Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab

Open Pedagogy Event (Th 11/3): Writing and Open Digital Pedagogies

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!

Sun filtering through a dandelion. — Image Credit: Hartwig HKD

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)

Recap: Open Educational Resources at City Tech

Image: Ron Madar

Last Thursday evening we held the first Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Open Educational Resources at City Tech. The event centered around presentations of self-developed OERs from three of CityTech’s OER Fellows, Ari Maller, David Lee, Sue Brandt, and Andrew Parker, Opening Gateways Co-Director of OER Development. The presentations sparked a lively conversation about the about the joys and challenges OERs present, and the potential they hold for our classrooms here at CityTech.

To recap:

Assistant Professor and City Tech librarian Cailean Cooney opened the event by contrasting open educational resources (OER) with the average amount a college student spends on textbooks a year ($1,200!). As many attendees concurred, textbook fees often prevent students from completing course readings or assignments, or present serious obstacles to doing so. OERs, which are free and openly licensed (public domain, Creative Commons) educational materials that can be used for teaching – as well as learning, research and other purposes – help students circumvent these prohibitive costs when accessing course material. Faculty noted that when they used OERs, as compared to traditional textbooks, students were able to access materials and complete courses more regularly. Presenters also commented on and shared how OERs allowed them to include more interactive elements into their class, including movie and audio clips, as well as allowed them more flexibility than a traditional textbook in terms of crafting the content for their course. Relatedly, Sue Brandt discussed how her OER allowed her to keep course content current in a way that traditional textbooks could not, David Lee discussed using learning management systems in tandem with the OpenLab, while Ari Maller and Andrew Parker highlighted the flexibility of updating assignments year to year to avoid cheating.

The discussion also highlighted OER-related anxieties and challenges. In particular, navigating licensure agreements and WordPress as a technological tool were of utmost of concern. Presenters shared their insights on navigating these domains, while the OpenLab Team chimed in to ensure the group that we are here to answer questions such as these through our workshops, office hours and email support.

Beyond the content of the presentations, OpenLab Community Facilitator Andy McKinney initiated a discussion about the potential for synergies between open pedagogy and OERs with respect to the potential for student-professor collaborations in the creation of OERs. For example, by building a shared resource like a glossary or even a set of test review questions, faculty can use open pedagogy techniques to collaborate with students to build OERs that have value beyond that particular class. This elicited much interest from the group and is something we’re looking forward to discussing more in the future.

All in all, this event was a tremendous success! Thank you to everyone who participated!

We look forward to seeing you at our next Open Pedagogy event with Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) on November 3rd, 5:30-7:00pm in the Faculty Commons (N227). If you haven’t already, don’t forget to “join” Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab to stay in the loop about upcoming events and discussions about open digital pedagogy at City TEch.

For more reading on OERs:

Check out City Tech Library’s resource guide on OERs
“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

Or Become an OER Fellow! The call for Spring 2017 fellows will go out October 17, 2016.

Open Pedagogy Event (Th 9/22): Open Educational Resources at City Tech

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): logo saying 'Open Education Resources - Property of Everyone' laid over a shelf of books 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

Hypothes.is for OERs

hi everyone: I wrote this blog post on Hypothes.is originally for the OER Fellows but am reposting to Open Pedagogy group to reach a broader audience:

Hypothes.is an open annotation tool that allows users to collaboratively annotate, highlight, and tag web pages and .pdfs. We’re happy to share that the OpenLab now has the Hypothes.is plugin as well as the Hypothes.is aggregator plugin. Created for open peer review, Hypothes.is has many uses for teaching and learning and it is an important tool for OERs.

The chief use for Hypothes.is is for students to collectively annotate a shared assigned reading. Rather than blogging in response to an entire reading, students can respond to a specific piece of the reading and, in turn, respond to their classmate’s comments. Students can also use it to give feedback to their instructor on the OER they are using. Peter Brantley on the Hypothes.is blog writes:

“The promise of annotation lies in its ability to create a richer and more interactive environment for learning. This support ranges from the point of creation of educational materials through aiding editing workflows for content authors, to active use in pedagogy. Annotation can enable classroom or workgroup-based student-student assistance, and it can also create a framework enabling the creation and review of assignments by teachers for their students. Perhaps most intriguingly, annotation is a “write-back” technology, enabling students to provide direct feedback on the utility or educational content and their use, providing a means to suggest improvement and clarification.”

The plugins
I initially tried Hypothes.is as a browser extension for Chrome. Users not on the also have the option of installing it as bookmarklet for their browser. All users need to create an account in order to save their work. But now that we have the OpenLab plugin, all you have to do is activate the plugin for your OER and you’re good to go.

