Fall 2015 OpenLab Office Hours & Workshops for Faculty and Staff

Want to get started on the OpenLab, create a dynamic syllabus, or learn how to blog more with your students?  Look at this Fall semester’s workshops for Faculty and Staff.  Workshops take place in G604, the Faculty Commons (N227), or the Library–please note the different times and locations of various workshops and office hours. Download a PDF of the Fall Schedule here

OpenLab Faculty-Staff Workshops Fall15

 

Sept 19: What’s Happening in the Living Lab?

Come and find out what’s been happening in the Living Lab on Friday, September 19, 2014 in Namm 119, 11:45 am-1:30 pm. The dissemination event is open to all. See what your colleagues have been doing in the Living Lab. Take a break, grab a little lunch, and even think about different approaches to your own classroom. Hope to see you there!

FC_LivingLab_What's_New_91914

What’s Cooking at CityTech? Associate Fellows Present a Living Lab Smorgasbord

Associate Fellow Professor Lenore  Hildebrand, Human Services Dept, presents her Living Lab activity

Associate Fellow Professor Lenore Hildebrand, Human Services Dept, presents her Living Lab activity

Faculty from a wide range of disciplines gathered for the “Real World Problem Solving” meeting to hear final presentations by Associate Fellows and their Living Lab facilitators. After a series of workshops, the latest cohort of Associate Fellows presented creative examples of pedagogical activities to their peers, Living Lab facilitators, and the greater CityTech community.

The gathering began with reflections from Third Year Fellows Aida Egues, Jill Bouratoglou, and Robert Leston, who spoke of their Living Lab involvement and its impact on their teaching and professional development. The Associate Fellows showcased their works-in-progress by adapting an unusual structure for academic presentations. Taking a cue from speed dating, each Associate Fellow took 2 minute-turns to present an activity to small groups that rotated around the workspace from one presenter to the next. Faculty ranging from Construction Management and Civil Engineering to Dental Hygiene and Human Services presented and listened to mini presentations from their colleagues across the college. Gathering in small, intimate groups, each participant had ample opportunity to listen, learn, and ask questions of their peers.

Choosing Your Best Practices

Choosing Your Best Practices

All attendees were given the opportunity to vote for what they thought were the best engagements with issues of Assessment, Place-Based Learning, High Impact Educational Practices, and General Education but in reality all presenters were winners for every professor revealed their passion for teaching and strong commitment to student learning. The gathering culminated in a graffiti activity in which all attendees had a chance to visually express their interests, frustrations, and aspirations. Participants left with an arsenal of new ideas and new strategies to use in their own classes and much to reflect on.

Call for Fourth Year Fellows—Final Opportunity

A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology

GENERAL EDUCATION SEMINAR — Spring 2014

Call for Faculty Fellows                 Join us in the Living Lab

To apply, please complete the application form: http://tinyurl.com/genedseminar

Application Deadline: 1:00pm, Thursday, November 7, 2013

DOWNLOAD Information on the Living Lab Faculty Fellowship Application here

“A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology” is a five-year initiative (2010-2015) funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Strengthening Hispanic-Serving Institutions (Title V) program. Its mission is to re-envision General Education at City Tech as a “living laboratory,” using City Tech’s signature strengths: hands-on experiential models of learning and our vibrant Brooklyn Waterfront location.

We are seeking faculty members to join the General Education Seminar, one of the central activities of the Living Lab, in Spring 2014 and become part of a growing interdisciplinary community of Fellows who are enthusiastically engaged in this transformational effort.

The Gen Ed Seminar

Each year, 18 Faculty Fellows participate in an intensive seminar during the Spring semester, exploring innovative pedagogical approaches that they then incorporate into their courses in the Fall. In the second year of their participation, Fellows recruit and mentor colleagues, attend a series of workshop and events, and collaborate to produce a final report.

Three cohorts of Fellows have taken part in the Seminar to date – the first explored General Education concepts through the lens of the first-year student experience, the second examined collaborative field-based research and the third engaged in academic service learning.

The fourth, and final, cohort will address culminating experiences – capstone courses, internships, global learning (travel experiences), and other courses that focus on the last requirements for degree programs.

Among the questions seminar participants will consider are these:

– What changes can we make to culminating courses that will not just prepare our students to transfer their success at City Tech into careers and further studies but also support creative, original, and critical thinking through the use of high-impact educational practices?

– How can we use one of City Tech’s greatest assets — its location within the “living laboratory” of the downtown Brooklyn waterfront— to create hands-on, place-based learning opportunities with our students?

– How can we use the City Tech OpenLab, an open-source digital platform, to customize learning experiences for our students that will engage them in the intellectual fabric of our College and make their achievements visible to our own community and to the wider public?

