Category: Announcements

Open Pedagogy Event: Writing and Open Digital Pedagogies
Thursday November 3, 5:30-7:00pm (Faculty Commons, N227)

*Refreshments will be served. (Thanks to the Faculty Commons for its generous support of this event!)

*Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation.

*RSVP by commenting on this post. Please share this invitation with your colleagues!

Join faculty and staff around the college at the next Open Pedagogy event, where we will be partnering with City Tech’s Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program to discuss writing and open digital pedagogies (which is the support of teaching and learning by using open, online, cost-free, publicly available digital platforms and tools). Together we’ll discuss how to translate the most successful pedagogies which support student learning into the digital world. Emphasis will be placed on writing-to-learn strategies.

City Tech faculty and WAC fellows will share their assignments centered around writing in social media, formal writing and the OpenLab as well as the benefits of low-stakes writing. In doing so, we’ll consider the following questions:

• What challenges have faculty encountered while developing or considering developing writing assignments using open online tools and platforms?
• How can writing-to-learn strategies impact student learning? How can they impact the teaching process?
• How can you (and your students) use the OpenLab to realize the writing assignments you design?
• What does the future of writing assignments and open digital pedagogies look like?

Want to learn more about writing-to-learn strategies and open digital pedagogies? Here are a few short pieces for reference:

• “Open Digital Pedagogy = Critical Pedagogy,” by Jody R. Rosen and Maura A. Smale (2015)
• “Dream Bloggers Invent the University,” by Jason Tougaw (2009)
• “The Challenges of Online Writing Instruction,” by Luca Zamparini (2016)

Open Pedagogy Event: Open Educational Resources at City Tech
Thursday September 22, 5:30-7:00pm (Faculty Commons, N227)

*Refreshments will be served. (Thanks to the Faculty Commons for its generous support of this event!)

*Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation.

*RSVP by commenting on this post. Please share this invitation with your colleagues!

Join faculty and staff around the college at the next Open Pedagogy event, where we will be partnering with the Library to discuss open educational resources (OERs): teaching materials that are free to redistribute, revise, and remix. Together, we’ll deconstruct the nebulous acronym “OER,” and distinguish what makes a resource free and what makes it open. We’ll discuss examples of several homegrown OERs and hear from the City Tech faculty who developed them.

We’ll also share updates on OER initiatives at City Tech and throughout CUNY, considering the following questions:

• What challenges have faculty encountered while developing or considering developing OERs?

• How can OERs impact student learning? How can they impact the teaching process?

• How might OERs support course coordination and fill the gaps in course sequencing?

• How can you use the OpenLab to create and circulate OERs you design?

• What does the future of OERs and curricular materials look like?

Want to learn more about OERs? Here are a few short pieces for reference:

• City Tech Library’s OER Resource Guide

• “What Do We Mean by Open Education?”  (January 16, 2015). Audrey Watters. Hack Education: The History of the Future of Education Technology.

• “Pedagogy, Technology, and the Example of Open Educational Resources.” (November 9, 2015). Robin DeRosa and Scott Robinson. Educause Review.

• “Open Pedagogy in Biology and Political Science.” (June 14, 2016), Cailean Cooney. Open Pedaogy.

• “Into the Open” (August 5, 2016). Karen Cangiolosi, Professor of Biology, Keene State College

*Image credit: opensource.com

Accessibility, Disability, and Open Digital Pedagogy

Thursday, November 12, 2015, 4:30-6:00pm (Faculty Commons, N227)

*Refreshments will be served

(Please share the invitation with colleagues, and RSVP by commenting on this post)

Join faculty and staff around the college at the next Open Pedagogy event, where we will discuss issues of accessibility and disability in online communities and digital spaces. Together, we’ll explore key issues at stake and brainstorm how we, as faculty and staff, might better serve our students and each other by being aware of and competent in best practices. We will start to think through our open digital pedagogy to become more inclusive of all our members as we teach, research, collaborate, and communicate in open digital spaces. We’ll consider the following questions:

• What do accessibility and disability mean and look like in online digital spaces?

• What is universal design?

• What are our responsibilities (ethical, legal, institutional, personal) to consider accessibility and disability, & implement changes to our pedagogy in response?

• “Why is accessibility often treated as an afterthought” (Hoffman 2014)?

• How can we make our work in open digital spaces more accessible?

Want to learn more about issues of accessibility / disability in open digital pedagogies? Here are a few short pieces for reference:

• “Disability, Design, and the Digital Humanities” (George H. Williams, Debates in the Digital Humanities, 2012)

• Recent special issue of First Monday on “Disability and the Internet” that is hot off the (digital) press, and explores a wide ranges of issues on the topic (September 2015)

• “Increasing Access and Making Practice More Inclusive through Disability Awareness Training” (Carrie E. Rood and Michelle L. Damiani, Academe, September-October 2015)

• “Accessibility” [From The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)]

*Image credit: Disability Symbols (Wikimedia Commons)