Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab

Thursday, March 22, 2018, 5:30-7:30pm (Faculty Commons, N227)

UPDATE: In anticipation of the impending snowstorm, we’re postponing this event. We’ll work on rescheduling and will let you know when this event is back on our calendar.

*Refreshments will be served.

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

*Please RSVP by commenting on this post. Please share this invitation with your colleagues at City Tech and beyond!

Join the OpenLab Team, City Tech faculty and staff, and CUNY colleagues at our next Open Pedagogy event, where we’ll be discussing gateway courses in open digital pedagogy. We’ll be discussing how to help students be successful in introductory courses in 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.” While this grant focuses on math courses, we will be extending the conversation to look at other gateway courses across the disciplines. You’ll have the opportunity to learn strategies for helping your students succeed in these courses, and how open digital pedagogy can scaffold their learning experiences in these courses and the rest of their academic careers.

We’ll consider the following questions:

• What are gateway courses, and what are some of the challenges students face in them?
• What strategies can we share across disciplines to support students in these classes?
• How does open digital pedagogy help students succeed in these courses and their majors?

Suggested Readings:

• Opening Gateways to Completion: Open Digital Pedagogies for Student Success in STEM, A Cooperative Arrangement between City Tech and BMCC.
• When a C isn’t High Enough, Kasia Kovacs, Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2016
• How to Help Students of Differing Abilities, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 08, 2018.
• Prioritizing Active Learning: An Exploration of Gateway Courses in Political Science, Candace C. Archer and Melissa K. Miller, The Teacher, April 2011.

On Thursday February 22, a group of faculty and staff from City Tech and CUNY more broadly gathered to discuss Accessibility in Open Digital Pedagogy. Similar to our Fall 2015 event entitled, “Accessibility, Disability, and Open Digital Pedagogy“, this conversation approached accessibility from the frame of universal design, and asked, how can we design the college and classroom experience in ways that benefit our communities as a whole? To help facilitate discussion and provide insight, we were joined by invited guest, John Currie, Director of The Center for Student Accessibility.

Attendees brought their own ambitions to the evening’s discussion as well. One attendee was interested in thinking about the role of the human in mediating accessibility and disability practice in digital technology. Another was particularly interested in thinking about accessibility in relation to OERs (open educational resources): “How ‘open’ can an OER be if it’s not accessible?”, he asked. A related and unifying interest among the group was a desire to think about and address accommodations before they are needed; to plan and design our courses, classrooms and colleges with accessibility in mind from the get go.

The evening began with a free write and discussion about needs and accommodations in relation to our own learning, pedagogical practice and disciplinary standards. Specifically:

• Think about your optimal working/learning environment. What strategies have you developed based on how you work/learn best?
• Think about planning your courses or programs. What accommodations have you made either in general, or in response to a student self-identifying a particular need. What challenges have you faced in doing so?
• Think about your discipline. What are the unique ways your discipline approaches needs and accommodations?

Thinking about how we make accommodations for ourselves and our learning – whether finding a quiet space, cutting oneself off from the internet, annotating text, and more – and how these personal accommodations differ in pursuit of similar goals, raised questions and key points that set the tone for the evening.

In thinking about making accommodations in our classrooms, one common anxiety among participants was how to create an inclusive learning environment without overcompensating for students in damaging ways. As John pointed out, the transition from high school to college is an adjustment for all students. For students with disabilities, the transition can be further complicated by both a shift in the level of accommodation they can expect from their faculty and school, and a growing need to learn to advocate for themselves and their needs on their way to full adulthood. Stunting this growth through overaccommodation or otherwise could create future challenges farther down the road.

Ultimately, a reframing of ‘accommodation’ at both the individual and classroom level is needed. Oftentimes we approach accommodation as a process of making things easier for students. However, at an individual level, we should focus on meeting students where they are, helping them to understand the skills they currently have and creating pathways for them to consciously realize the skills they need to acquire going forward. This is true of all students. At a classroom level, the principles of universal design can be helpful. Universal design asks that, instead of making specific accommodations on a student-by-student basis in hindsight, you should prepare your course spaces, practices, and material with a broad understanding of capabilities in mind. John described this as approaching your planning and praxis with an expanded notion of normal; with the understanding that students are not made the same, that many have challenges even if they aren’t officially recognized by The Center for Student Accessibility, and that creating multiple pathways to success is a good rule of thumb. Despite planning efforts, however, we must be open to adaptation – we must expect that things will come up and changes or additions will be made; universal design is not a one and done, but an iterative process that evolves through the course of our (pedagogical) practice.

