This doc highlights examples of different types of assignments that City Tech faculty use on the OpenLab to facilitate community-building in both teaching and learning. We encourage you to peruse these links for inspiration as you continuing developing your FYLC courses and, as always, please let the OpenLab team know how we can support you!
EXAMPLES:
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- Introductory assignments
- Jill Belli’s Introduction Posts (Fall 2017: Introduction to Literature: Fiction): gets students to join OpenLab, join the course site, learn how to post (and add media, make links) and comment in a low-stakes way. Professor provides help how to do it and also makes her own post. Builds community because students read and comment on each other’s posts.
- Jody Rosen’s most recent 1101 which asks students to introduce themselves in a comment—which they can do even without a City Tech email/OL account
- Kate Poirier’s 1275 introducing yourself in a Post
- FYLC “Our Stories” as introductory post about college (see also in Concluding Assignments)
- Introductory assignments
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- Check-in assignments
- Masato Nakamura’s project check-in
- Patrick Corbett’s ENG brainstorm and follow-up for tech-writing projects.
- Carrie Hall’s Fall 2018 English 1101 makes effective use of blog posts to give students instructions, tips, and  (downloadable) cheat sheets for their assignments.
- Check-in assignments
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- Prep for exam assignments
- Kate Poirier’s 1275 test solutions
- Kate Poirier’s 2540 Final Exam review problem, with comments from students asking for clarification
- Jonas Reitz’s Mathematical Treasure Hunt: find a Parabola, Circles, Parallel Lines, etc.—great for getting students to see concepts in the real world and also for helping them learn how to add media to a post or comment!
- Prep for exam assignments
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- Semester-long assignments
- Jody Rosen’s glossary: Glossary Assignment and Student Work
- Jill Belli’s meeting-notes assignment (Fall 2017: Introduction to Literature: Fiction): students take notes throughout the semester for class (so there is a record of what we did, even though students take their own notes) & People’s Choice Assignment (Fall 2017: Introduction to Literature: Fiction): brings student blogs into dialogue with one another (peer to peer engagement, motivation/recognition), student generated content becomes part of the required class reading
- Karen Goodlad’s “36 Hours…” assignment, based on the New York Times column with the same name, asks students to highlight features around Brooklyn using informative, detailed language and practice writing in a specific genre
- The Fall 2018 Learning Places’ course asked students to think throughout the semester about their experiences in NYC and connect them to their semester long research on the Barclay Center. The culminating final project was to create an OpenLab Project site with a link to student-made podcast on a research topic related to Barclay center, as well as pages containing an annotated bibliography used for the research, and an outline.
- Semester-long assignments
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- Concluding assignments
- Jonas Reitz’s “Advice from the Past/Advice for the Future“
- FYLC “Our Stories” as concluding post about transitioning into college, focusing on expectations and community
- Masato Nakamura’s “Are You Ready for the Last Day?”
- Concluding assignments
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- Other resources
