Category: Technology & Design

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App Review

App Review

Tanya Goetz

Communication Design

COMD 4900 Internship

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

Students are assigned the task of reviewing 2 iPad or iPhone apps for the Creative Professional as one of their internship journal entries in this class. As preparation for this assignment, during our class meeting, I present several apps currently in use in the industry such as Paper, Evernote, Flipboard, MyPrice, Pocket, and Neenah Cabinet. I also provide them with time during class on the department’s iPads to work with these apps after we discuss them. I also given them a verbal review of the app Flipboard, an app I use regularly. During class, I also have them read this short review for the Paper app from MacWorld at http://www.macworld.com/article/2107944/paper-review-fiftythrees-sketching-app-gets-ios-7-update-dots-and-brush-sizes.html
In order to help them find pertinent apps to review, I provide them with the following article from the Guardian ” The top 50 apps for Creative Minds” http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/22/the-top-50-apps-for-creative-minds. I also allow them to review one of the apps we’ve discussed in class. I give them three weeks to complete this journal entry on their internship blog. I also provide them with samples of a past student’s review of an app such as this one: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/rbayron-eportfolio/academics/internships/week-5-6-apps/

I also the students to present their app reviews orally to the class once the reviews are completed.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

Lifelong Learning
Writing for Professional Purposes
Thinking Critically
Oral Communication

I want students to realize through this assignment that the tools are ever changing in our field and that, as part of their professional lives, they will be required to use new skills, update their skill sets and find new methods to become more efficient at doing their work. Reading professional journals and technology sections of general interest magazines and newspapers that cover our field are key resources for identifying tools they should be exploring. Along with identifying these new tools, they will often be required to communicate how they are using these tools to supervisors and to colleagues. Writing a review of an apps key features helps students develop their abilities in this area as it necessitates thinking critically about an app’s features and then requires them to articulate their thoughts first in writing and then orally to the class. I want the students to share their experience with their classmates, perhaps inspiring a peer to use an app they hadn’t yet tried out.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

I assign this lesson sometime between week 5 and week 7 in the semester because at that point most of the students are at this point established in their internship. I devote 45 minutes of one class to covering different apps currently in use and then allow the students 45 minutes to explore working on the department iPads experimenting with the apps I’ve just shown.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

For this lesson, one needs to have available a projector/screen and at least one’s own iPad or iPhone (or Android) and have previously worked with the apps you are demonstrating so that you model for the students how to go about evaluating different features, providing a rationale to them for why this app is useful, etc. In the COMD department, we have iPads to use in the classroom and so in advance of the class, I ensure that all the iPads have the apps I will be discussing during lecture and I also make sure I have reserved the iPads/cart for that particular class with the CLTs in advance of class.

This activity is not graded on its own. Instead, the written journal assignment becomes part of their whole internship blog, which is 30% of their grade for the course. So, in that sense it is part of a high-stakes assignment but just a small piece of an overall package. The oral presentation they do on the app review in not graded at all and so is low-stakes but I hope that this time in front of the class helps prepare them for the oral presentation of their complete blog, which is 10% of their grade for the class.

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

There is a rubric for the overall internship journal. I use a rubric that is based on the original ePortfolio rubric that was part of that Title V grant at the college and I have tweaked it for this class.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

This activity has worked extremely well in the classroom. The students really enjoy evaluating and experimenting with apps on their iPhone or iPad and many of them write detailed reviews and are enthusiastic in sharing these apps with their classmates.

The only challenge one faces in the classroom is when the iPads for the department need updating or one has an app that only runs on IOS and not on Android, etc.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These can be links to pages or posts on the OpenLab.

Samples of student App reviews:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/rbayron-eportfolio/academics/internships/week-5
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sharad/internship-2/app-review/trello-app-review/
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sharad/internship-2/app-review/vscocam-app-review/
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/a-blog/from-the-field-2/app-reviews/

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

http://www.macworld.com/article/2107944/paper-review-fiftythrees-sketching-app-gets-ios-7-update-dots-and-brush-sizes.html

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Writing With Purpose

Writing With Purpose

John McCullough

Entertainment Technology

ENT 1100 Intro to Entertainment Technology

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This lesson introduces the writing concepts of thesis statements and supporting evidence, and trains students to analyze their writing assignments and prompts.

