Author: Bree Zuckerman

There was one feature update included in the OpenLab December release that is relevant for OER sites.

The Creative Commons widget, which was added in the September 2019 release, has been updated to include two new fields for the widget, allowing site admins to specify a site author and author URL for their license.

This means the license statement in the site sidebar can now read, for example, “Unless otherwise noted, this site by Bree Zuckerman has a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.”  Previously there was no way to easily specify an author’s name.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the OpenLab team.

There were two new features included in the OpenLab November release that are relevant for OER sites.

New Features

• OpenLab Attributions is a new plugin built by the OpenLab development team that allows anyone to add attributions for Creative Commons licensed content they’re using on an OpenLab site. Each attribution will add a superscript number that links to a reference list at the bottom of a page or post.
• There’s a new Library widget (in addition to the existing Library Tools) that can be added to the sidebar of any OpenLab site. The Library Subject Guides widget allows you to add links to any of the subject guides created by the City Tech Library.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the OpenLab team.

There were a number of new features, themes, and functionality updates on the OpenLab in the June, August, and September releases that are relevant for OER sites.

New Features and Themes

• Education Pro Theme: This theme is designed for OER sites on the OpenLab, although it can be used for any type of site. It has been customized to improve the design, ensure accessibility, and to include styles that would be useful for an OER.
• Commons License Widget: Available for use on all OpenLab sites, this widget was built based on the one developed for the CUNY Academic Commons, which allows site admins to choose a Creative Commons license to display in their site’s sidebar. Although all content on the OpenLab is automatically licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license, the widget allows you to display a license more prominently on your own site, or to choose a different license.
• PDF Embedder Premium Plugin: This plugin was retired due to accessibility and usability issues. It will continue to work on sites where it’s already activated but will no longer be available for activation on new sites.
• Print this Page: There is now a ‘Print this Page’ button you can add to the bottom of pages and posts, which allows readers to print a nicely-formatted version of the page or post (you can see it in action at the bottom of this post). There are two different settings for this: (1) You can enable this functionality on a site’s Dashboard, in Settings > Reading.  At the bottom of the reading settings, choose ‘Enable ‘Print This Page’ button on all posts and pages,’ and click ‘Save Changes.’
  
  (2) Once enabled, when editing a page or post, you will see a checkbox in the right-hand sidebar that says ‘Add a ‘Print this Page’ link to this post allowing site users to easily print its contents.’
  

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the OpenLab team.

Last month, there were no OER-specific OpenLab updates to report, but there were a few that are relevant to OER in the May OpenLab release.

New Features and Updates

• Course and Project “Type” was added as a heading on the search results page, when you filter Courses or Projects by Type (e.g. FYLC, OER, or Cloneable).
• Breadcrumb navigation is now included in the default site for new courses, in order to improve navigation on a site’s subpages. Currently breadcrumbs are available with the OpenLab Twenty Sixteen and OpenLab Twenty Thirteen themes, but they will now be included by default on all new course sites, created after the May 15 release.  A few things to note:
  1. If you change from the default theme to anything other than OpenLab Twenty Sixteen and OpenLab Twenty Thirteen, the breadcrumbs will no longer appear.
  2. If you want to keep the default theme but don’t want the breadcrumbs, you can remove them by deactivating the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin in Dashboard > Plugins.
  3. You shouldn’t need to change any of the plugin settings, but if you do, you can find them in Dashboard > Settings > Breadcrumb NavXT.

Bug Fixes

1. In rare cases where a course was cloned through shared cloning but the original source course was deleted, it appeared in the credits as “Course – “.  Now, if the original course was deleted, nothing appears in the credits line.
2. For OpenLab members using the new WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg), you may have noticed that the OpenLab toolbar at the top of your site covered up some of the elements at the top of the Block Editor page. This was fixed so that it no longer overlaps.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact the OpenLab team.

This is the second post in what will become a monthly series highlighting any new features, functionality, or bug fixes on the OpenLab that are relevant for OER sites.

New Plugins and Themes

• • Mammoth .docx converter plugin: allows for easier copy and pasting from Microsoft Word without losing formatting, which should be helpful in adding materials like a syllabus to an OER site.  Something to keep in mind with this plugin is that the more semantic the Word doc is (e.g. use of Heading and paragraph styles), the better the formatting will translate to  posts and pages. Claire Cahen, an OpenLab Digital Pedagogy Fellow, has written a helpful post about the plugin and its functionality.
  • OpenLab Twenty Thirteen: This is a child theme of Twenty Thirteen.  The only difference between the two is that activating the theme also automatically activates the plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT, which adds breadcrumb links to pages, making it easier to navigate sites that might have a large number of pages. The plugin may be deactivated if you don’t want to use breadcrumbs, but it is only compatible with the OpenLab Twenty Thirteen and OpenLab Twenty Sixteen themes.
  • Shortcodes Ultimate plugin: provides more than 50 shortcodes that can be used in the post or page editor to add different kinds of functionality and visual elements, such as dropcaps, accordions, tabs, sliders, and more, to posts and pages. You can preview the available shortcodes on the plugin site.
  • Search and Filter plugin: allows you to add advanced options for searching and filtering posts on your site, such as the ability to allow people to filter posts by tags within particular categories, and more.

