Author: Claire Cahen

In the Spotlight: Virtual Office Hours, Summer 2020

A deer peeking out over a field of yellow flowers.
Deer in a Canola Field by Jim Choate on Flickr.

Greetings City Tech Community!

We wanted to extend our congratulations to all of you on completing an especially trying spring semester. A special shout-out to the class of 2020!

We know many of you will be spending a chunk of your summer developing online academic resources. Some of you will be preparing your fall courses, which may well need to be fully online; some of you will be developing online student orientation materials; others will be continuing the transition to virtual student club life. The OpenLab is a great community-run platform from which to expand your web presence. But we realize that you may need support in setting up your OpenLab site. The OpenLab team is here to help!

We have scheduled virtual office hours for the rest of the summer (see full schedule below).  These offer the opportunity to meet with a member of the OpenLab Community Team. All office hours are held via Google Hangouts and are open to faculty, staff, and students. 

Support in office hours is first-come, first-served. If possible, please reach out to the OpenLab team in advance to let us know what questions you have so we can be prepared.

Click here to sign up for virtual office hours.

Click here to join us in our Google Hangout during the office hours listed below.

Click here for instructions for joining via Google Hangouts.

6/26 Friday 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

7/1  Wednesday 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

7/9 Thursday 12:00 PM-1:00PM

7/17 Friday 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

7/22 Wednesday 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

7/30  Thursday 12:00 PM-1:00 PM

8/7  Friday 2:00 PM-3:00PM 

8/12 Wednesday 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

8/20 Thursday  12:00 PM-1:00 PM

 

In the Spotlight: OpenLab Help and Distance Learning

A photograph of a pink and yellow flower in bloom.
Photo credit: Uplifting! by Andrea_44

Hi City Tech faculty, students, and staff!  As all of us continue to adjust to telecommuting and working from home, we want to take a moment to highlight the different ways the OpenLab can support your transition to distance education.

New Help Documentation

This semester, the OpenLab added new help documentation titled Distance Education.  It includes resources for:

 TEACHING ON THE OPENLAB

 FINDING EXAMPLE COURSES

ORGANIZING STUDENT POSTS

DESIGNING ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING

…and much more. Please check out this help(ful) documentation on the OpenLab. It offers step-by-step guides for much of what you might need to do at the different points of the semester.

Spring 2020 Virtual Office Hours

As CUNY transitioned to distance learning for the Spring 2020 semester, the OpenLab shifted our events and support online. All workshops for the remainder of the semester have been converted to virtual office hours. We have them scheduled through mid-May: please see our calendar here and sign up for an office hour here.

Email

We are available to support you via email: openlab@citytech.cuny.edu.

Join Our In-House Sites

We encourage you to become members of our in-house sites (you can do so by visiting the profiles of each site). These sites will keep you up-to-date with all things ‘OpenLab’ and offer opportunities for deeper investment with City Tech’s community.

  • Learn more about the OpenLab, including workshops, events, community, and support opportunities on The Open Road. (Profile)
  • Share and discuss resources about open digital pedagogy with other City Tech and CUNY-wide staff and faculty on Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab. (Profile)

We hope you’ll take advantage of these different resources! Wishing you all good health and a smooth end-of-semester!

The Transition to Distance Learning: Getting Started on the OpenLab

Welcome to the OpenLab!

As we shift to distance learning, the OpenLab is here for you, and the OpenLab team can support you through this semester. Below are three steps to help you get started on the OpenLab.

Step 1: Join!

Step 2: Get help and support with using the OpenLab

Step 3: Create!

  • Follow instructions to create a Course to support your teaching this semester.
  • Remember that even though courses are shifting to online, you do not need to recreate your physical class in virtual space, nor do you need to be an expert online instructor. This archive of exemplary courses might inspire you, but remember that this is a good time to keep things simple and manageable!
  • Help students join your Course by sending them the URL for the course profile–it starts https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups
. Students can then click Join Now! or Request Membership (depending on the privacy setting you chose when setting up your Course).

Now that you’ve joined the OpenLab community, you can join some of the collaborative communities that support your use of the OpenLab, such as the Open Road, where you can find updates, highlights, and announcements from the OpenLab, the Open Pedagogy project, where City Tech faculty and staff trade digital teaching resources, and L4, where instructors share sample digital assignments. You can also look for other Courses and Projects in your department to see examples and find resources.

In the Spotlight: Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center

The banner image from the Brooklyn Waterfront Center site. It says the letters "B", "W", "R" and "C" in large letters.

