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Accessibility Mentor Training
This training introduces new Accessibility Mentors at UMPI to the role and responsibilities, as well as some of the simple “quick fixes” to improve digital accessibility of our files.
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đź’ˇFeedback & Engagement Strategies Workshop
Watch the recording of this practical, faculty-focused workshop on boosting student engagement in in-person classes and using closed-loop feedback to continuously improve your course. You’ll leave with ready-to-use strategies for active learning and participation, plus a simple process for collecting feedback, making targeted changes, and “closing the loop” by communicating what you adjusted and why. Ideal for instructors who want more responsive teaching, stronger classroom momentum, and measurable course improvements.
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👩🏻‍🏫 January 12, 2026 Faculty Workshop
Watch the recording of the full day faculty workshop on Monday, January 12, 2026.
Agenda
- 2025-2026 Highlights: Enrollment, Budget, Academic Program Development, Teaching & Learning Survey, EAB
- University Day planning
- Advising updates
- General Education Curriculum
- Title II Core Group
- Q&A with Tricia Bertram Gallant (not recorded)
- Ally demo
- YourPace
- AI Committee
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🥪Faculty Lunch & Learn: Semester Show & Tell Friday December 12, 2025
Watch our Faculty Showcase where we share all of the wonderful or curious things happening in our classrooms and community. UMPI is a magical place where faculty care deeply about their learners and humbly explore and experiment to improve the learning experience to ensure success for every student. In this engaging conversation, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Dr. Teri St. Pierre, shares her journey of transitioning math courses to the YourPace modality, and Associate Professor of Social Work, Dr. Beverly Wagner, discusses an engaging activity that brings learners through the experiential learning cycle.
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🥪Faculty Lunch & Learn: The Coherent Professor: Finding Productivity and Purpose in a Whole Faculty Life
Higher education often pressures faculty to fragment their time, energy, and identity into isolated buckets: teaching, research, service, and “life.” But what if sustained productivity and purpose came from approaching your career as a unified whole? Join a fellow faculty member for an inspiring and practical one-hour session designed to help you thrive, not just survive, in academic life. This talk is built on three transformative, big-picture principles:
- The Law of the Whole Person: Reclaiming your right and responsibility to act as a unified person, refusing to separate yourself into discrete work and life components.
- Consistency Beats Performance: Discovering how showing up regularly for your most important work is more vital than chasing high-stakes outcomes or occasional bursts of intense effort.
- Small Steps within Coherent Systems: Learning that daily, sustainable action within a well-structured personal system creates more progress than ambitious, high-profile “wins.”
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🥪Faculty Lunch & Learn: Digital Accessibility
Join Sara Henry, Director of Equal Opportunity and Title IX Services for the University of Maine System, for an in-person workshop on digital accessibility at the University of Maine at Presque Isle on Friday, October 10. This session will help equip faculty and staff with the knowledge and tools needed to comply with the upcoming Title II regulations, which require public universities to make all digital content accessible by April 24, 2026. The workshop will cover the importance of accessibility for various document types, including PDFs, Google and Word documents, and PowerPoints. Participants will learn practical skills such as creating alternate text for images, writing effective image descriptions, and providing accurate captions for video content. Additionally, Henry will introduce Anthology Ally, a powerful new tool from the University of Maine System designed to help faculty integrate accessibility into their course materials.
Spring 2023
- In case you missed it! Let’s look at the recent events:
- The Experiential Deep Dive with Jay Roberts, from 1/09
- Spring 2023 Faculty Workshop from 1/10
- Spring 2023 Slidedeck from the presentation
- Wherever you are in your Wicked Design, we put together a playlist of past Wicked Problem events for you to access!
- There has been a lot of buzz about ChatGPT, and other chatbots–and what the future may hold for creating cheat-proof assessments in higher education–others are looking at the potential to use this tech for good. In February’s ID & Tea, you will have a chance to try out Chat GPT, (and some anti-AI/AI-detection tools), and chat about it!
- Professors at Play PlayBook, EDITED BY: Lisa Forbes, & David Thomas (2022) is an anthology of 100ish play techniques from over 65 professors across a variety of disciplines. Check out this OER!
- Look at what we are reading:
- Heather: Unearthing Joy, by Gholdy Muhammad (2023)
- Heather: Textured Teaching, by Lorena Escotto Germán (2021)
Fall 2022:
- Have you been thinking about ways that you can support more experiential learning in your courses? Keep your eyes peeled for updates to CTL’s Experiential Teaching & Learning page, and brush up on Jay Roberts videos!