Credits

This post is adapted from the monthly series This Month in the OpenLab, written and published on the Open Road blog by the OpenLab community team.

This is the first post in what will become a monthly series highlighting any new features, functionality, or bug fixes on the OpenLab that are relevant for OER sites.

New Features and Functionality

• Improvement of OER identification and searching. This includes: creation of a system for the visual identification of OERs on the OpenLab, creating a functionality and procedure for designating courses as OERs so they will have a visual “badge” as well as an identification on the backend that will allow users to better search for OERs on the OpenLab
• Broadening the functionality of Course Cloning.  Faculty can designate their courses “shareable,” which allows any other OpenLab faculty member to clone the course.  Step-by-step instructions for shared cloning are included in OpenLab Help.
• Disable Discussion, Docs, and Files. Many OER sites don’t use these tools, located on a course or project’s profile page.  These can now be disabled by going to Profile > Settings > Settings, and then scrolling down to the section for Discussion, Docs, and Files Settings.
• Improvements to the Navigation Menu widget. The menu that appears in the widget no longer includes the Group Profile and Home links by default. This should be helpful for anyone who wishes to use a menu in the sidebar for sites with more complex navigation structures.

New Plugins and Themes

• Easy Table of Contents: This plugin improves upon the functionality of the older Table of Contents Plus plugin that is no longer being maintained by its developer. We recommend using Easy Table of Contents rather than Table of Contents Plus, but the latter does still work.
• PDF Embedder Premium: This plugin expands the functionality of the PDF Embedder plugin, including a download button for embedded PDFs, the ability to show active links in PDFs, and a better views on mobile. If you’re already using PDF Embedder, you can continue to use it, but in order to take advantage of the new features, you’ll need to deactivate it, and activate the premium version. It appears in the list of plugins on your site dashboard just below PDF Embedder, and is called PDF Embedder Premium.
• Easy Custom Sidebars: This plugin allows you to show a different sidebars, on different pages of your site. It replaces Dynamic Widgets, which had a similar functionality, but was more difficult to set up.
• OpenLab Twenty Sixteen theme and Breadcrumb NavXT plugin: OpenLab Twenty Sixteen is a child theme of Twenty Sixteen, and is quite similar, with the following changes: there’s no black border around the site, and some of the margins around the content are decreased so there’s less white space. The size of the site title is larger,  some of the heading styles are different, and bulleted and numbered lists are indented. Activating the theme also automatically activates the new plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT, which adds breadcrumb links to pages, making it easier to navigate sites that might have many different pages, like OER sites. The plugin may be deactivated if you don’t want to use breadcrumbs, but it can only be used with the Twenty Sixteen theme.
• Anthologize plugin improvements. A number of improvements were made to the plugin including:
  • When editing a project, you are now able to view more details about each page and post, including categories, tags, and author, as you’re choosing them to add to a project. In addition, when exporting a project to save as a pdf or other file type, the author is now generated automatically from all post and page authors included in that project.
  • Changes to the formatting and options available for PDF exports, including improvements in the way image captions display, and the way text wraps around images. There are also now options for including the author and date for a post or page being included in a project.
  • A number of accessibility improvements to the dashboard interface were also made.
• TablePress: This plugin provides a very robust but simple way to add tables to any post or page. The tables can be anything from simple to more complex tables that can be sorted or filtered, or split into multiple pages. The tables are mobile-friendly and accessible.
• WP Accessibility: This plugin makes a number of improvements to the accessibility of OpenLab sites. On the OpenLab, the main function will be ensuring that everyone remembers to add alt text to images. It also removes the target attribute from links so they do not open in a new tab.  This is not a good practice for both accessibility and usability, but if you feel it is necessary, you can find instructions to change this setting on the WP Accessibility help page in OpenLab Help.  You can also find out more about the plugin on the WordPress.org WP Accessibility plugin page.
• Accordion Shortcodes: This plugin allows you to add sections of text or other elements to their site that can be expanded or collapsed.  It is both mobile-friendly and accessible.
•  Cite: This plugin adds a box at the bottom of any post or page with citation information that readers can easily copy and paste.

Credits

This post is adapted from the monthly series This Month in the OpenLab, written and published on the Open Road blog by the OpenLab community team.