News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.
To ensure your classes have course packs on Monday, August 24, please submit your materials to printing services as soon as possible! Packets received after Monday, July 27 cannot be guaranteed completion because of the time it can take to confirm copyright information.
If you have any questions, please contact Kassie Hansen, printing services, at x8101 or printjobs@up.edu.
An “all you can eat buffet” Moodle course for all faculty on the topic of Online and Hybrid Teaching has launched. An inclusive sub-committee worked to gather all the existing tools, tutorials, and emerging wisdom into one place for faculty to explore at their own pace as they prepare for fall courses. Every tool shared here is available to all members of the UP community and is well supported by our amazing ATSI and IT staffs.
The team is optimistic that your efforts this fall will feel a teensy bit less frenetic than the tectonic shift in March, as you engage with the Moodle Basecamp. The team was interdisciplinary, and the course itself allows for plenty of contributions and questions from the entire teaching community via the Forum functions. This includes a call for “Campus Coaches,” a roster of our peers who are willing to provide support—technical and moral—to anyone on campus. This roster grows each day through peer and self-nominations. We have an amazing, generous and talented faculty.
The Basecamp for Hybrid and Online Teaching is presented in scrollable blocks that faculty can dip in and out of as their time and needs dictate. The labelling is clear and intuitive. Everyone who teaches at UP has been enrolled in the course, and the team worked hard to have this ready in time to support the enormous effort faculty will put forth to be ready to welcome students in mid-August. For more information, please contact Jeffrey White at white@up.edu.
University president Rev. Mark L. Poorman, C.S.C., shared the following message with the UP community on Friday, June 19:
Dear UP Community Members,
I pray that this message finds you and your loved ones safe and well. I hope that you will join me in reflecting on today’s celebration of Juneteenth and praying that our nation may know peace, justice, and healing.
One month ago, I wrote to you about our plans for a return to in-person instruction and on-campus residentiality for the Fall 2020 Semester. In the weeks that have followed my message, teams across the University have worked tirelessly to develop procedures and protocols for our new academic year this August.
Today, I’m excited to share our Back to The Bluff website with you. This website will be a hub of information and resources for the Fall Semester. I encourage you to return to the site often as many of our protocols are still in development and our understanding of COVID-19 continues to evolve.
Our return to campus this August will look and feel different than semesters past. All community members will be required to wear face masks in public settings. Physical distancing will be necessary. Classrooms and residence halls will be de-densified. Testing, contact tracing, quarantining, and isolation will be aspects of our new reality. But I’m confident that the things that make UP so special – our warmth, our community, our care for one another – will enable us to thrive despite the challenges we face.
Once again, please know of my prayers your continued health and safety. On behalf of all of us at the University of Portland, we can’t wait to welcome you Back to The Bluff this August!
The University of Portland’s Portland magazine has won a national Silver Award from CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) in its annual Circle of Excellence awards. Portland won second place in the “Magazines, Alumni/General Interest 3x Per Year category.
In announcing the award, CASE’s statement about Portland reads: “After Portland magazine’s two-year hiatus following the death of beloved, longstanding editor Brian Doyle, editor Jessica Murphy Moo put the wheels in motion again with new designer Darsey Landoe (using partial redesigns from Zehno). They had an audience eager to receive Portland again, and expectations were high in terms of both content and design. Portland magazine has a strong and unique brand; it is more literary and heartfelt than many alumni magazines. The brand was also very much attached to the previous editor. So the team needed to figure out how to continue to give the audience what they wanted—authentic, deeply human stories—with a new editor at the helm. This first year of the redesigned magazine offers great stories—a balance of personal essay and reporting. A New York Times writer described his work with the Compton Cowboys, and the founder of a nonprofit named Girls Build told a personal story about her work to encourage girls to consider careers in the trades. The editor wrote about an archeological dig in Mallorca, Spain, and an alumnus wrote about his summer answering phones at the White House. The tradition of spiritual writing continues as well. The elements of the Portland magazine tradition are there. In the first year of the redesigned magazine, the team delivered the authentic, deeply human storytelling our readers wanted and expected.”
Please congratulate Jessica Murphy Moo for her outstanding vision and leadership in continuing Portland magazine’s reign as one of the top university magazines in the U.S. and beyond.
The University Museum’s nursing collection contains an assortment of medical supplies and equipment, including items no longer in use, or renovated and adapted for safety and efficiency. For students and visitors today these pieces provide a glimpse into medical and nursing history and pique the curious-minded. In this post we take a closer look at this tonsillectomy bag from the 1940s or 1950s. Click on this link for more.
The Learning Commons invites all students to connect with peer tutors, writing assistants, and speech and presentation consultants as an effective learning strategy for greater success in their college courses. Working with our tutors also makes your online learning experience at UP more social. This summer, we offer students the following online tutoring programs in Microsoft Teams:
Students can find strategies for learning online at the college level by clicking here.
The Learning Commons’ virtual tutoring takes place on the Microsoft Teams platform which is available through the University’s Office 365 MyApps at this link.
To support the success of their virtual tutoring appointments student can take the following steps:
All questions regarding the Learning Commons’ virtual tutoring program can be directed to Jeffrey White, Learning Commons, at white@up.edu.
Those who would like to start their summer with some new skills are encouraged to sign up for the Clark Library’s introductory workshops on using iMovie, GarageBand, Audacity, and Canva. Workshops will be offered through Zoom over two weeks (June 15 through June 24). They are free and open to current students, faculty, and staff. Visit the Digital Lab’s site to see the detailed schedule and to register.
Starting on Tuesday, June 16, you will notice some changes when logging in to TechSmith Relay, most notably a new name: Knowmia.
The good news, however, is that none of your video links or University of Portland’s TechSmith address (up.techsmithrelay.com) will be changing, so you will not need to update course pages or bookmark new links in order to access the items that you need. TechSmith Knowmia will also continue to be accessed by the same icon (simply called TechSmith) in your My Apps portal.
Where you will notice changes are the names and colors in places like email notifications, your landing page after logging in, and TechSmith’s own help pages. However, these will not affect the function of the product and you can continue using it as before. During their transition, TechSmith will also include the language “formerly TechSmith Relay” in communications and on sites to help alleviate any confusion.
Why are they changing the name you ask? In short, TechSmith hopes this name change will more fully reflect the purpose that their product has developed. Full information on the changes and the story behind the new name can be found in TechSmith’s announcement using this link.
Questions about using TechSmith? Contact academic technology services and innovation at atsi@up.edu.