Year: 2018

Spotlight on an OER

As you work on developing your course site, it’s helpful to see what others have done at CityTech. Below is an OER course site developed through the OER programming here at CityTech, by Prof. Theodora Siranian.

The site’s clean appearance is amplified by a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, which helps orient visitors to its content. The overall cohesion  is supported by the layout: students can quickly navigate to their Syllabus, Research Project, and Essay Assignments from the main menu bar.

Prof. Siranian notes the program, “helped me create an open-access, resource-sharing site for my English 1101 course. This site provides my students with cost-free access to the course’s entire curriculum, and creates a wonderful digital synthesis between classroom activities, homework, and long-term projects.” 

If students are seeking additional writing resources, those are also available under “Helpful Style & Grammar Resources,” such as the Purdue OWL site, and Excelsior OWL. CityTech resources, such as links to the Atrium Learning Center and New Student Center are found on the homepage, where students are most likely to find them.

Prof. Siranian’s site achieves visual simplicity, while also providing a direct path to important content. She also confirmed that the student experience has been strongly positive: the class “has been extremely receptive to [the site’s] accessibility and cohesion.”

Upcoming OpenLab Workshops

This Fall, consider attending a workshop with the OpenLab! Check out the list of all the great options (below), also included on this printable flyer.

OPENLAB FACULTY AND STAFF WORKSHOPS — SEPTEMBER 2018
*Newly attending part-time faculty receive a stipend for participation.
 
DESIGNING AND ASSESSING WORK ON THE OPENLAB
Thursday 9/13, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm (L540 – in Library)
Do you want to create online interaction with your students and also be able to assess it within the OpenLab? This workshop shares useful penLab tools for blogging and assessing student work and helps you to brainstorm assignment design for your OpenLab course. Please note: An OpenLab account is required! RSVP http://bit.ly/152nATa
 
OCTOBER 2018
 
SUPPORTING STUDENT SUCCESS ON THE OPENLAB
Thursday October 4th, 2:30pm-4:00pm (G604)
Learn how to use the new course cloning feature, a new OpenLab functionality to promote collaborative pedagogy while building from existing models. RSVP http://bit.ly/152nATa
 
OPEN PEDAGOGY EVENTS – FALL 2018
*Refreshments will be served; Part-time faculty receive a stipend for participation.
 
OPEN DIGITAL PEDAGOGY IN GATEWAY COURSES
Thursday 9/27, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm (N227)
Come discuss how to help students succeed in introductory courses across the curriculum, looking to the successful model of City Tech and BMCC’s Title V grant-funded project, “Opening Gateways to Completion: Open Digital Pedagogies for Student Success in STEM.

REMIXING AND SHARING IN OPEN DIGITAL PEDAGOGY

Thursday 10/18, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm (N227)

Come discuss the ethics and responsibilities of remixing and sharing in open digital pedagogy, & learn about new functionality for cloning and adapting content on the OpenLab.

OFFICE HOURS FALL 2018
Monday, 10:00am – 2:00pm 9/17, 10/15, 11/19, 12/10
Wednesday 12:00pm – 2:00pm 8/28, 9/25, 10/23, 11/27
Friday, 12:00pm – 2:00pm 9/7, 10/5, 11/2, 12/7
All office hours take place in the conference room of the Faculty Commons, N227.

JOIN OPENLAB PROJECT SITES FOR MORE!
The Open Road is your one-stop-shop for everything OpenLab. The site including monthly development updates, our blog series, ‘In the Spotlight’ and up-to-date information on workshops, office hours and OL events!

Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab aims to generate community and discussion around digital pedagogy on the OpenLab. Faculty and staff can pose questions, stimulate discussion and share teaching materials, resources and ideas related to teaching and learning on the OpenLab. We also share information on our Open Pedagogy events, which are CUNY-wide events held at City Tech where we discuss particular aspects of critical digital pedagogy. Past topics have included Open Educational Resources, Writing and Open Digital Pedagogy, and Annotating Digital Texts.

OER Resources

For ease of reference, we’ve compiled this page of resources from the Summer Intensive.

Finding OER

George Mason MetaFinder – This tool helps to search through multiple OER respositories at once; consider it the “Google” of OER.

Some prefer to search through individual repositories instead – here are a few options: OER Commons ; OpenStax ; College Open Textbooks

 Creative Commons licenses

About the licenses – A guide to the different licenses, and what they offer.

As a mini-refresher, here’s our recent blog post about Creative Commons.

Attribution

Open Attribution Builder– If you’re using a photo/image or other specific item, just drop the information in for an instant attribution, to paste into your site.

The OpenLab

This is a document with a list of helpful tools and information about how to create your site on the OpenLab – widgets, tools, and more!

Pedagogy, Usability, and Accessibility

Accessibility Best Practices 

Accessibility Toolkit – An open textbook about accessibility, designed to provide guidance for content creators.

OER at CUNY/SUNY

Open SUNY – Textbooks created by SUNY faculty with open licensing.

CUNY Academic Works – You can find OER in the CUNY institutional repository, by searching via the above link.

Final Steps

Library Permalinker – If you’re linking to something that’s in the library, just copy and paste the original URL of the item into this toolbar, and it will shorten it.

And lastly – as you complete your site, take a moment to review the OER Creation Checklist, as a quick way to cover all the bases.

Seminar 3 Highlights (3/23): Pedagogy, Usability, and Accessibility

Hi everyone,

Here’s a copy of the seminar slides. Also including a digital version of the Accessibility Best Practices for the OpenLab handout. Please feel free to get in contact if you need help locating materials or if you have licensing and fair use questions. If you’re get started on your OpenLab site feel free to contact the OpenLab team with questions; their email openlab@citytech.cuny.edu. They’re always someone available to follow up with you.

Enjoy spring break and I’ll see you on April 13th!

Seminar 2 Highlights (3/16): Licensing & Finding/Selecting OER

Hi all,

Here’s a copy of today’s seminar slides.

Today we talked about how many different learning objects might be incorporated into your OER.

What about assigning an NPR podcast or an article from the Washington Post website? Great! All you need to do is include the links to them on your OER site. This way students are sent directly to the author / publisher’s publicly available version of the resource. It’s perfectly fine to assign free materials available on the web by linking directly to them.

The place to be cautious is with PDFs floating around on the web. Unless you see a Creative Commons license on that PDF, you’ll want to consider if it looks like it’s been posted by someone other than the copyright holder (copyright holder would be the author or publisher). It’s common for PDFs to be posted without permission from the copyright holder, in which case they’re copyright violations and are especially likely to be removed from the internet.

What’s interesting about finding public domain and Creative Commons materials to incorporate into your OER is the extra flexibility you have in how you can use them. Most Creative Commons licenses give you permission to remix and adapt the learning object to your preferences, although the somewhat more “restrictive” CC licenses, specifically non-derivatives, don’t permit you to modify but they do let you post and distribute the materials more freely. For instance, you can upload a PDF or Word file version onto your OER to ensure stable access to students.

We also talked about fair use and finding resources in your discipline. Be sure to reach out to us if you have questions about fair use and finding materials along the way. See you all next Friday!

 

The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

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