Category Archives: OpenLab

Paul King: The Field Trip as Architectural Scavenger Hunt

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Professor Paul King teaching on the Brooklyn Waterfront

Professor Paul King teaching on the Brooklyn Waterfront

Professor Paul King heads a unique learning community comprised of two classes, ARCH 1200 Architectural Drawing II and ARCH 1290 Architectural CADD, both taught by him. Using the learning community framework to combine the two classes offers increased one-on-one contact hours between professor and students, and it allows for greater flexibility with lessons. Both courses share a common class website on the OpenLab that links to team pages for group projects. Professor King applies numerous innovative pedagogical strategies to his courses, including a motivating field trip early in the semester that allows students to apply practical, disciplinary knowledge as well as become better acquainted with their teammates.

A field trip to the nearby Brooklyn waterfront launches a two-part assignment for which students are assessed for individual work and a group presentation. Professor King uses a detailed worksheet to transform a field trip to Brooklyn Bridge Park into a site visit. Students are asked to present a preliminary subject for an individual case-study that they continue working on during the semester. Working in teams, students prepare slideshow presentations that present team members and documentation of architectural structures related to “movement,” “expansion joints,” “points of failure,” “retrofits,” and things that need improvement in design. The early field trip enhances class objectives by encouraging students to discover and apply architectural concepts in real settings. Moreover, the class outing creates an opportunity for students to interact beyond classroom walls to foster group dynamics.

Click here to see a final Powerpoint presentation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park site visit by a student team.

Sean Scanlan: Shared Reading across the Professions

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Who's reading the New York Times?

Who’s reading the New York Times?

Recently, Professor Sean Scanlan’s ENG 1101 English Composition class participated in a learning community with two courses in the Hospitality department (Perspectives of Hospitality Management-HGMT 1101 taught by Professor Karen Goodlad and Food and Beverage Management-HGMT 1102 by Professor John Akana).  The learning community shared readings, shared their experience of the Brooklyn waterfront, and even shared a meal in CityTech’s Janet Leffler Dining Room. This ambitious endeavor helped create a unified experience for first-year students and linked the three classes on the OpenLab. A common goal for all was to raise student awareness of the connections between different courses, in essence, one of the critical aims of General Education. But how does one assess Gen Ed in the classroom? within the curriculum? across the college? Assessment begins by asking the right questions, and asking the right questions begins by opening the discourse on Gen Ed to students and faculty. Professor Scanlan starts the dialogue in his classroom and on the class website, on which he dedicates a section to Gen Ed, beginning with a question “Is English 1101 a General Education course?” As Professor Scanlan notes, ENG 1101’s emphasis on reading, writing, and critical thinking makes the course fall firmly within the broad parameters of Gen Ed.  Moreover, Professor Scanlan raises important questions on the impact of our digital age on General Education and to this end, he posts an amusing video “The Machine is Us/ing Us” for us to reflect on.

Maria Bilello: Looking Beyond Cavities to Promote Cultural Sensitivity

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Smile Pinki, 2008 documentary by Megan Mylan

Smile Pinki, 2008 documentary by Megan Mylan

Students in Professor Maria Bilello’s DEN 1114 Oral Histology and Embryology course do more than master the many tissues of oral cavities, they write to become more culturally sensitive health care practitioners. To better connect basic knowledge to real world issues in contemporary dental care, Professor Bilello incorporates assignments that encourage students to examine their cultural identities and personal biases in relation to oral congenital malformations. With her guidance, she urges her students to take the first step to greater self-awareness when confronted with deformity. For one project, students are asked to research and prepare oral presentations of developmental abnormalities and their impact on dental development and care. For a reflective writing assignment, students view the Academy Award-winning documentary Smile Pinki about the life-changing journey of a 5-year-old girl Indian girl with a cleft lip. Students are asked to reflect on the film and to share their personal cultural views of deformity and disability on the OpenLab (read examples of student writing here). By incorporating different forms of writing, Professor Bilello aims to shape a more competent and sensitive dental care provider.