The Living Lab Grant

“A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology” has four interrelated activities:

1) The General Education Seminar: brings together diverse groups of Faculty Fellows to revitalize General Education through place-based learning and high-impact educational practices;

2) The OpenLab (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu): creates an innovative digital platform to support open teaching and learning at City Tech, and enhance the intellectual and social fabric of the college community;

3) A Culture of Assessment: integrates comprehensive outcomes assessment into the Gen Ed curriculum;

4) The Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center: builds an endowment to support student and faculty research at this newly-created City Tech institution.

The Schedule

Spring 2014
Fellows will participate in weekly activities, attend public college-wide events, and plan capstone courses, internships or other culminating experiences of the associate or baccalaureate level programs they will teach in the Fall of 2014. Fellows will also commit to using the OpenLab actively for all seminar-related work and teaching. Participating faculty will receive a 3-credit course release during this semester.

Fall 2014
Fellows will implement what they have learned in their classrooms and on the OpenLab. Fellows will participate in four meetings or workshops.

Spring 2015
Fellows will mentor colleagues with the intent of applying seminar findings to additional courses and sections.

Fall 2015
After a thorough examination of both theory and implementation, the seminar cohort will write a final report with recommendations for specific courses and the broader vision of general education at City Tech.

Eligibility

To take part in the seminar, faculty must be:
– full time;
– able to make a two-year commitment (January 2014 through December 2015)
– available on Fridays in Spring 2014 to participate in grant activities; availability will also be required on several Fridays through Fall 2015;
– teaching a capstone course, internship or other culminating experience in Fall 2014; – willing to work in a highly collaborative environment;
– willing to use the OpenLab (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu) for all seminar-related activities and teaching (training and support will be provided);
– approved by their department chair.

Compensation

Faculty Fellows will receive 3-credits of release time during the Spring 2014 semester. Work done as part of this project is vital service to the College.

Application Process

Fellows will be chosen based on the strength of their statements of interest and their commitment to participate fully in all activities. We seek to convene a heterogeneous group of faculty members who bring intellectual vitality and a passion for teaching to City Tech.

To apply, please complete the application form: http://tinyurl.com/genedseminar

Application Deadline: 1:00pm, Thursday, November 7, 2013

Further Information
Please contact Karen Goodlad, Living Lab General Education Seminar Co-Director, at kgoodlad@citytech.cuny.edu or Alexander Aptekar, Living Lab General Education Seminar Co-Director at aaptekar@citytech.cuny.edu if you have questions or need additional information.

Transformations: The Living Lab at City Tech and Beyond

Remnants of destruction remain a year after Hurricane Sandy hit Sheepshead Bay

Remnants of destruction remain a year after Hurricane Sandy hit Sheepshead Bay

As the thick, warm air of a city summer dissipates into the crisp days of early autumn, it is timely to reflect on City Tech’s Living Lab project, a federally-funded grant aimed at re-imagining the role of general education in an urban college of technology. This fall, we embark on the fourth year of the project that has helped transform City Tech and our Brooklyn Waterfront into a living laboratory for our students. Each year, a select group of fellows has gathered in a semester-long series of seminars to enhance general education at City Tech, whether one is teaching first-year students, building a collaborative research team, or developing service learning projects. With two more years of the long-term grant to build durable and effective practices, a reflection of Living Lab activities demonstrates how the project has transformed teaching and learning for faculty and students alike.

Living Lab seminars are intensive with thought-provoking reading and lively debate, and they offer unique opportunities for collaboration among faculty from disciplines as diverse as Architectural Technology, Human Services, Math, Nursing, and English. Together, Living Lab fellows evaluate and work on implementing creative, high-impact pedagogical practices in their classrooms; and encourage each other to move beyond classroom walls to engage the larger community. Take for example two science courses, Professor Ralph Alcendor’s microbiology class and Professor Diana Samaroo’s chemistry laboratory that turned the waterfront into an experimental lab. Working in groups, Professor Alcendor’s students drew water samples from under the Brooklyn Bridge in order to gain a better understanding of the bacterial diversity of our environment. Student teams in Professor Samaroo’s class used their samples to conduct numerous chemical experiments back in the lab. The chemistry students even borrowed samples from Professor Alcendor’s biology course to test for differences in water quality before and after last fall’s catastrophic storm. The exercises helped nurture collaboration between students, as well as created opportunities for students to conduct field-based research and data collection. For Professors Alcendor and Samaroo, their involvement in the Living Lab seminars helped create the opportunity to pool resources for students enrolled in courses in different disciplines.

