Discussion of Open Digital Pedagogy, Non-disposable Assignments, Open Education Resources (OER)
Jonas Reitz, Professor, Mathematics, Jody Rosen, Associate Professor, English
What resonated with you in this morningâs conversation?
How will you use non-disposable assignments to engage your students?
Please post three ideas that you are thinking of for your assignment/activity
This morningâs refresher on the OpenLab platform was incredibly exciting for me. Itâs been a long time since I last used it, and itâs great to see how much it has evolved over time while maintaining the essence of its character. Iâm hopeful that my students will be able to fully leverage the work and resources I share with them through OpenLab. The platformâs growth and continued alignment with its original mission make it a valuable tool for both educators and students.
I love the concept of non-disposable assignments. Early in my career in food and beverage management, I often returned to materials from my time as a student at City Tech. Those resourcesâincluding recipe templates, cost control Excel sheets, and tools for inventory and ordering databasesâplayed a critical role in my professional development. The idea that assignments can have a lasting impact beyond the classroom is powerful. I believe itâs essential for students to create resources during their academic journey that they can reference as they transition into their careers. It adds value to their work and reinforces the importance of learning as a lifelong process.
Three Assignment Ideas:
1. Reverse Engineering Food Costs
Students will research menus from local restaurants and reverse-engineer the food costs for specific menu items. This assignment would help them practice critical thinking, develop an understanding of cost structures, and connect classroom learning to real-world applications.
2. Collaborative Price Guide Development
In groups, students will create a uniform price guide for key categories like dairy, produce, or meat. These guides will be shared with the entire class and used in their term projects. This project fosters collaboration, ensures consistent data for all students, and provides hands-on experience in sourcing and analyzing pricing data.
3. Peer Review for Scaffolding Term Projects
Students will participate in peer review sessions where they analyze each otherâs term project submissions prior to final grading. The goal is to catch errorsâsuch as misspellings, missing ingredients, or technical issuesâand to elevate areas of confusion that can be addressed collaboratively. While the peer review may not catch everything, it allows students to engage critically with their own and othersâ work, fostering a deeper understanding of the material.
I love the concept of peer review sessions and will try to incorporate that into one of the assignments.
The presentation and discussion about Open Lab was a great reminder about the many faceted resource. I set up an account and course several years ago, but it never got off the ground – because I teach only one of 3 or 4 sections of the design class each semester, hosting an assignment or parts of assignments on Open Lab will be more attainable.
Non-disposable assignments are a great idea, and I absolutely plan to incorporate at least one of the examples we discussed today. Because of the way the design studio course works, the assignments are not really disposable in the first place: Each of the interim assignments builds on the previous work and ultimately become part of the final project. And of course, students use work from previous semesters for guidance and reference. The course explicitly includes research on built precedents for certain assignments. Their final presentations must include representative work from the entire semester to show the arc of the project development.
However, I think there are ways that the current assignment(s) can be modified to increase collaboration and engagement through the use of non-disposable assignments.
Assignment Ideas:
Glossary: Modify the concept development section of “Assignment 1: Museum Research + Concept Development” to include a shared glossary of terms. The current assignment suggests that the students establish a concept driver for their design by creating several phrases made up of a verb and preposition. These words should be representative of the the ideas the student feels are important to the topic or theme they have chosen for the museum project. The challenge I see has been that because many students do not discern the shades of meaning between similar words, their conceptual thinking is constrained to a handful of ideas. A glossary would be set up on OpenLab, initially seeded with the words suggested in the assignment brief. Students would be asked to add definitions, diagrams and/or images of architecture or sculpture that embody the ideas. It probably makes sense to have a first round of written definitions, with citations (AI is okay, even encouraged here), this semester. Subsequent semesters could add new words with written definitions or add annotated diagrams or images. The current rubric for this assignment could be adjusted to incorporate this work, or it could be graded separately as part of the class participation. If the other sections participate, then groups of students selected from all sections could work on a word each, adding written and graphic information to Open Lab this semester.
Lecture Readings: Groups of students work together to read and analyze an interview with an architect, usually focused on a particular built work by that architect, and then present it to the rest of the lecture class. The results of the group work would be entered into a template on a shared platform, such as Open Lab or Miro. The lab class is supported by a lecture class of 50 minutes. There are 2 lab classes of about 30 students for the 4 lab sections. 50 minutes is too short a time to expect the students to read in class, but if readings are assigned ahead of time, then two groups of 4 or 5 students could present their findings with time for discussion. Those presentations would occupy 3 of the 15 class meetings. It would be important to devise an appropriate template with prompts. The goal is to get them to use the reading as a text source, not the internet or AI, although it would be valuable to have images included in the presentations – to connect the architect’s words with the built work. It could be a sort of Treasure Hunt assignment. In her presentation on Tuesday, Rebecca Mazumdar mentioned using the Treasure Hunt assignment for students to identify parts of speech in a text. The Treasure in this assignment could be attitudes or ideas expressed by the architect who is the subject of the interview, or aspects of the buildings they discuss.