Viviana Vladutescu: Making Sense of Remote Sensing

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Viviana Vladutescu and CityTech group at Brookhaven National Lab

Viviana Vladutescu and CityTech group at Brookhaven National Lab

For students in Professor Viviana Vladutescu’s EET 3132 Remote Sensing class, a visit to a “real” lab vividly brought together theory and practice.  In the classroom and university labs, students learned the principles of remote sensing techniques, acquired new software knowledge, and gathered and interpreted data as well.  As part of their coursework, Professor Vladutescu’s students participated in a departmental field trip to the impressive Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.  With the objective of expanding awareness of the field and encouraging further study in the applied sciences, engineering, and physics, students had the opportunity to observe firsthand the work of technicians, engineers, and scientists.  One student noted how unexpected it was to hear a Brookhaven physicist cite the “right hand rule method” that was taught in class, a technique that the student thought was used to “dumb down” content in class when in reality it was a practical trick of the trade.

Students in Professor Vladutescu’s course are enrolled in the Associate or Bachelor degree programs in the Department of Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering Technology (ETET).  For many, meeting active professionals helped validate their own academic choices in the ETET programs.   Several students were inspired when they learned that some of the Brookhaven lab technicians graduated with associate degrees too, thus giving them a better sense of the end goals of graduating with a degree from City Tech.  To encourage students to be proactive in their academic and professional careers, Professor Vladutescu’s class website on the OpenLab included links to internships and job opportunities as well as newsfeeds to stay up-to-date on current technology.

Click here for reflections on one of Professor Vladutescu’s field trips.

The President’s Taste Test: Wine Making in Karen Goodlad’s Class

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Guests are served student wine blends in the Janet Lefler Dining Room at City Tech

Guests are served student wine blends in the Janet Lefler Dining Room at City Tech

In honor of Presidents’ Day, it is fitting to showcase a class lesson conducted by Professor Karen Goodlad and Prof. Lynda Dias as guest lecturer’s in Prof. Roger Dagorn’s class, HGMT 4997 Wines of the New World, which ended in a wine presentation to City Tech President Russell Hotzler in the University’s Janet Lefler Dining Room.  Students worked in groups to produce new blends and evaluated and voted on which wines to serve in City Tech’s dining room, a veritable lab for students in the Hospitality program.  Student teams created blends called “Spicy Brooklyn” or “Charlie’s Angels” by striking a tasty balance of reds such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Syrah.  The teams blogged about their experience and various blend formulations on the class website.

This course examines the multi-faceted world of wine, from production to service to economic regulations of wine industries in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa.  Class trips included a memorable one to the local City Winery in Lower Manhattan.  In turn, experts from the industry visited the classroom on City Tech campus.

Click here for more photos of Professor Goodlad’s blending lesson.

Justin Davis: The Art of Public Speaking

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Garry Winogrand, JFK at the Democratic National Convention, 1960

Garry Winogrand, JFK at the Democratic National Convention, 1960

Professor Justin Davis’ class SPE 1330 Effective Speaking makes use of videos for students to better “see” the performance of public speaking. Students are videotaped in class and asked to review and evaluate their own speeches outside of class. Recordings of student speeches are made available on the class website on the OpenLab, which is loaded with videos of sample speeches that help illustrate differences between persuasive and informative speaking. Alongside student examples of public speaking, Professor Davis also includes links to Presidential speeches. Students are even asked to judge a speech contest virtually by viewing videos of the contestants online and evaluating the speeches for an assignment.

Daniel Alter: Aesthetics and Dentistry

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Student study of a tooth

Student study of a tooth

How do you directly address General Education objectives in a course on Tooth Morphology for a program in Restorative Dentistry? Professor Daniel Alter came up with creative means to overcome this conundrum by using the OpenLab to increase student participation and by assigning an interesting paper assignment.

Professor Alter’s class website is filled with handouts, videos, links to his powerpoint lectures, as well as instructions. In his paper assignment, students were asked to consider the perceptions of beauty in dental practice across diverse cultures. Students uploaded abstracts of their paper to the class site. Their introductions reflect the diverse level of cultural engagement with dental practice from Bali to Japan and South Africa. You can read examples of his students’ research here.

 

Alex Aptekar: Student Projects in Building Technology

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Building SketchProfessor Alexander Aptekar offers two advanced-level courses in Building Technology for the Department of Architectural Technology. Both courses share one class website that is filled with readings, instructions, and video tutorials.  Since assignments for both courses are posted, students can see what is expected of them in the following sequence of the course.  Assignments range from early ‘scavenger hunt’ type exercises to more complex projects late in the semester.  Moreover, the class website offers the opportunity for students to showcase their work.  For example, see a student’s project for an assignment that evaluated the student’s understanding a structure grid, levels, and framing plan.