By SHANNON O. WELLS
As Michael Bridges launches into his first academic year as executive director of the University Center for Teaching and Learning, palpable enthusiasm for the role — and a strong belief that the center’s offerings go above and beyond those of other institutions — is not among the job qualifications he’s had to learn.
“Anybody who talks to me for 10 minutes understands that I get really excited about this stuff,” he said. “I’m mediocre in most things in my life. I like to think I’m a good dad and I’m an (enthusiastic and engaged) teacher. Get me in front of a classroom, it really excites me.”
Lately, Bridges — who former Provost Ann Cudd appointed as the center’s interim director after the departure of Cynthia Golden in June 2022 — hasn’t spent as much time in the classroom. However, he finds ample fuel for that excitement in the Center for Teaching and Learning’s uniquely comprehensive and seamlessly integrated offerings.
“In many institutions, the teaching center is three faculty members who have a part-time appointment or a yearly appointment to the teaching center, and they essentially do consulting work with faculty on the design, development and delivery of courses,” he explained. “(Pitt has) this really unique model, and I think it brings great value to what we do, and a lot of people don’t recognize the breadth of the portfolio under the Teaching Center.”
The Pitt center has close to 70 part- and full-time team members, including teaching consultants, instructional designers, learning space consultants, survey coordinators, strategic initiative managers, software consultants, media specialists and administrative assistants.
Before coming to Pitt in 2020, Bridges served as executive director of online learning and strategy at Duquesne University, worked as vice president for educational strategy and excellence at iCarnegie Global Learning and held leadership roles in faculty development at Carnegie Mellon University and UPMC St. Margaret Hospital. Bridges said he believes his collective experience, combined with the nature of Pitt’s Teaching Center, provide a dynamic platform for success in this role.
“I’m old enough to have enough gray hairs, and the bald spot back here suggests that I’ve served in a number of different roles, whether it’s teaching in a traditional teaching center, online learning (or) educational technology,” he said. “I’ve also taught for years and years and years. Those all kind of coalesce to give me some good insight into each one of the functions that I support here.”
His positions at previous institutions found Bridges working among largely disconnected offices, such as in classroom design and classroom services structures. “And while there was some communication and collaboration, they were different units, they were siloed, and those silos created challenges,” he said.
The way Pitt’s teaching and learning resources are structured, those challenges are largely avoided. “The fact that we’re all co-located in the same space driven by the same mission, that really brings an advantage to us,” he said.
Bridges has a significant background in pedagogy and assessment, particularly in the context of higher education, “and that’s a real traditional focus of many teaching centers. But then what’s layered on top of that is educational technology,” he noted. “We have an entire team that supports the educational technology at the institution, most notably the learning management system, which is Canvas, and its use in pedagogically sound and appropriate ways, and beyond the LMS, a whole range of educational technologies that can be used in the laboratory and studios and classrooms.
Here are some of the center’s services:
Learning space design — Bridges called this a “team of folks who help us think about and design, either if we’re developing new classroom spaces or refurbishing upgrading old classroom spaces, really with an eye towards what kind of learning is going to be taking place in those spaces and how can the design of that space facilitate and contribute to the learning that’s going to be happening there.”
Academic digital media — The center has a large studio space in the Information Sciences Building that can produce high quality digital media assets and content, often for online courses, including video tutorials and video support structures. “We’ve got an enormous green screen and teleprompters and we can work with faculty who often aren’t comfortable in those environments to learn how to manage those spaces.”
Pitt online — Programs and courses designed to provide intuitive, engaging and innovative learning that meets the needs of a diverse student population, the website says. They provide students flexibility and equitable access in completing the program requirements and meeting the learning objectives.
Podcasting and lightboard studios — A lightboard studio allows an instructor to write information on a board without blocking the writing with your body, so you can face your audience while writing on the board, and students can see the instructor’s expressions or even read their lips. Instructors also can annotate a digital image, and avoid time-intensive and complicated video editing or animation techniques.
Open Lab — A collaboration with University Library Systems, located in the Hillman Library, the lab features 3D printers and XR virtual reality, augmented reality and multiple reality capacities. “We have laser, laser cutters, a whole variety of creative opportunities and creative tools to help support learning,” Bridges said.
Classrooms services and events support — A team that supports the use of technology in the classroom. Training and assistance are offered to faculty members using technology that exists in a studio, laboratory, classroom space, who are not familiar with it, “but in a pedagogically appropriate way,” Bridges said.
Testing center — Located the basement of the Cathedral of Learning, this is where students come for proctored exams. “These are our students who have an accommodation through the Office of Disability Resources and either need extended time or they need a distraction-free environment,” he said, noting there are 40 accommodation options. “We support that effort.”
Student surveys — Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching (OMET) surveys are administered through the center’s office to provide feedback to faculty.
“So, that’s a pretty big catalog,” he noted. “All of that, the guiding principle of every single one of those components is how do we design, develop, deliver, create learning experiences that are really robust for students, whether that’s the pedagogy that’s being used, the technology that’s being used, the physical environment — and it’s all guided by this kind of deep understanding of how human beings process information and learn, and the application of that understanding, that scholarship of teaching and learning to the work that we do.”
The center is built on a cross-collaborative approach. Those who design spaces are talking to the center’s classroom services people who are ultimately those who go into the classroom and help faculty use it, “and they might be talking to our educational technology folks, who really will help faculty understand what’s the most relevant application of this, so there’s a lot of cross units within the teaching center.”