Reading with Annotation: Groups of 3 or 4 students would read an assigned reading, adding annotation with their reactions. Each group would present their thoughts for discussion with the larger group. The lecture class which supports the design studio lab meets weekly for 50 minutes and is made up of students from at least two of the four lab sections. There are two lecture sections, made up of about 30 students each. It is a good time for them to get to know students in other sections, but the class is too short to encompass reading, annotation and discussion in one class period, so the assignment would be introduced in one class, and the presentations and discussions would take place in subsequent class meetings. It occurs to me that the discussion will be most robust if all the students have read all the texts. So the groups would be tasked with formally annotating their assigned text – located on some shared space – and leading the discussion with the larger group.
Libby,
You have given a lot of thought to possible activities/assignments. So much hinges on reading and comprehension. and your ideas will foster inquiry and critical thinking — some of our most important learning outcomes, and ones we have identified as being important. Juanita’s presentation was helpful to me because sometimes we think we have exhausted all strategies, but there is always more to learn from our peers.
Today’s quote (for me) was, “I want to be brave in the class.” But as we’re being introduced to different concepts and platforms, I’m changing it to, “I want the students and I to be brave together.” My mind is in overdrive after the Open Lab presentation and the different opportunities to collaborate, connect, and share resources.
I love the idea of using non-disposable assignments to engage with the students. This is their time to explore themselves and what they want to accomplish. Providing them with tools they create and use in other parts of their life will hopefully make them feel more connected to their assignments.
Three non-disposable assignment ideas:
Please excuse my formating! It didn’t look like that in my draft.
Alana,
I am glad to know that âBravery in the Classroomâ resonated with you. The practice has been profound for me. We still want to create safe and comfortable places for our students, but we need to create an environment where they are empowered and can take risks. I did a survey with my students some semesters ago to find out what bravery in the classroom meant. to them. The overwhelming theme in their responses is that bravery in the classroom is having confidence to ask questions, sharing their opinions in class even if they felt it was unpopular. Students said that bravery in the classroom also meant being able to share their personal experiences. One response. “Bravery in the classroom means to have the courage to speak your mind, knowledge, or experience despite what our peers might think or say and to publicly speak without having the fear of being ‘wrong’.” Yes, we must be brave as well.
Last time when I joined the seminar, I was not very comfortable about using Openlab for my course because I was afraid that students may feel unease about going from Blackboard to Openlab back and forth. As a result, I only used Blackboard for easy access.
From todayâs presentation, I donât feel that scared anymore as an instructor. I think I should have faith in my students that they will do well if I give it a try. First of all, I was a student in Prof. Reitzâs class and used Openlab. I enjoyed it as a student, and now it is my turn to make it fun for my class. I donât think I can do it as good as Prof. Reitz but he gave me a good direction about what to start with.
It is a lot of information again today. I hope I can use some of the functions in Openlab to help students engaged with learning Mathematics.
Diana,
I have been hesitant to use the full spectrum of OpenLab because I felt uneasy about sharing students’ work and I had to devote time to learning how to use it. But I am embracing it more since being involved with OpenLab. You have a great example of your work as a student on OpenLab that you can share with students and they like showcasing their work, so that is a motivator.
Thank you Profs. Zhu, Effrat, Parks and Cantagallo. I agree, today’s Open Lab session provided so much rich information. I had to slow down after our session and review my notes to really think through all that I heard. Such powerful ideas to take concepts we already have and help them have a longer more useful lifespan, increase accessibility and break down the walls of the classroom to open possible connections.
Prof. Cantagallo was actually my introduction to Openlab around 2015 in a Faculty Summer Institute! As we all brainstormed ideas that we hoped to develop in coming semesters, he humbly shared his Openlab profile which was brimming with pages he had developed, his students had constructed. I remember feeling inspired and I was more prepared when asked to develop OERs templates (I think models now) for several classes in the department. Thank you Prof!
I am hoping to revise a public project that resulted from the TLH Fellowship Susan and I held together, where students shared their final work throughout campus, online and even their neighborhoods (at the grocery store etc) in a way where there could be an exchange so that we could learn together with those outside of our classroom.
This public project has continued to be a part of my course. Since the pandemic when in person contact was minimal, many students elected to use QR codes for their public work and have posted throughout their community. They have documented experience of sharing their favorite course reading with a family or community member and captured their response, and connections made to the interviewee’s lived experiences or references offered by them for further research. Others have mapped out how the course material connects to their field and how they may reconstruct work in their field based on what they know. This has been shared with others in their department etc.
The QR code has become the default and we have not really used the Open Lab so I am excited to see how at the very least we can post and archive student projects that are circulating out in the world in paper/QR form and possibly share a site of our projects with others. May be it can be an alternative to paper in some cases (especially thinking of those family / community stories that students may want to archive and share). Whether QR code or Open Lab it does require tech access for those in our community, so students will need to think of the best forms of exchange on a case by case basis .
Thank you Susan for reminding us all to be brave, like many others here, that will stay with me.
I love how the winding road of CUNY brings people together at the right times!