The hypothes.is aggregator plugin can collect the work of the entire class from a specific OpenLab site such as your OER. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education Professor Hacker blog by George Williams explains how the aggregator can be used for OERs:

“Many instructors already use hypothes.is by assigning a reading that students will annotate together. Hyopthes.is Aggregator makes it easy to assign a topic, rather than a reading, and ask students to find their own readings on the web, annotate them, and tag them with the course tag. Then Hypothes.is Aggregator can collect all the annotations with the class tag in one place, so students and instructors can see and follow-up on each other’s annotations.”

My experience
I tested out Hypothes.is on a variety of library resources and it should work in any OER-related context. It works perfectly on all kinds of websites except, not surprisingly, proprietary content in library databases. Library database content can be highlighted and annotated and tagged if it is in .html but .pdfs allow only annotations and tags.

The user interface is fairly intuitive although it should be noted that in order to highlight specific text, the text needs to be selected with a cursor and only then does the icon for highlighting get invoked.

Open pedagogy in Biology and Political Science

Inspiring work in open pedagogy – both projects integrate general education competencies including information literacy.

Suzanne Wakim, Biology – Butte Community College

Butte Biology

Modern Biology

Michael Elmore, Political Science – Tacoma Community College

http://www.openwa.org/stories/

View their presentations: Designing for Open Pedagogy and slides

Recap: Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab

Thursday evening brought the last Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab. A working session, the workshop focused on tools and strategies to implement research practices on the site. Faculty who attended were especially interested in exploring methods to support web-based student research. The event began with OpenLab Community Team members presenting strong examples of research and collaboration on the OpenLab, including Prof. Raffi Katchadourian’s professional portfolio, the collaborative Opening Gateways site, and Prof. Jody Rosen’s interactive map assignment, a Being in Brooklyn Walking Tour.

Participants then broke into working groups to begin to implement particular strategies according to their needs. For example, one group discussed integrating visual mathematical elements, like graphs, into posts as a way to build resources for students in Economics classes. An OpenLab Community Team member is now looking into possible WordPress plugins to enable this kind of activity. Another group considered using the OpenLab to facilitate the design and implementation of a survey, as well as its results. How exciting to see faculty members begin to implement ideas that they had been developing in Open Pedagogy events throughout the semester!

To that end, thank you to all who participated in Open Pedagogy events this spring! We look forward to following your ideas, projects, research, and collaboration on the OpenLab!

Join us on Th 4/7: Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab

Remember to bring your devices on Thursday — hopefully one a little less dated than this. (Image by Javier Carcamo)

Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab
Thursday, April 7th, 5:00 – 6:30 pm (N227)

Refreshments will be served.

Interested in building a space for your research on the OpenLab? Bring your own laptop or device to this follow-up working session on research projects on the OpenLab, where we will explore and build projects on the OpenLab centered on specific research questions. Participants will leave with a collaborative space on the OpenLab for organizing, archiving, and publicly displaying their research.

Please email us at OpenLab@citytech.cuny.edu or comment below to let us know your ideas for the session. What research project do you want to work on?

And remember to bring your devices, as this will be a working session!

Recap: Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab

Last week’s Open Pedagogy event, Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab, was a great success, with lots of time for faculty members to explore opportunities for collaboration and research on the site. Attendees agreed on their interest in research design that sends students into the world to investigate a question, followed by opportunities to share and discuss their findings on the OpenLab. There was particular excitement about the possibility of mapping research, as Prof. Jody Rosen’s students did in her2013 course Being in Brooklyn. You can explore her students’ interactive map here.

Our final Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab, will serve as a working session to follow-up ideas that emerged from last week’s session. All faculty and staff are welcome, even those unable attend the last session, and all attendees should bring their own devices. Stay tuned, too, for a list of open pedagogy resources for research that we will share in anticipation of that event.

Join us on Th 3/17: Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab

Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab
Thursday, March 17, 5:00-6:30pm (N227)

Refreshments will be served.

Interested in learning more about how the OpenLab can support your research? Previous events have focused on courses, but we’re seeing more research projects appear on the OpenLab. This session showcases this exciting work happening at City Tech, and explores some of the ways faculty and staff are using the OpenLab to collaborate with colleagues and students on research projects.

Please share the invitation, and feel free to comment on this post to let your colleagues know you’re planning to come!

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

Image credit: janneke staaks

Join us on Th 2/18: Knowing Brooklyn through Place-Based Open Digital Pedagogy

Knowing Brooklyn through Place-Based Open Digital Pedagogy

Thursday, February 18, 2016, 5:00-6:30pm (Faculty Commons, N227)

Refreshments will be served

Interested in using the OpenLab to engage with the college’s current City Tech GenEdge bird's view of the brooklyn bridge theme, Knowing Brooklyn? A companion event to this college-wide effort, this session takes a place-based approach to open digital pedagogy. Together we will think through ways to integrate place-based learning around City Tech’s Brooklyn location with open pedagogy on the OpenLab, as we design our courses, activities, and assignments. In partnership with the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center.

Photo by The Buzz student blogger, Jean-Luc. See more here.