Wondering how you can apply these principles of accessibility to your OpenLab sites?

Join us for an Accessibility-a-thon on Thursday March 8th from 1:30pm – 3:30pm in A441 (smaller library classroom). We hope to see you there! RSVP

As always, thank you to everyone who was able to join us for this event, and for your contributions to the conversation! And thank you to the Faculty Commons for your generous support of this event.

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We have one more Open Pedagogy event this semester on Thursday March 22nd from 5:30pm – 7:00pm. Through this event we’ll discuss open digital pedagogy in relation to our gateway courses. Stay tuned for more information!

On Thursday October 26, 2017, a group of faculty and staff from City Tech and across CUNY sat down for a discussion of Teaching and Learning with Annotation. This conversation intentionally built upon an earlier Open Pedagogy event entitled “Annotating Texts in Open Digital Pedagogy” held in February 2017. Whereas the initial event was an introduction to annotation in open digital pedagogy, this follow-up event narrowed in on how to increase engagement with the resources we build and share on the OpenLab.

The evening began with an interactive activity that asked participants to co-annotate an image of a painting displayed on a screen at the front of the room. Specifically, participants were asked to write their annotations on post-it notes and stick them to the digital version of the text at the front of the room. In reflecting on the experience, the conversation gravitated to thinking about close reading as a teaching and learning strategy that allowed students to reflect on intricacies of the image they may otherwise have missed. Extrapolating from this activity, participants shared examples of how they had or might apply a similar strategy to other media in their courses, including films, poems, and photography. In general, this strategy helps students move from the general to the specific – and with texts specifically, it is useful in having students find quotes that can back up their claims and assumptions about what the text is aiming to convey.

In summing up this initial conversation, Senior Digital Pedagogy Fellow Andy McKinney framed annotation as evidence of the learning process – highlighting how our initial questions and points of inquiry can take us deeper into texts of multiple mediums. However, what happens to these layers of the learning process over time – do they just sit in closed books on the shelves of our personal libraries or jotted down on printed pdfs that are ultimately discarded or recycled? Relatedly, how can annotation in open digital environments like the OpenLab give a longer or more meaningful life to our annotations? Can annotations take on a collective nature? Annotating in open digital environments may resolve some of these issues.

From there, Andy took the group through some existing tools for and examples of annotating in digital environments. In particular, we looked at a co-annotated mapping activity Professor and OpenLab Co-Director Jody Rosen asked her students to participate in and how other professors have used the stand-alone applications like Genius, SoundCloud and Social Paper or WordPress based applications like CommentPress to have students comment on written and audio texts. Moreover, we discussed how some of these tools, particularly the text-based applications, can be useful for processes of peer review as well. However, these standalone applications can be tricky. What about the ethics of the closed, proprietary sites, which may be at odds with the values underpinning your pedagogy or scholarship? Or the reality that projects like Genius may be abandoned or morphed towards other ends over time, which may mean your content and annotations may become lost or inaccessible? How do issues of fair use factor into the use of these platforms?

The third portion of the evening was dedicated to introducing participants to a newly available application on the OpenLab, Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is a open-source, web-based annotation tool that allows for annotation of pdfs, posts and pages. It allows for annotation in public- or private-based web settings, and allows users to embed links and videos in the annotation, creating a multi-media, co-annotating experience. Hypothes.is can be used through adding a Chrome extension, or as a plugin on WordPress-based sites, including sites on the OpenLab! The plug-in feature of this tool is a particular draw for us because it doesn’t ask students to do anything technical on their end; instead faculty need only activate the plug-in on the site and voila, the site is open for annotation!

