slower pace of work between semesters. So what’s a Panther to do with so much downtime until the new term begins? Pitt IT has some great ideas:
It’s the Year of Engagement here at Pitt. With the pandemic, most is taking place online these days. That’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, the internet makes it easier to connect to all kinds of people, all across the world. On the other hand, with online activity exponentially increased, cybersecurity risks have risen accordingly.
Microsoft Teams is the official unified communication platform for faculty and staff at the University. Here are some of my favorite features that Teams phone users will like.
Microsoft is retiring Skype for Business, with Teams becoming the default chat, calling, and meeting app for Office 365. But the power of Microsoft Teams is that it is far more than a communications app—it is a shared workspace that facilitates organization and collaboration. In honor of the Panther’s 3–1 start, here’s a game plan for your getting your team to harness the full potential of Teams.