Such scientific experiments serve as an example of place-based learning practices promoted by the Living Lab, and they also highlight the environmental vagaries of New York City’s shoreline, which came into glaring focus a year ago when Hurricane Sandy devastated the city’s waterfront. Severe flooding damaged communities of numerous faculty, staff, and students, and even turned the old Klitgord auditorium into a temporary shelter. With the third year’s emphasis on academic service learning, Living Lab fellows took the opportunity to visit with a community organization in Sheepshead Bay, one of many seaside communities ravaged by the Superstorm. On the surface the sleepy community appeared tranquil and back to normal, but fellows quickly discovered the very real consequences of a devastating hurricane. Living Lab fellows met with local residents to listen to their first-hand recollections of their experience before, during, and after the storm and came away with a deeper understanding of the recovery process. Professor Soyeon Cho of Human Services noted how she was “able to look at the community not as a professor who teaches Human Services classes, but a person who is trying to examine the needs to provide actual help.” Meeting with hurricane survivors was dramatic, evoking Walt Whitman’s lines in Leaves of Grass “what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life,” a poetic statement that highlights the disjuncture between direct experience and experience mediated through media. The visit to Sheephead Bay was a perfect opportunity for faculty to directly engage a variety of issues that arise when one develops academic service learning projects for students, including methods to identify needs, assess situations, and the importance of one-to-one communication. Third-year fellows have initiated numerous academic service learning projects to foster student involvement in diverse communities to achieve lifelong impact. Professor Aida Egues of Nursing has noted how the “Living Lab has been the most incredible opportunity and platform for educators wanting to offer students altruistic, creative, and meaningful experiences through high-impact practices suited for developing the leaders of the future. ” In Professor Jason Montgomery’s Building Technology course for the Department of Architectural Technology, students have the opportunity to study the effects of Hurricane Sandy. One assignment requires students to redesign a storm-damaged brownstone in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Professor Jill Bouratoglou, also of Architectural Technology, assigns design projects for commercial and residential use in her Architectural Design class. As part of the design process, her student teams are required to visit and research their target communities. Each group reflects on and submits components of their research and design steps on the class website on the OpenLab, City Tech’s new online platform.

Professor Soyeon Cho strives to combine course objectives with a model of academic service learning in “Introduction to Human Services” for the Department of Human Services. She proposes using a semester-long project in which students identify a community and an active agency within it for a series of research papers, and reflective writing. Student teams are required to interview an agency and to create a means to survey clients in order to assess the agency’s impact. The collaborative student work promotes the practice of formal assessments, writing research reports that demonstrate the application of learned theories, enhanced personal observations, and peer evaluations.

This year in the Nursing Department, two Living Lab fellows Professors Aida Egues and Elaine Leinung, have enlisted other faculty members in their department, including Professor Lisette Santiseban, to help launch a service learning component for all students enrolled in the “Community Health Nursing” course. Full-time and part-time faculty will work with students on projects that meet course objectives while addressing health disparities in vulnerable populations throughout New York City. Collaborating in teams, students will perform comprehensive community assessments, and document their experiences on the OpenLab, posting self-reflections of meeting clinical objectives as part of their ePortfolios. Students will engage community partners through educational sessions, health assessments and fairs, media and political support initiatives, outreach, and training.

Other Living Lab fellows have explored the potential for applying the service learning model to communities within City Tech. Professor Andrew Parker of the Mathematics Department proposes including a service learning project in an introductory course for Math Education majors. Future math teachers would be paired with students in remedial math classes and required to create lesson plans. The transformative process of learning how to teach students of varying needs will be documented in a reflective paper. The project gives student teachers direct experience with pedagogical methodologies as well as engagement with the broader City Tech community.

Living Lab fellows have taken advantage of the interactive abilities of the OpenLab since it went live two years ago. With the capability to reach wider audiences than conventional learning management systems, the OpenLab increases the possibilities of student interaction with fellow students, faculty, and the greater community. At last count, the OpenLab boasted over 7,000 users, who have filled the site with stunning student portfolios, class websites, and virtual spaces for a diverse range of university groups. The OpenLab is a vibrant online community that has given students more access to each other and to professors than ever before. Promoting open access, many OpenLab courses are public and therefore visible to anyone with access to the internet allowing those in the “real world” to see what’s happening at City Tech. The next group of cohorts will focus on the role of general education in capstone courses and the development of internship opportunities. A university-wide dissemination event took place on September 27th. Applications are due November 7, 2013. Come join us!

The above post is published in Nucleus, the Faculty Commons quarterly publication.

