Bits and bytes from around campus:

• Read about how faculty and students are adjusting to the Flex@Pitt model in last week’s Pittwire article.
• Chancellor Patrick Gallagher addressed challenges and successes of the past year during the Sept. 25 fall meeting of the Board of Trustees.
• The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine announced today that it is operating one of 25 initial sites to test therapies aimed at treating early-stage COVID-19 to keep the illness from becoming severe.
• Pitt IT has released information on a new way for students, faculty, and advisors to access student information ahead of spring 2021 course enrollment.

We are pleased to announce that University of Pittsburgh on Coursera is now available. This program allows Pitt students, faculty, and staff to access nearly 4,000 courses offered by Coursera partner institutions at no cost. The courses are non-credit, but successful completion could earn joint credentials from both the universities offering the course and Coursera. The program was designed by the Coursera community to assist colleges and universities with delivering courseware online to help minimize the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on students, faculty and staff. For more information on how to enroll, please visit Pitt Online's page on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Requests for fall midterm course surveys increased 60 percent from the spring 2020 term. Thank you to all faculty who have requested this service through the Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching (OMET). Key Dates:

• Sept. 21-27: Surveys will be available to students.
• Sept. 29: Results will be available to instructors through the Teaching Survey dashboard.

The Office of the Provost announced yesterday that additional in-person classes may be offered on the Pittsburgh campus starting on Monday, Sept. 14. What does this mean for faculty and students?

• Some additional courses may be moving to in-person learning over the next few weeks.
• Students who wish to study remotely may continue to do so.
• Faculty who wish to continue to teach remotely may do so.
• In-person instruction that adheres to proper physical distancing (6 feet) is permitted under Pitt’s Standards and Guidelines on Shared Spaces. The Commonwealth’s guidance also exempts classroom settings used for educational instruction from indoor gathering limitations.

Face-to-face classes are scheduled to begin on Sept. 14. To support faculty who will be using the newly installed Flex@Pitt classroom technology, the Teaching Center has developed several resources:

• Our Zoom Rooms Introduction video provides an introduction to technology embedded in the classroom.
• The Zoom Rooms Technical Overview video provides information on creating Zoom meetings, setting up audio recordings, using screen sharing, and navigating controls.
• A guided tool will walk you through the steps of how to schedule your synchronous Zoom class sessions in Canvas, associate the classroom technology, and find your class recording afterwards.

The PittEd Justice Collective, a movement launched in June to center equity and anti-racist approaches in education, recently convened a panel of expert practitioners and scholars to provide insights on remote teaching and learning strategies. The webinar’s focus: anti-racist teaching and learning, and how to create remote learning environments that are anti-racist and equitable. You can watch the full webinar online and read highlights in Monday's PittWire article.