We’re two weeks in to the Spring 2021 semester. Each semester so far has been so different, with Spring 2020 allowing for faculty and students to get to know each other and the courses before the switch to remote, and Fall 2020 imposing the obstacle of starting the semester without any in-person experience for the vast majority of courses.
What’s different about Spring 2021? We’re hopefully learning more and finding ways to foster teaching and learning using digital tools, kindness, and patience. But we’ve also used up much or most of our energy reserves.
With all of this in mind, we want to ask:
How are you doing?
What support do you need?
What’s something that’s working that you can share as inspiration?
No pressure to share, but if you want to, please feel free to share some thoughts in the comments here.
Our email support offers anyone the opportunity to write in to get help with a specific question.
Finally, we hope you find a little comfort with our Comforting Content for COVID Coping. Sometimes we tweet comforting images or video from our Twitter account, @CityTechOpenLab, using the #ComfortingContent hashtag.
Is there topic in open pedagogy you’d like to see us address here on Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab? Let us know here in the comments or by getting in touch directly!
With the end of the semester is in sight, but before we all scatter to our virtual summer spaces, the OpenLab team wants to hear from you about what worked in this distance-learning semester. What’s something that you found useful, that you want to keep in the upcoming online Summer or Fall semester? What’s something that you have incorporated into your pedagogy that you’ll continue to do–or not do–into the foreseeable future? Leave a comment–short or longer–to share your brilliance with the OpenLab community.
Does this make you think about what’s not working? Save that thought and add it to the What’s not working? conversation instead.
If you have ideas that you want more help with, either from a pedagogical angle or a technical one, please check out our expanded Help materials, contact our team via email (OpenLab@citytech.cuny.edu) or contact form, or participate in our virtual office hours.
With the end of the semester is in sight, but before we all scatter to our virtual summer spaces, the OpenLab team wants to hear from you about what didn’t work so well this semester. Maybe you realized something that works so well in person doesn’t convert so well in this distance education context. Maybe a new tool doesn’t work the way you need it to. Maybe you see things clearly now, or can’t puzzle out what didn’t work. Share a thought in the comments–as long or as short as you want–to add a voice to our conversation about what needs improvement, rethinking, or what we need to drop altogether–or be sure not to drop again.
Have something that worked really well? Share in in the What’s working conversation instead!
If you have ideas that you want more help with, either from a pedagogical angle or a technical one, please check out our expanded Help materials, contact our team via email (OpenLab@citytech.cuny.edu) or contact form, or participate in our virtual office hours.
Don’t forget–there are places to publish your teaching fails. Your comment here could be the start of something very productive for an even larger audience!
The OpenLab grew up alongside the Living Lab General Education Seminar, and the success of both is thanks in part to a commitment to high-impact educational practices and open pedagogy.
The OpenLab team is collaborating today with the Living Lab General Education Seminar to get creative and think about ways of engaging students in the Intercultural Knowledge gen ed student learning outcome through open digital tools, using a game-based approach.
Interested in learning more? Check out our slides!
Did you ever show friends or colleagues City Tech’s OpenLab, only to have them ask, “How can I have an OpenLab at my school/institution/organization?!”
The answer is Commons in a Box OpenLab!
Please share information about the NYCDH Week workshop introducing CBOX OpenLab, tomorrow, 2/7, at the CUNY Graduate Center:
This workshop introduces Commons In A Box OpenLab: free, open source software that enables anyone to create a commons space specifically designed for open learning, where students, faculty, and staff can collaborate across disciplinary boundaries and share their work openly with one another and the world.
Funded by a generous grant from the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities, the project brings together Commons In A Box (CBOX; http://commonsinabox.org/) — the software that powers NYCDH — and City Tech’s OpenLab platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/). The result is a teaching-focused version of CBOX that provides a powerful and flexible alternative to costly proprietary systems, and is already being adopted at CUNY and beyond.
We will begin by introducing CBOX OpenLab and demonstrating its features and functionality, using examples drawn from City Tech’s OpenLab and BMCC’s new installation. We will then engage participants in group discussion of how they might use (or are already using) CBOX OpenLab, and the benefits and challenges of open learning.
Some of City Tech’s OpenLab team is joining forces with some of the team growing BMCC’s OpenLab to showcase Commons in a Box OpenLab at the CUNY IT Conference today, 12/6, at 1pm: “Building Open Pedagogical Communities with Commons in a Box OpenLab.” We hope you can join us or check out our slides.
CBOX OpenLab is a platform that brings together work that happens in different aspects of college life: coursework, portfolios, collaborative projects, initiatives, clubs, and administrative, committee, and pedagogical work. The platform’s more defined architecture–for example: courses, projects, clubs, and portfolios, but customizable to any taxonomy–structures college activities to make visible on its homepage, on member profiles, and through browsing, the robust work and life of the college community.
Bringing these different aspects of college life together on one platform benefits the work of the college community. The skills from using the platform for one aspect–coursework, for instance–become invaluable in another, such as participating in a club. Rather than segmenting OERs or portfolios or isolating coursework from extracurriculars, each into separate, closed, often proprietary platforms, these resources and activities comingle in one open digital space.
Thursday, February 21, 2019, 4:30-6:00pm (Faculty Commons, N227)
*Refreshments will be served. (Thanks to the Provost’s Office for its generous support of this event!)
*Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation.
*Please RSVP by commenting on this post. Please share this invitation with your colleagues!
Join the OpenLab Team, City Tech faculty and staff, and CUNY colleagues at our next Open Pedagogy event, where we’ll be discussing teaching and learning with ePortfolios on the OpenLab. While ePortfolios are the work of students, faculty and staff have a key role in helping students to build an online presence and curate an ePortfolio that is reflexive, engaging, and professional. ePortfolios on the OpenLab are designed to allow students to create professional websites that showcase their academic and professional experiences, as well as a space to reflect on these experiences. We’ll discuss how ePortfolios can be integrated into class-based assignments, and the challenges of having students curate their work in the open, public-facing space of the OpenLab. We’ll consider the following questions:
How can the opportunities available in digital spaces change the way we think about curation in teaching and learning (and how we teach and learn through curation)?
How can ePortfolios scaffolded into students’ coursework at City Tech help students curate and reflect on their academic, extracurricular, and personal growth?
How can ePortfolios be revised as a student approaches graduation to present a professional portfolio for their career or graduate studies aspirations?
How does working individually, publicly, and socially change the way we implement and consider curatorial strategies?
This event kicks off our Spring 2019 Open Pedagogy series on curation in open digital pedagogy, and we’re excited to start a conversation around how “curation”–practically and conceptually–can be integrated into teaching and learning on the OpenLab.
Save the date for our upcoming linked workshop, “Curating Student Work in ePortfolios, ” where we will share best practices for / do hands-on work for incorporating ePortfolios into coursework to facilitate student curation of their academic work (Friday, March 1, 12:00-1:30 PM Room G606).
Recommended Readings:
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “ePortfolio.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments. MLA Commons.
