Month: March 2020

COVID Update: The Machines are Working But …

Posted on by avihyman

March 31, 2020

The machines are working, but sometimes we just need a little humanity!

Over the past two weeks, our world has changed significantly. Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increa

picture of magic by video

ses in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies.

As we’ve previously documented, the number of people using Microsoft Teams and Team Video Meetings (among other video-conferencing tools) has rapidly increased. That includes our team here in ACT. It has allowed each of us to remain connected, responsive and productive, while also doing our part to reduce the covid spread, in our communities, and at our office.

I’m glad the technology is working out, but as much as things have changed, many things remain the same, and in a functioning, happy workplace, that means maintaining the human touch.

Today we took a break from the work, and had a magic workshop. Magicians Jonah and Ben from the Toronto Magic Company joined us online by video, to show us a few magic tricks (including an interactive card trick for those with a deck of cards at home), and even taught us how to do a trick we could use on our families and friends.

It’s not the same as being with people in person, but it was a little touch of humanity.

Photo courtesy of CIO Bo Wandschneider via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/bjuul/status/1245018439682527232

COVID Update: Finding time for a smile

Posted on by avihyman

March 29, 2020

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we have been sharing some visualizations of those changes.

Today, however, I wanted to take a moment to pause, and remember that, despite the daily dose of unhappy covid news, and the grind of work that so many of my colleagues are putting in to keep the teaching and learning going, it is important to remember our mental health, and take a moment to smile, and maybe even laugh.

Here are some wonderful videos my colleagues have been sharing with each other, trying to keep our collective spirits afloat:

COVID Update: Who is Asking for Help (part 2)

Posted on by avihyman

March 27, 2020

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In this post we share the data on who is asking for our help. In part one, we looked at distribution by “division/department.” In this post, we show the distribution by role and the topics. Not surprisingly, the immediate surge was from instructors seeking a way to deliver their remaining lectures – Collaborate is our institutionally supported webinar tool. We would imagine that as the term comes to an end, and instructors are looking for assistance in dealing with final assessments, we will see a change in the patterns. This data is from March 16 to March 23. Thank you to ACT team member Maryam Shafiei for compiling the data.

who

topic

COVID Update: Who is Asking for Help (Part 1)

Posted on by avihyman

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In this post we share the data on who is asking for our help – in part one, by Division. At UofT, the concept of a “Division” refers to our major schools and faculties. The numbers for “academic technology” are fairly consistent with the expected distribution, where our Arts & Science faculty is about a third of the total university population by students. The distribution for Teams support, on the other hand, requires some additional analysis.

EdTech by DIvision

EdTech support by Division

Teams By Division

Teams support by Division

COVID Update: Additional Support “Staff”

Posted on by avihyman

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

As the University’s educational technology professionals have moved into a work-for-home mode in order to continue providing support, they’ve been joined, in many cases, by another type of support ‘professional.’ In this post, we are happy to share some pictures of those new members of the team, as shared by our EdTech crew. By the way, did you know that cats are fascinated by hearing multiple different voices coming out of a single source (a computer) during a video or audio conference?

"pets UofT EdTech support ‘professionals’ in action at homes all around the GTA

COVID Update: 3D Printing

Posted on by avihyman
3d printer making medical device

A MADLab 3d printer making an experimental medical device – photo courtesy of Mike Spears, ACT

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

Today we feature a short story from my colleague, Mike Spears, manager of our Mobile Application Development Lab (MADLab) in the Gerstein Science Information Centre. The MADLab was the site of the first public-access 3D printers for member of the UofT community (several instructor-run labs had them, but not a general access printing service; it has since been replicated at Robarts Library as well).

As the University was shutting down last week, Mike was preparing to close up the MADLab, when he was approached by graduate student from our Della Lana School of Public Health, Aasha Gnanalingam. Aasha was inquiring about the possibility of using the 3D printers to create medical supplies – which has now become a hot topic in Ontario and around the world. So Mike packed up one of the lab’s Makerbot Replicator 2 printers and took it home. Aasha had suggested he look at the Gila Free Medical Hardware project.

