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Feature Article
Digital Measures Update
January 2021
Digital Measures/Activity Insight: Updates
The 2020 Annual Activity Report submission process officially opened on January 19, 2021. All tenured and tenure-track faculty members should complete their 2020 Annual Activity Report by March 12, 2021. Professional track faculty members are invited to use Digital Measures to document their activities. Expectations for professional track faculty member participation for 2020 annual reporting are set at the local college/unit level.
See below for updates on training opportunities, report submission overview, the timing of data integrations from the Fall 2020 semester, guidance on documenting pandemic impact on faculty work/activity, and the bulk data import service.
Training Workshops
Starting in late January, weekly training sessions will be offered for faculty to prepare for the annual activity reporting. Sessions will be held on Zoom. The training covers the use of the platform, data integrations, tracking activities, time-saving tips, and goals and expectations for entering data. The schedule and registration are on the Faculty Affairs website.
Annual Activity Report Submission: What to Expect
Submitting your annual activity report is a straightforward process:
- Log in to Digital Measures.
- Enter your Activities on the Digital Measures platform for the calendar year 2020.
- Go to the Workflow section (available in the top red bar), select the UMD 2020 Annual Faculty Activity Review task from the Inbox and review the guidelines for report preparation.
- When ready, move to the Personal Statement step in Workflow. It is your option to add a personal statement for the year, either in the textbox on the screen or by attaching a file.
- Submit your report and personal statement to your unit approver.
You can learn more about the submission process by reading the Annual Activity Report Submission - Faculty Instructions.
A Few Things To Remember
The system is open now for your use; you may begin documenting your 2020 activities immediately. Please note that courses taught, course evaluations, and completed thesis/dissertation committee involvement data will be auto-populated for 2020 by January 26, 2021.
Activity Insight integrates with several citation management systems and supports BibTeX file import. This is a great way to bring in your publications. The Libraries have a guide on how to use the Publication Import feature in Digital Measures.
Also, as you work on manually adding your activities, be sure to remember to save each record. The Rapid Reports tool lets you preview your activities in the annual report as you are entering them. Additionally, you may find the duplication feature is a timesaver.
Explaining Faculty Work/Activity
UMD ADVANCE and the Office of Faculty Affairs offer useful resources to help individual faculty members and campus leaders navigate, address, and document the impact of the pandemic on faculty members.
Faculty Work Activities Impacted by COVID-19: This document lists the kinds of faculty work activities that may have been impacted by the pandemic that faculty members may wish to document for the purposes of evaluation, promotion, and reporting. The Office of Faculty Affairs has subsequently mapped these work activities into the relevant Digital Measures fields.
Using Digital Measures to Strategically Document COVID-19 Impacts and Invisible Faculty Labor: This document offers guidance and examples on the use of the new optional Notes & Annotations fields and the personal narrative statement, to highlight new or ongoing invisible labor and to show how a faculty member’s research, teaching, and service may have changed, in quality and/or quantity, as a result of the pandemic.
Bulk Data Import Service
A bulk data import/update service is now available. We can import your activity data from an Excel file into Digital Measures. To take advantage of this service, please contact the Digital Measures team with a request for details. This service can also apply bulk updates to activity records on a particular screen in Digital Measures, avoiding record-by-record editing in the system. We will provide you with an Excel import template for the associated data screen. The columns of the template will correspond to the data fields on that screen. We will give you detailed information on the data format for each column and can load your data into Digital Measures for you.
Learn More About Digital Measures
The Faculty Affairs Activities Data website is not only your starting point for logging in to Digital Measures; it is also a self-service resource with short how-to videos, extensive user guides, and contact information for the Digital Measures team. Platform support is available through email and by phone (301.405.7681).