One of the center’s greatest overall strengths, he added, is its cabal of experienced and committed staff.
“We have a group of Ph.D. level folks who are teaching consultants. … They run our workshops, they run our faculty learning communities, they run our faculty seminars, they can consult with programs or departments across a whole range of topics,” he said.
Artificial intelligence: For good or evil?
One of the larger elephants in the higher education room in the past year encompasses intelligent systems and artificial intelligence. Bridges is among those recognizing that, regardless of how threatening such technological tools may seem, you can run, but not hide from them.
“Every leadership team, every organization, is asking the question about how do intelligent systems and AI affect what we do,” he said. “And I think that’s true in education, not only in our business practices, but also in teaching and learning. So what are the applications of intelligent systems or AI — the design, the development, the delivery, the assessment, and the revision of courses? And then how do we help faculty understand about how to most effectively use these tools to support learning in the classroom?”
For a faculty member developing a case study, for example, AI can help figure out what a case study is for a particular application, or perhaps offer an activity that can aid and help design and develop it. “The other side is, ‘Oh, my gosh, students are gonna be using this. It’s a powerful tool. How can it be used for good and not for evil?’ And I think that’s going to be a big focus.”
Noting that the provost’s office commissioned an ad hoc committee to advise on the use of AI in teaching and research, Bridges said he thinks they’re “going to take a 30,000-foot view. I think, particularly in this fall semester, we’re going to really dig in and help faculty understand in very concrete ways how to use (AI) for what they do, in designing and developing their courses and about how they might think about using it as a tool to support student learning.
Bridges said they are looking at opportunities to collaborate with the Learning Research and Develment Center and with the School of Computing and Information about “how we can all work together to really bring some visibility to the institution around the application of AI in education.”
Choosing the right tools
Bridges said he would like to bring greater visibility to the Teaching Center as a whole, both internally as well as nationally, and innovative AI applications are a way to achieve that.
“There are some teaching centers, the (Derek) Bok Center at Harvard, Vanderbilt, Michigan, these have kind of teaching centers with national reputations and visibility,” he noted. “I would like to bring some of that back to Pitt. I think AI in our exploration and the focus of AI and its application in higher ed is going to be one way to do that.
“I’m interested in immersive media … AR and VR, simulated experiences,” he added. “It’s kind of sexy.”
At the same time, Bridges wants to avoid “the technology tail wagging the educational dog,” as in, tech tools are only as good as the interest and knowledge of the educators using them.
“We don’t want to use something just because it’s new or sexy or good. … Use a white board and a marker if that serves your purposes. You know, flip charts and post-its,” he said. “You don’t need high tech to achieve … but if the technology or an approach gives you advantage, then you want to explore what that’s like.”
Noting that some prices are coming down for software and tools, Bridges said the Center for Teaching and Learning is beginning to explore immersive media.
“There’s still challenges with the available content and the scalability of that, but that’s another area of interest … an emerging approach, and tool that we can use in the classroom,” he said. “It’s used in anatomy classrooms, and it’s used in some engineering contexts. To be a little more sophisticated, (we could be) a little more thoughtful about how we use those technologies.”
The center will continue to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. Pitt, he said, has been very committed to helping faculty understand how to create an inclusive classroom climate about equitable teaching practices that really offer all students an opportunity to learn.
“We are constantly asking our questions … in structuring our classroom a particular way,” he said. “In doing this activity, who are we leaving out? Who might maybe be marginalizing or isolating and how can we create an environment that really supports all of our learners? I think that’s a big topic area.”
Legacy building
Interim Provost Joe McCarthy, who took over from Ann Cudd after she departed to be president of Portland State University in Oregon, is enthusiastic about Cudd’s decision to move Bridges into a permanent leadership role at the Teaching Center.
"Mike Bridges has served as Interim executive director of the University Center for Teaching and Learning over the last year to great success,” McCarthy said, adding that the Teaching Center is the primary “go-to” in support of Pitt's faculty on all campuses. “Mike believes, as I do, in the critical importance of the University Center for Teaching and Learning to the University.
“He is the right person to help lead innovative efforts to enhance on-campus teaching, learning, assessment, diversity in the curriculum, and other teaching activities across the institution."
Bridges credits his predecessor, Cynthia Golden, for helping to build and shape the center into the dynamic resource it has become. The University Center for Teaching and Learning replaced the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education, in 2016, under Golden’s leadership.
“Cynthia was a visionary in many ways, in establishing the structure, and the organization of the Teaching Center,” he said. “And I think we’re seeing what we have, and we will continue to see some of the benefits of those decisions that were perhaps made 10 to 12 years ago.”
Bridges said he and Golden had a “great working relationship” based on what each brought to the table.
“She came from the educational technology side of the of the field, (while) I come more from the teaching and learning, pedagogical-motivational theory side of the field. We were a great working team because we complemented each other really, really well,” he said. “So I think my task is to continue to think about the trajectory of the legacy that she and (former provost) Patti Beeson and other folks established in the Teaching Center (while adding) my own particular flavor.”
Reflecting on his recent shift from interim to the official executive director role, Bridges relishes having an opportunity for creative freedom.
“What it does is give me the foundation from which to initiate some ideas, some vision that I bring that may be slightly different,” he said. “We all bring a different set. of skills and kind of ideas to any particular job. So what it does is give me the foundation on which to begin to initiate and establish some of those ideas in that vision.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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