- As we work toward even more inclusive course design, many are looking for ways to design accessible in Brightspace. Their Accessibility Lab Certificate course for Community members is a great start!
- Engagement Matters online, and Martin and Bollinger (2018) can tell us why!
- 2021 is behind us, and Edutopia has published another list of the 10 Most Significant Education Studies!
- Looking for more Active Learning strategies for your Synchronous Online (Zoom) classes? The CTL at Columbia has just the right guidance!
- Looking for a graphic or tool that we shared in a past newsletter of the session? Have you seen our Laundry List of CTL-Resources? It’s were we keep all of our homemade guides and tutorials.
Spring & Fall 2021:
- Before Zoom fatigue, there was were faculty-created videos. Explore the Power of Asynchronous Video with this new Educause article!
- What better way to kick off a new year, than looking at some of the great educational studies (in remote learning and beyond)–Edutopia has compiled a list of the 10 Most Significant Educational Studies of 2020
- Trying to tease out what experiential learning is, and what it looks like? Boston University’s CTL has a great experiential learning primer!
- If you had to choose just 4-5 course design elements or attributes that would help you build an award-winning class, what would they be? This study: Award-Winning Faculty Online Teaching Practices: Elements of Award-Winning Courses does just that!
Fall 2020:
- Did you miss our Jay Roberts event on Experiential Education in the College Context–we have your back, with the replay and a link to his slide deck!
- We were able to showcase some amazing Peer Mentors, with Brightspace tips, tricks and strategies, including: Student Engagement & Communication with Teri St. Pierre, Flipped Learning with Brightspace with Heather Nunez-Olmstead and Course-building and troubleshooting Brightspace with Kathleen Harrigan.
- Did you miss the June Brightspace Timeline Newsletter?
- This has been a semester rich in development opportunities-both in remote transition and in Brightspace onboarding. We developed the Past Event Archives to help connect you with those resources. Our Teaching Strong Through It All page has also become a repository for remote instruction specific resources.
- Have you heard the buzz around designing with a Hyflex model for Fall, but don’t know what that is? Inside Higher Ed was an easy-to-digest description (with examples), and we also found this great diagram of flexible classroom/delivery set-up options!
- You may notice that our Brightspace page has shifted to be more informational–that’s because our tutorial/how-to content has shifted to Semester Ready in Brightspace!
Spring 2020:
- Did you miss the April Brightpsace Newsletter?
- Shifting to remote instruction, from face-to-face, check out our Planning for the Unplanned page
- Struggling with rubrics? Check out our new Creating Rubrics page.
- Do you have YourPace competencies that you have to design, we have a step-by-step page to walk you through the process
- Getting a jump start on Brightspace work? Reference our Brightspace page for tutorials and resources as you build!
- Curious about what going on with the current adult learning theory? Check out this interesting white paper on nueroandragogy
- We also have some Advanced Video Production resources, you can use yourself or with students!
- Want to create synchronous interactions in your online course? Check out this Faculty Focus article on the subject!
- Did you miss the May Brightspace Timeline Newsletter?
- Shifting to remote instruction, from face-to-face, check out our Planning for the Unplanned page
- Do you have YourPace competencies that you have to design, we have a step-by-step page to walk you through the process
- Getting a jump start on Brightspace work? Reference our Brightspace page for tutorials and resources as you build!
Summer 2019:
- The Teaching Professor has collated a wonderful collection of articles on Diversity & Inclusion
- Video-based Exit Tickets? Look at this interesting engagement strategy from Faculty Focus, and then come talk to us about great exit ticket tools and strategies!
- In addition to creating our own awesome content, we spend a lot of time looking for great content from outside resources. Course Hero’s Youtube channel has a great selection of short educational videos to enhance and supplement your instruction (check it out)!
Fall 2019
- The Blum Center at UC Berkley has made a great case for project-based learning that is inter-disciplinary by design
- Craving guidance on Creating Accessible Content–we’ve got you covered!
- How can you check out our institutional Quality Matters subscription? You can learn more about this resource on our “Time for Re-design” page.
- Have we any Video Production Studio resources? Yes, we do! Check them out (they can be accessed in the “Tech Tools for Teaching & Learning” menu)