After a brief review of the five-paragraph essay structure and the definition of a thesis statement, students are asked to write thesis statements in response to questions or topics suggested by the instructor.
Students share their thesis statements, then discuss which ones were stronger and why, offering suggestions on how to improve weaker statements.
Finally, the class chooses one or two thesis statements and brainstorms about what kinds of supporting evidence are appropriate to use to support that statement and why.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

Students will be able to…
a. analyze a writing assignment to identify if they should be answering a question, persuading the reader, or stating an opinion.
b. define the term ‘thesis statement’
c. write a strong thesis statement for a five-paragraph essay
d. use appropriate evidence to support their thesis statement

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This is an in-class activity for early in the semester, and it takes about 60 minutes for a 25-person class.

There is a follow-up homework assignment which is due the following week.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

The only preparation required is to generate a list of questions and topics for the students to write their thesis statements about. These topics can be discipline specific to reinforce other material from the class, or they can be based in current events, or some other area of interest to the class. They should be accessible enough that everyone in the class can have an opinion.

I have used the following questions in ENT 1100 and gotten good engagement from the students:
o Are copyright laws too restrictive?
o Which is more important, freedom or safety?
o Is technology good for society?

This is a low-stakes activity, and nothing is collected or graded.

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

This in-class activity is not directly assessed.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

This activity worked well, and I would repeat it. I found it helpful to do some in-class writing early in the semester before the first essays were assigned to work on the basics of essay structure. It seemed to have a positive effect on the later writing assignments.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These can be links to pages or posts on the OpenLab.

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

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A Peek on the Inside: Place Based Learning at Body World Exhibit

A Peek on the Inside: Place Based Learning at Body World Exhibit

Linda Bradley

Nursing/School of Professional Studies

Phyiscal Assessment NUR 3010

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

The Bodies exhibit provides a fun and engaging way to provide the students with the ability to take abstract concepts and make them into a tangible reality. This will impact their practice and thus the thousands of people they will come in to contact for their lifetime as a nurse. There is no grade for this I would consider this low stakes.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

Physical Assessment course includes review of anatomy and physiology, description of alterations in a system and assessment techniques which the student practice. As with most courses it does so in sections, thus providing the students with this learning experience it will:
1. analyze the connections between the organ locations and physical assessment techniques
2. understand the body’s normal and abnormal function
3. appreciate stress and lifestyle impact on the body

General Education SLOs:
Which of City Tech’s General Education Student Learning Outcomes does this activity address? Please be as precise as possible.

Information Literacy is the Learning outcome that this activity addresses: The ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

1. On first day of class during introduction of the course, devote time to introduce the students to the planned experience

2. Schedule the experience toward the end of 2/3rd of the course

3. Offer the course during one of the online course days or if your department allows students to participate in learning as part of their course offsite on their own then schedule it based on your departments abilities

4. State length of experience expectations which is approximately 2 hours at the exhibit

5. Provide pre and post experience assignment documents for student’s completion

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

1. Discuss and gain consensus for this experience with fellow course faculty and Chair of your department. Decide how you will fund this experience, if this would enhance a portion of your course or would replace an assignment, low stakes or high stakes, grade or not, the class schedule and best possible time that would allow this experience to occur. This then would require that you consider this experience well in advance of the beginning of the semester to receive the maximum amount of participation.
2. Contact the Body World Exhibit group number and discuss date, time, number of students and faculty and other pertinent instructions. Ask for a Group sales account representative 866.987.9692 info@tsxnyc.com 226 W. 44th Street New York, NY 10036
3. Once you have completed your initial discussions and have gained consensus in all areas required for the success of this endeavor next steps would be to provide the students with an overview of the experience, expectations, pre-experience assignment, in class discussion and post experience assignment. Generate a list of students and faculty who will attend. Provide everyone with the required Travel Waiver. (If your students are under 18 there is specific instructions on the document)
4. Obtain final list of all attendees and all must complete Travel Waiver and submit to Evening office more than two weeks before the trip.
5. Complete and send travel waivers to of which your Chair and your Dean/Provost would sign for approval of the off campus trip
6. Faculty must have complete a current Title IX training and signed document which must be included in the forms send to the Evening office along with all of the travel waivers.
7. Meet the students at the site at the specified time (If your students are under 18 there is specific instructions on the document)
8. Enjoy the experience! But be sure to seek opportunities to turn the students attention to areas related to course content, SLOs and any other area you deem valuable
9. Provide the students with an expected due date for their assignment

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

Assessment of this place-based learning experience would be through:
1. I would provide the students with a question prompt within the course Open Lab site. Prior to this I would utilize the computer lab at the beginning of the course to provide Blackboard and Open Lab orientation
2. Students would then add their own question for consideration prior to the experience. I
3. Students would choose those most appropriate and post them.
4. We would then meet at the exhibit and then they would return to those questions and complete them. I would also provide them with an opportunity to provide a reflection of their experience.
5. I would use the Information Literacy Value rubric
6. This course would be a part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative.
.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?
I most definitely would repeat this experience. The challenge will be funding, scheduling and timing so that the majority of the students would be able to attend, obtaining signed travel forms in advance of the experience. The change I would make is to include more student input as noted in the assessment process indicated above.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These can be links to pages or posts on the OpenLab.