Curious to learn more about using Hypothes.is in your course? Join us for a hands-on workshop titled Annotating Text on the OpenLab, on Thursday 11/2 from 2:30-4:00pm in Room G604 (RSVP). We hope to see you there!

As always, thank you to everyone who was able to join us for this event, and for your contributions to the conversation! And thank you to the Faculty Commons for your generous support of this event. This is our final Open Pedagogy event of the Fall, but we will be back in the spring with more discussions of open digital pedagogy! Stay tuned!

On the morning of Friday October 13th, and in anticipation of experimenting with an open digital learning platform in Spring 2018, BMCC faculty from the Media Arts & Technology Department (all but one) hosted members of the OpenLab Community Team for a rich discussion of open digital pedagogy on the OpenLab.

We opened the session with a freewrite and discussion of the values that underpin our pedagogy, the strategies we deploy to implement those values, and the challenges we face in doing so. During the share back portion, the discussion was wide-ranging. Faculty discussed values, strategies, and challenges related to a holistic type of learning that valued not only learning course material, but having a sense of creativity and vitality for learning, and viewing learning in relation to the maturation of students more generally. Faculty also discussed their desires around learning as a classroom community, and building a culture of respect, reciprocity and shared growth among the students. There was also a realization of the challenges presented by the realities of student’s lives (i.e. other demands on time such as work, friends, family; access to software; long commute times) which sometimes impedes our ability to achieve these goals. You can view the full list here, and if you’re like me, you will find yourself nodding your head as you read through the list, seeing many of them embedded in your own pedagogy, whether you previously recognized them there or not.

Ultimately, this conversation was a primer for thinking about how the OpenLab resolved some of these issues at City Tech, and how a similar open digital platform might do the same at BMCC. From striving for 1000 members in its pilot year, to facilitating a community of 23,000 users in its 6th year, the OpenLab has become another place for teaching, learning and community building at the tight, commuter school. As we discussed, in part this can be attributed to the ‘open’ aspect of the OpenLab, which expands the possibilities for both students and faculty along the lines outlined in the table below. Another important factor is the networked aspect of this open community – that through the OpenLab’s homepage, one can peruse (and in some cases, join!) the various courses, clubs and projects taking place at City Tech – and learn more about the members and groups who comprise the community.

Opening Student Experiences at City Tech	Open Faculty: Teaching, Research, &  Service
o Supports student learning in Gen Ed core competencies and high impact practices o Bridges experiential and classroom learning o Builds student proficiency with digital media, transferrable skills o Offers professionalization opportunities o Provides space to network, collaborate, and socialize around shared interests	o Fosters and showcases innovative and engaging pedagogies o Enables sharing of best practices o Supports interdisciplinary approaches o Promotes community and collaboration

Together, this strengthens the college community by providing a space for students, faculty, and staff to interact, supports and enhances major college-wide initiatives and other grant-funded projects, and makes the work of the college more visible & accessible.

This introduction to the OpenLab was followed by a more practical conversation about how we have strived to achieve this – for example, through the different digital tools we use (WordPress and BuddyPress), how we have designed our homepage to showcase recent activity, and what kinds sites one can build on the OpenLab (courses, clubs, ePortfolios and projects). In addition, we shared examples of how various community members are growing the possibilities of the OpenLab, through assignment and classroom activity creation, ePortfolio construction and the integration with external sites, and finding novel ways of sharing across classrooms, departments and sub-fields. In many cases, as came up in our conversation again and again, this growth in use is really the result of the built-in flexibility of the platform, the creativity of our members, their sense of ownership over their content, and their ability to share, borrow and remix from one another quickly and easily in an open, centralized environment.

For examples of the type of innovation taking place on the OpenLab, we encourage you to check out our ‘In the Spotlight’ blog series, where we highlight one site per week, and The Buzz, which showcases the work of our student bloggers. Lastly, if you’re looking share and view assignments or tips related to open digital pedagogy, check out the L4 Library and Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab!

We look forward to continuing to support our peers at BMCC as they adopt and adapt a similar open digital learning platform over the next year, and we look forward to the possible for synergies going forward!