What’s New in the Living Lab? Find out on Sept 27!

brain-in-lightbulbCome learn about City Tech’s $3.1 million Title V Grant from the U.S. Department of Education: “A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st Century College of Technology.” This project aims to involve the entire City Tech community of faculty, students, and staff as we build on the college’s hallmark strengths: its experiential, hands-on approach to learning; its identity as a school of technology; and its faculty expertise in place-based education.

September 27, 2013, Namm 119, 1:00-2:45. Lunch will be provided.

Please RSVP to Avril Miller  amiller@citytech.cuny.edu.

BWRC Sponsors Biking in Brooklyn Conference

On Friday March 22, the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center will host a half-day conference on the history, culture, and future of biking in our namesake borough. The conference will bring together local authors, business people, planners and advocates in a conversation about what is happening on our streets and why it matters to Brooklyn and New York City. Hope to see you there!

Bikes on the Brooklyn Waterfront Conference

Narrative Medicine Pioneer, Rita Charon, Speaks at City Tech

Dr. Rita Charon, Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons will speak at City Tech on Friday, February 15, 2013 at 11 am in the Atrium Amphitheater.  Charon’s advancement of narrative competency for health professionals has had significant impact on medical education in the U.S.  Following Charon’s lecture is a discussion led by James Stubenrauch and Joy Jacobson on narrative writing and nursing practice

Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

Call for Second Year Associate Fellows

A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology

GENERAL EDUCATION SEMINAR – ASSOCIATE FELLOWS PROGRAM — Spring 2013

UPDATE: Many thanks for your interest! The application period has now closed. If you completed an application we will be in touch soon with more details about the program.

About The Living Lab

“A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology” is a five-year initiative (2010-2015) funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Strengthening Hispanic-Serving Institutions (Title V) program. Its mission is to re-envision General Education at City Tech as a “living laboratory,” using City Tech’s signature strengths: hands-on experiential models of learning and our vibrant Brooklyn Waterfront location.

The “Living Lab” grant has four interrelated activities:

1) The General Education Seminar: brings together diverse groups of Faculty Fellows to revitalize General Education through place-based learning and high-impact educational practices;

2) The OpenLab (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu): creates an innovative digital platform to support open teaching and learning at City Tech, and enhance the intellectual and social fabric of the college community;

3) A Culture of Assessment: integrates comprehensive outcomes assessment into the Gen Ed curriculum;

4) The Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center: builds an endowment to support student and faculty research at this newly-created City Tech institution.

Join the “Living Lab” General Education Seminar

We are currently seeking full-time and part-time faculty members to join the General Education Seminar Associate Fellows Program in Spring 2013. As an Associate Fellow you will become part of the growing interdisciplinary community at City Tech that is enthusiastically engaged in this transformational effort.

Fellows in the General Education Seminar commit to exploring innovative pedagogical approaches and incorporating what they have learned into their courses. Among the questions seminar participants consider are these:

– What changes can we make to the student experience that will not just prepare our students to succeed at City Tech, but also support creative, original, and critical thinking through the use of high-impact educational practices?

– How can we use one of City Tech’s greatest assets — its location within the “living laboratory” of the downtown Brooklyn waterfront — to create hands-on, place-based learning opportunities with our students?

– How can we use the City Tech OpenLab, an open-source digital platform, to customize learning experiences for our students that will engage them in the intellectual fabric of our College and make their achievements visible to our own community and to the wider public?

The Associate Fellows Program

Associate Fellows – who may be part-time or full-time faculty members – will participate in four workshops during the Spring 2013 semester that focus on General Education and the following: High-Impact Educational Practices, Place-Based Learning, Assessment, and working with the City Tech OpenLab, our new open digital platform for teaching and learning.

Associate Fellows will be mentored by full-time Gen Ed Seminar Fellows, who are responsible for sharing what they’ve learned, with the goal of disseminating the Seminar findings to the entire faculty community.

Eligibility
– both full-time and part-time faculty are eligible;
– available on Fridays in Spring 2013 semester to participate in four workshops (dates TBD);
– willing to work in a highly collaborative environment;
– willing to use the OpenLab (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu) for seminar-related activities and teaching
(training and support will be provided);
– willing to implement what you have learned in your classroom and on the OpenLab in Fall 2013.

Compensation
Work done as part of this project is vital service to the College. Active participation by full-time faculty is recognized as service to the College; part-time faculty will receive a stipend of $480 ($120 per workshop attended).

Application

UPDATE: Many thanks for your interest! The application period has now closed. If you completed an application we will be in touch soon with more details about the program.

Application Deadline
1pm, Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Further Information
Please contact Living Lab General Education Seminar Co-Directors Karen Goodlad at kgoodlad@citytech.cuny.edu or Jonas Reitz at jreitz@citytech.cuny.edu if you have questions or need additional information.