City Tech has two different Learning Management Systems to support your classroom instruction. You can use one, both, or parts of each as you choose. Just make sure your students know where to look for materials or assignments. All courses at City Tech are expected to have a site on OpenLab or Brightspace, should another pandemic or emergency arise.
These sites are also important tools for students to succeed in your courses, as the content should reflect what handouts and materials you review in class. If students should miss class, they can always check these platforms and thus, not fall behind.
Brightspace
Students are automatically enrolled into Brightspace course sites when they’re enrolled in your course, but your Brightspace site isn’t “live” until you make it so. This Faculty Checklist from City Tech’s Department of Academic Technologies and Online Learning (AToL) offers some baseline instructions for how to access your Brightspace account and begin setting up your course materials there.
Whether you choose to use Brightspace to share course materials or assignments, you may find it useful for keeping your grading, since the class roster is already in place there. Brightspace has a built-in grading system that will make final grade calculations and adjustments more transparent to students. Beginning Fall 2026, you will also be able to keep track of student attendance on Brightspace. More details will be forthcoming about this soon.
OpenLab
City Tech’s OpenLab is a custom-built open-source digital platform where students, faculty, and staff can meet to learn, work, and share their ideas. Its goals are to support teaching and learning, foster communication, connection, and collaboration, and strengthen the intellectual and social life of the college community. OpenLab enables students and faculty across the curriculum to experiment, innovate, and communicate with one another and the world beyond City Tech, while gaining expertise in the widely used WordPress software.
To use Open Lab, you and your students will need to set up OpenLab accounts using your City Tech email addresses. Set up your account and learn more about OpenLab here. Also, if you plan to use Open Lab, please give instructions for enrolling in Open Lab on your Brightspace accounts, as students will have access to these when the semester begins and they might be expecting something to appear there in the fall.
Model Courses
Regardless of which platform(s) you choose to incorporate into your class, please be mindful of the principles of Universal Design for Learning. You can read more about UDL and other accessibility issues here.
The Model Courses for First Year Writing all have cloneable sites. This means there are Open Lab and Brightspace sites that are easy to use with these curricula which you can copy. If this is your first semester here, it is strongly recommended that you use one of these models, as they have been designed with our specific student populations in mind.