Why is this change different?
*It will incorporate student’s decisions as to what will be the area of focus related to the planned experience
*Students will be provided with an opportunity to determine the scope of the questions and key concepts before the experience and use them post experience
*Systematically analyze their own and others assumptions and evaluate the relevance of contexts when they present their positions.

What inspired the change?
* Incorporation of importance of classroom climate—adding humor and fun into the classroom
*Teaching to the needs and learning styles of the students and not that of the faculty
* Need to make abstract scientific and clinical information into tangible transferable information

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

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Assessing the Whole Student

Assessing the Whole Student

Jason Montgomery

Architectural Technology/Technology and Design

ARCH 1130 Building Technology I

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

In this course, students are required to set up their e-portfolioon OpenLab. Here the e-portfolio is used as a learning log, assignment submission system, and assessment tool. All aspects of the student work for the semester are documented and uploaded, including their sketchbook sketches, their notes from assignment readings, as well as their technical drawing assignments.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

There are multiple goals of this approach to using the e-portfolio:
1. Students learn to use an internet tool to present themselves to an audience.
2. The way the students organize the site, the clarity of the presentation, the rigor of the organization, the care put into the graphics (clean scans, neatly cropped versus smartphone picture with poor focus or lighting and background distraction…) is an opportunity to assess digital skills, engagement, presentation skills and to work with students that need help with these.
3. The e-portfolio serves as a learning log, where students can become more conscious of their learning, seeing the connections between various activities in the course and across different courses when this activity is more broadly utilized (breaking out of silos).
4. The faculty can use this tool assess the student holistically, especially with a range of required activities in the course (such as reading comprehension, building foundational knowledge in the discipline, technical drawing, thinking and articulation of ideas through freehand drawing)
5. The e-portfolio becomes a tool for subsequent faculty to assess the skills of students at THE BEGINNING of the semester, so they can tailor assignments and adjust sequence to address needs of that particular group of students.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

The e-portfolio must be introduced at the beginning of the semester in order to effectively capture the whole semester of student work. The students require more or less a one hour demonstration of how to set up their site, the interface on OpenLab, scanning and uploading images, adding pages and organizing menus. It is important to show them the support pages on OpenLab and the help desk.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

The faculty member may need training in OpenLab to be better able to administer and support this activity. The faculty member and the students could benefit from seeing examples of other’s e-portfolios to inspire and help them visualize what they are trying to do.

This activity is important if it becomes part a broader tool across a department, so the stakes are significant in this context.

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

This activity is a tool that facilitates assessment, but it could be assessed directly too, with a rubric that gauges the care and organization of the site.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

The students’ portfolios expressed a wide range of skill and care, but this in itself is useful. As the end of the semester approached, the students had a very clear visualization of what remained to be completed; they had a clear sense of their responsibility to meet the course requirements.

Many students struggle with what are becoming entry level skills with technology: scanning, manipulating and converting files, digital editing… These skills become important to the success of the students, but are often not part of the curriculum. This activity raises awareness of the need to support the students with their development of these skills.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These can be links to pages or posts on the OpenLab.

A particular component of this activity, which will be documented in a separate L4 activity template, is the reading and note taking activity that was part of the e-portfolio submissions. This activity proved much deeper and more direct as a tool for assessing student reading comprehension than a typical quiz.

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/hchikhmousa-eportfolio/reading-notes/

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Bustling Vacancy_ Mapping “behavioral” city patterns to produce architectural space

Bustling Vacancy_ Mapping “behavioral” city patterns to produce architectural space

Loukia Tsafoulia

Architectural Technology/Technology & Design

ARCH3609_Integrated Software in the Architectural Office https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/3609-integrated-software-in-the-architectural-office/

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

In this course, I create a project with multiple components that incorporates research, evidence, reading and thinking critically, demands organization and presentation skills and requires the ability to work collaboratively. Students work in groups of 2 or 3 over a semester period to produce a highly conceptual design project that is generated following rules of grammar, logic and mathematics. The project brings together the Urban and the Architectural scales through a series of NYC data abstractions and the establishment of rules that will define the students’ design in the architectural scale.