Over the past week, Mike has been experimenting. As Mike says, “The first project we looked into trying is the faceshield. There are definitely some unknowns though.”

Factors to ascertain include the appropriateness of the printing materials (in Mike case, PLA), strength, flexibility, and of course the sanitizing process. But he’s not worried. He’s connecting with others who are starting to step up the work around 3D printing medical materials to help deal with the covid-19 pandemic.

For about our MADLab, please visit: https://mobile.utoronto.ca/

COVID Update: MS Teams – Creations

Posted on by avihyman
Team Creation in March chart

Team Creation in March chart (data gathered by G. Katterloher, ACT)

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach, learn and work due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In this post you can see the increase in the number of MS Teams we have been creating for various departments and groups.

If you are at UofT and would like to read more about Teams, please visit: https://easi.its.utoronto.ca/shared-services/office365/teams/

COVID Update: Quercus Course Shells

Posted on by avihyman
Active Quercus Courses

Active Quercus Courses

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In the graph above, you can see the number of active (in use) Quercus course shells this year (note the jump at the start of each semester). Active course shells include shells mapped to specific courses as populated from our Student Information System, plus “sandbox” course shells given automatically to every instructor (for experimentation), and manually created course shells (either for real teaching or experimentation). Note that there is a relatively small increase associated with onset of Covid-related teaching changes, but not as much of a slope as with other services. We are choosing to interpret this as a sign that adoption of our main teaching environment, even as a document repository, was already reasonably high, which hopefully means that the jump to all online teaching wasn’t as big a jump as it might have been if instructors weren’t already familiar with Quercus, even if only partially.

If you are at UofT and would like to learn more about making use of Quercus for your teaching, now or in the future, please start here: http://uoft.me/qresources

PS – for those of you outside UofT, Quercus is our ‘branded’ instance of the Canvas LMS

COVID Update: Support & Consultations

Posted on by avihyman

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In this post we are showing the rapid increase in support and consultation requests in the first week after the University announced it would be moving to on-line teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, requests for help with educational technologies (in blue), and then mid-week, increased requests for support and creation of MS Teams, primarily for administrative and project use. We hope the slow-down in edtech requests as the week ended is a reflection that instructors were getting (somewhat?) used to the technologies they were adopting to complete the semester.

Are you at UofT? Have a question about educational technologies? Write to us at q.help@utoronto.ca. Have a question about MS Teams? Write to us at need.team@utoronto.ca

COVID Update: Use of a Webinar Tool Instead of Live Lectures

Posted on by avihyman

Like almost all North American schools (and many around the world), we’ve had to switch the way we teach and learn due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That means significant increases in the use of technology, and in demand for support around those technologies. In a series of posts, we will be sharing some visualizations of those changes.

In this post we show the massive, and almost instantaneous uptake of our enterprise webinar tool, Bb Collaborate, as our instructors looked to deliver synchronous live teaching as a replacement for in-class teaching. My colleague, Marco Di Vittorio published these graphs in near-real time today on Twitter – https://twitter.com/mduoft/status/1240371559551897602 – they are something to behold … especially the graph showing the jump from just a typical few hundred a day on March 12, to over 30,000 session attendees by March 17. And this number does not include those instructors who opted for MS Teams or their own Zoom rooms (Zoom is not an enterprise solution at UofT, although we are aware that some instructors and departments do use it).

Visualizations courtesy of Marco Di Vittorio, Manager of Application Administration, ACT

If you are at UofT and are interested in the Bb Collaborate Webinar tool, please start here with our support material (the tool is automatically available within your Quercus course shell):
https://q.utoronto.ca/courses/46670/pages/integration-blackboard-collaborate-ultra-web-conferencing