To mark the transition into a new academic year, we would like to welcome you to the Commonwealth Campus Teaching Support website! This new site goes beyond the initial goals of the former Commonwealth Campus Faculty Development website, which was founded to provide a place for Commonwealth instructors to find resources relevant to the ever-changing needs brought about by the pandemic.

Building on the sense of collaboration and sharing that arose from those years and the popular faculty-driven Instructor Days events, the new Commonwealth Campus Teaching Support website aims to provide more robust and varied opportunities for community building and professional development to instructors across the Commonwealth.

Some of the new features you will find on this site include:

The Commonwealth Campus Event Calendar

A strength of the former website was its status as a common place to share online events that were available to instructors across the Commonwealth Campuses. This new site takes it to a new level by creating space for each campus to post all of their events: even hybrid and in-person ones. Our goal is to be a more comprehensive, one-stop shop for professional development and learning opportunities.

While the events you currently see are primarily online, this will evolve as the semester progresses and opportunities are announced.

Improved Search Capabilities

One of the most common requests we had for the previous website was the ability to more easily find relevant resources. This new website allows for that. While you will still find the categories you are familiar with (and a few new ones), you now have the ability to search within each category or site-wide to return more customized results that meet your needs.

PSU Resources

In addition to the resources you will find on this site, there are several other informative and helpful websites maintained across Penn State. This section highlights some of those and lets you search for the ones related to what you need, without the hassle of trying to keep track of them all in bookmarks.

The Toolkit

This is a space where you will find customized applications and tools built by the Commonwealth Campus community for the Commonwealth Campus community. These resources provide practical services to help your many course development needs, such as the Hours of Instructional Activity App that can help estimate how many hours students spend on learning in online courses and the (soon-to-be-released) Pathways to Pedagogy tool that connects ed tech with pedagogical practices.

The Commonwealth Connections Newsletter/Blog

Check back or subscribe (coming soon!) for monthly articles on various topics related to teaching, learning, research, and professional development across the Commonwealth. Learn from fellow instructors in our instructor spotlight features and keep up-to-date on pedagogy practices from our contributing instructional designers.

And More to Come!

As this site grows, the functionality and resources available will also expand. For example, we are actively working on integrating more complex filter options into the searches. If you have any ideas for new features or improvements, please let us know!

The website redesign was possible because of the tremendous hard work, collaboration, and guidance offered by the CCTS team, which is comprised of:

• Matthew Bodek, Coordinator Instructional Design, Academic Affairs, Brandywine
• Jaimen Gallo, Multimedia Specialist, Behrend
• Jon Gunnell, Director of eLearning Initiatives, Behrend
• Elizabeth Huck, Director for Statewide Instructional Design for the Commonwealth Campuses
• Sarah Kettell, Education Programmer/Analyst, Harrisburg
• Griff Lewis, Instructional Designer and Information Technology Support, Scranton
• Dani McCauley, Instructional Designer, Behrend
• Amanda Price, Instructional Designer, Harrisburg
• Jennifer Wagner, Instructional Designer and Accessibility Specialist, Altoona
• Matthew White, Multimedia Specialist, Harrisburg
• Kimberly Wick, Instructional Designer, Behrend

We look forward to supporting the Commonwealth Campus teaching community in the 2022-2023 academic year, and many more to come.