The students are asked to come up with a design dictionary of 3 main architectural elements that serves as their “alphabet” for space creation. At the same time, each group focuses on developing a visual language to discuss, collect, measure, map and quantify NYC behaviors/patterns. The students will respond to the literal and symbolic notion of “Motus” in the city, and create mappings, diagrams, data visualizations and diaries. The projects will ultimately be based on the cartography of their architectural
elements in such a way that they relate to the city mapping analysis. The assembly of these elements will ultimately create a spatial 3d pattern which programmatically serves as an open air experiential space in an empty city lot.

The assigned project involves four process stages:
– “Alphabet” stage
The “Alphabet” stage involves the creation of a design dictionary of three basic architectural elements: stair, wall and atrium. These are the “bricks” students will be using to construct their space.

– “Data” stage
This stage involves the study of New York City’s five boroughs using data analysis in order to identify and map “behavioral” city patterns such as patterns of noise, circulation, population, income, crime rates, programmatic uses, urban density, energy consumption etc. The teams select a minimum of two datamaps and numeric tables supporting these maps and through research, observation and analysis they correlate them and create a series of abstractions.

– “Syntax” stage
During the “Syntax” stage the students extract rules out of the city patterns that will define in a later stage their design. Outcome of this phase is a series of 2d diagrams and graphs explaining the “behavior” of each of the maps and their diagrammatic interpretation in 3d.

– “Composition” stage
This stage is about composing all the material produced during the Alphabet, the Data and the Syntax phases. The students employ the generated rules in order to assemble their architectural elements’ studies. They put together selected wall, atrium and stair studies (a minimum of 2 studies) following the rules extracted from the city pattern research to create a project. The projects will not take data literally. They will rather depart from conventional data definitions and ask what is the city, what is data, and how can they be re-applied in an architectural scale.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

For this project the students are provided with guidelines for a better understanding of the integration of specialized software into all aspects of the architectural profession. The class simulates the design office space complexity so the students familiarize with its demands.
Students work in groups, demonstrating teamwork spirit, schedule and manage their time in collaboration with others, be professional with timeframes, enhance their speech and rhetoric skills. They have to weekly fill out timesheets learning how to be efficient with the hours spent per task.

The work environment demands that employees work together responsibly so learning in the classroom is initiated in a highly collaborative, interactive, and experiential way and the evaluation and feedback given in between them is encouraging, learning focused and transparent.

Students have to use data related to their city as their driver towards design. During this process students develop research, analytical and compositional skills. They conduct research related to NYC data using online resources such as https://nycopendata.socrata.com/ , http://nyc.pediacities.com/Nycpedia ,
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/ and learn how to properly cite sources. They gather, interpret, evaluate, and apply information discerningly from a variety of sources. Students present regularly throughout the semester to invited professionals from the architecture and urban design as well as curatorial fields. The presentations are in the form of printed boards 24”by36” (I provide them with the template) and oral presentation. Through publicly presenting their work students gain confidence and conscientiousness on their production, engage in constructive dialog with professionals and through this personalized experience increase their interest towards higher education levels.
Students curate all the work produced for the class including their group project in an individual book / portfolio. Main emphasis is given into the narrative of their design concepts and how they all tie together. Story telling is the center of their curation. Every book represents each author so each student should manifest his/her arguments through this book. Together with a printed version the students are also asked to use OpenLab, Archinect and Issuu as platforms to digitally create their eportfolio.

In the end of the semester, I showcase students work at my online digital platform PLB_Education (see link below) giving students the opportunity to be exhibited, to make their achievements visible not only to School’ ‘s community but also to the wider public. For the next semester I plan to also use OpenLab as an online platform in which students will post their blogs and discussions participating in a more interactive learning process. This project and its supportive materials (online archive, recordings etc) create a strong base for continuation past the course’s teaching period. Each subsequent class will build on previous semester classes’ work and therefore document how NYC data progressively alter.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This activity is a semester long project. I introduce the project on week #2 when I spend 30 minutes in class explaining the details, giving references and engaging on brief discussion with the students. I also post the project’s detailed description, resources, references and tutorials on Blackboard. For this coming semester I will also use the OpenLab platform for discussions and open feedback. From that point on my lectures and weekly assignments support with knowledge on integrated software the evolution of the project.
After Midterm I split the class in two sections: first part is a lecture or workshop on software and technical skills and the second part (60mnts) is organised as desk-critiques or open discussion on each team’s progress and concept.