There are questions about authorship and intellectual property that I wouldn’t have imagined asking 10 years ago. #digped

— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) March 1, 2013

On the eve of Thursday September 28th, faculty, staff and graduate students from across CUNY gathered in City Tech’s Faculty Commons (N227) to discuss Copyright and Attribution on the OpenLab and other open digital platforms. Joining a growing group of scholars, our sense is that open digital environments are challenging long-standing notions of copyright and attribution, but in what ways, to what ends, and how are scholars and students thinking about and navigating these shifts in meaning and practice? This first Open Pedagogy event of the semester was organized around digging into these questions.

We began the evening by continuing a past Twitter conversation started by Hybrid Pedagogy. Using the hashtag #digped, “Plagarism Undone” highlights the complexities – new and old – of copyright and attribution, with attention to how technological developments have stretched and remixed long-standing interpretations of copyright, and what this means for scholars with regards to their own research AND pedagogy. In continuing this conversation, we carried out an analog, embodied twitter-like conversation where event participants wrote down tweet-like phrases on post-it notes and stuck them to the wall. We used the questions below as prompts for this activity. After an initial ‘posting’, participants reviewed others’ posts, taking some back to their seats to respond to with a second post-it note.

When creating and sharing content for research and pedagogy, how do you think about ownership and citation?

How was working on the OpenLab (or other open digital platforms) changed your ideas about authorship and remixing?

We plan to share these ‘tweets’ publicly via the OpenLab Twitter account (more info forthcoming!), however, for the evening, these ‘tweets’ worked to get the conversation going. Among these initial openings and throughout the evening, participants raised questions about: balancing openness and sharing with authorship and attribution and what the tipping point is between wanting to share and wanting to get recognition and compensation for your work; about whether and in what ways pedagogical materials are also scholarship and what responsible sharing and remixing looks like; and how we might begin to cultivate a culture of sharing and attribution with colleagues and students on the OpenLab and beyond.

In addition to these open-ended questions, the event, with the help of librarian, professor and guest speaker Nora Almeida, also addressed some practical challenges. Below we’ve included these questions with some of the responses and resources that were mentioned during the event.

What are my options with respect to copyright?

In addition to traditional copyright – which reserves all rights of use for the creator – you can look into Creative Commons licensing, which provide multiple options for sharing and licensing your work. The OpenLab uses a version of Creative Commons, as does all content on the OpenLab unless otherwise specified.

[prezi id=’https://prezi.com/mpktclfycnyf/creative-commons-v-copyright/’]

How can I respect the copyright preferences of others?

First you should check the licensing on the work. If you don’t seen any copyright information, it is usually safe to assume they are using a traditional copyright license, which automatically applies to original work by default. The use of others’ photos and images was a particular point of interest. The OpenLab has some tips here.

What are some strategies others have used to discuss copyright and attribution with their students?

Talking about copyright and attribution with students often takes the form of a cautionary conversation about plagiarism, however, there may be more productive ways of having this conversation. For example, in open digital environments like the OpenLab, students too are putting their intellectual property out there. How would they feel if someone used their work as their own? What if that person made money off it or benefitted in some other way? You might also consider having students reflect on some recent interesting copyright cases such as the nature photographer who is claiming selfies taken by monkeys as his own or the artist who is profiting off of others Instagram photos.

@JesseBalanyk @Jessifer Seems like demonizing plagiarism helps create atmosphere of fear, rather than conversations about writing. #digped

— Janine DeBaise (@writingasjoe) March 1, 2013

We hope this recap sparks your thinking around copyright and attribution and we encourage you to chime in here with questions and comments and keep this conversation going.

In addition, we encourage you to attend our related workshop on Thursday October 5th from 2:30-4:00pm in room G604. RSVP here!

In preparation for the workshop, or to learn more about this topic, visit our event posting for a list of short, relevant readings.

Lastly, our next Open Pedagogy event will be on Thursday October 26th from 5:30-7:00pm in the Faculty Commons (N227). This event, titled Teaching and Learning with Annotation, is a ‘Part 2’, building on an event on Annotating Texts in Open Digital Pedagogy held in February 2016. Refreshments and snacks will be provided, and part-time faculty will receive a stipend for attending. This event will also have a related workshop – more information here.