Students are required to work in groups and meet once per week with their collaborator/s for two hours of brainstorming. Then they have to distribute the tasks between them in order to meet the weekly goals of the project as defined in the weekly assignment handouts. I expect students to devote 4 hours weekly over the course of a semester. They use a timesheet template created in google drive to control the time spent per task. Generally, I will allow some class time for students to meet and discuss and for me to check in with their groups, however, students are expected to devote time outside the classroom for gathering and analyzing their data and composing their design.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

The students are given step by step all the software and theoretical support needed to develop the project’s multiple components in the form of weekly lectures and class discussions. So, the project is broken down to 10 weekly assignments/tasks outlined in the form of instructional handouts. I also post on Blackboard:
Tutorials and Class Recordings so I support them with possible software questions they may have outside the class hours.
– References and Resources.
– Base files for their convenience.

The students are given a template they have to follow and fill with required visuals and text description for their project’s presentation. These are boards 24” by 36” that they gather all the material needed to visualize their project (see project’s brief). Additionally, the whole class is sharing a google spreadsheet that serves as timesheets documenting hours spent per task as individuals and as groups for the project (see project’s brief).

High-Impact Educational Practices: Which of these practices based on George Kuh’s High Impact Educational Practices (and other innovative approaches) does this activity incorporate? Choose all that apply.

Collaborative assignments and projects, Open Digital Pedagogy (the OpenLab), Undergraduate research, Capstone courses and projects, Place-Based Learning

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

This project is 50% of the overall grade. All the students have to weekly upload their work digitally on Blackboard following a given file name protocol. I have designed and posted on Blackboard a Rubric relevant to the project’s learning objectives with 5 scales (needs improvement, satisfactory, good quality, excellent quality). The class is broken down into four big presentations (1/4 pin up, Midterm Review, 3/4 pin up , Final Review). The overall grade for this project is outcome of their weekly submissions grade (40%) as well as their 4 main group presentations grade (60%) throughout the semester.

The performance criteria I asses for their group project presentations in my Rubric are based on oral communication:

Organization
– Ability to collaborate and present successfully as a group a highly sophisticated project.
– Professionality in presentation and meeting the given deadlines.
– Followed layout and visualization instructions for the project.

Quality of Supporting Material:
– Neatness and accuracy of the visuals.
– Quality of written description.
– Quality of city data analysis and data interpretation.
– Quality of final design as defined by the constraints set by the city data each team is analysing.

Delivery
– Quality of oral presentation. The presentation techniques, speech and posture as well as
coordination btw the group members are appropriate and appealing.
– Quality of plotted boards (nicely cut, pinned and in great resolution).

The performance criteria I asses for their weekly group project digital submissions are:
– followed instructions and submission on time
– file composition
– file neatness & accuracy,
– file line weights & resolution
– file presentation.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

This is the second semester I assign this project and students have positively responded addressing it as one of the most motivating and challenging projects they have dealt with. It has been a motivator towards high quality of work and a very interactive and vivid class. I am very excited to implement all the knowledge obtained through the Living Lab Seminars related to the use of OpenLab and the incorporation of HEP and General Education SLO’s to the project’s brief. This assignment has many components so in order to create a very clear methodology for the students I have to provide them with very specific visualization steps, templates and class recordings. Directing all the steps of the project, creating an online platform to exhibit their work, creating timesheets, refining the rubrics for this project’s assessment and providing them in advance to the students has made my teaching overall more effective.

The main challenge is having the students work in groups and being able to manage their time accordingly. For that reason, I create an hierarchy similar to the office space where the working team reports to the project leader regularly through emails, timesheets and notes on each others projects shared with the whole class.

This project by nature relates not only to architectural, urban and preservation design oriented fields but also to Curatorial Fields and Social Sciences. Since this project is based on both qualitative and quantitative data analysis there could be a correlation with Math fields as well. Finally, the project focuses on developing a visual language to discuss, collect, measure, and quantify data. The students and create mappings, diagrams, data visualizations, diaries so I could imagine this project being part of Visual Arts Studies. In the future, I would like to further the project to better connect STEM fields with Liberal Arts.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These could be in the form of PDF or Word files, links to posts or files on the OpenLab, etc.

This is link shows the course’s OpenLab page with the courses syllabus and the weekly handouts, and the description for this project. This website is still under construction and will be used for the next
semester:

– https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/3609-integrated-software-in-the-architectural-office/

This link showcases students work from the previous semester:
– http://www.plbny.com/#!3609-bustling-vacancy/c1y5p

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