This week, we spotlight the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center, which is an “incubator for new waterfront-related research” and “a venue to bring students into the knowledge-creation process.” You’ll notice that the project has an OpenLab profile but that the site itself was built on our CUNY-wide, sister platform, the CUNY Academic Commons. As a reminder, if you have a site on the CUNY Academic Commons or–for that matter–any other platform, you too can create a profile and presence for this work on the OpenLab by setting up your site as an External Site.

We also wanted to spotlight the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center site because they have a $2000 summer fellowship open to support full-time City Tech faculty wishing to conduct research on the Brooklyn Waterfront. Applications are now open, and applicants can be from any academic discipline. Interested? See below for more details and learn more about the Research Center here.

Download (PDF, 71KB)

In the Spotlight: Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab

This week, as we prepare for our first Open Pedagogy Event of the semester, we’d like to draw your attention once again to our in-house site, Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab. This site operates as a forum where OpenLab community members can ask questions and stimulate discussion related to teaching and learning on the OpenLab and in open digital environments more generally. The site is replete with curated resources you can draw on in your teaching, from examples of digital pedagogy assignments to provocative readings on the value of multimedia pedagogy and public writing to information on best practices and tips for open digital pedagogy.  The site’s blogroll is a great place for online discussion on building a curriculum that integrates the OpenLab; each month, our Pedagogy Profiles blog series highlights a different City Tech faculty member who is using the OpenLab in creative ways. 

In conjunction with this site, our OpenLab team hosts Open Pedagogy Events, organized around particular themes and concerns related to teaching in open digital environments and more specifically with teaching on the OpenLab. This Thursday (2/27) we’re hosting our first Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Access in Service. The event will be held in the Faculty Commons (N227) from 4:30-6:00pm. Refreshments will be served (thanks to the Faculty Commons for its generous support of this event!). Visit the event posting for more information and to RSVP! We hope to see you there! We will also consider the theme of “access” throughout this semester, focusing on how faculty and staff can leverage technology to increase our students’ access to learning and other academic opportunities  at CUNY. Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation in the event.

As always, we encourage you to join the site, follow along and participate in the conversation!

In the Spotlight: Attribution Plugin

An image of a typed creative commons license.

This week, we spotlight a new plugin that allows anyone to add attributions for Creative Commons licensed content they’re using on an OpenLab site. The OpenLab Attributions plugin was built specifically for the OpenLab!

How does it work? 

Once you activate the plugin, you can go to your page or post editor and add an attribution to any open licensed material you have on your site. Each attribution will add a superscript number that links to a reference list at the bottom of a page or post (see, for example, how we’ve used the plugin to create an attribution for this post’s image. The attribution appears at the bottom of this post, in a reference list). We recommend using this plugin to attribute any Creative Commons images you’re using on your site and, if you are an instructor, teaching your students to use this plugin to cite open-licensed images and other media content they may be posting on the OpenLab.

In the Spotlight: Inviting Students to your Course!

Happy second week of school to all City Tech faculty, students, and staff! At the start of every semester, faculty ask us how they can get their students set up on the OpenLab for the very first time.  The process can feel intimidating! But below, I spotlight three easy ways that you, as an instructor, can invite your students to join your course.

Have your students join your course in class!

If your course and profile are public, then students should be able to search for your course on the OpenLab. Once they’ve found it, they can join simply by clicking “Join Now.”

A screenshot of an OpenLab course profile page, which includes a course avatar and a button that reads "Join Now." Students can join the course by clicking this button.

 

You can walk your students through these steps in class, using a classroom computer to demonstrate. I recommend having students join on the spot in the classroom from their phones, tablets or laptops. Note that you can have them search for the course from the top toolbar or go into the Courses tab and use the right-hand search function with filters. 

 

 It helps here to give your course an intuitive name that includes the course number and semester!  

 

 

 

Invite your students to your course via e-mail!

This method, too, works only if you keep your course site and profile public. (Note that you can always change your privacy settings later, if you’d like). An easy way to have students join your course is to e-mail them the URL to your course profile. The link will take them to your profile page where, once again, they can simply click “Join Now.” 

A screenshot of an OpenLab course profile page, which includes a course avatar and a button that reads "Join Now." Students can join the course by clicking this button.

 

Invite your students to your course via the OpenLab!

You can invite your students to your course from your course profile page.  Click Membership in the right-hand menu, and then click Invite New Members on the following screen. If your course is on the smaller side, you can search individually for each of your students and invite them to your site in this way. Note that you can search for new members to invite either by typing in their e-mails or Display Names.

 

Screenshot of an OpenLab Site's Membership Setting Page. On this page, users can search form members to invite.

 

Your students will receive an automated confirmation e-mail.  Once the e-mail address is confirmed by the user, they will be added to your site.

I hope this helps explain how you can invite students to your course. Please visit our Help documentation on managing users on the OpenLab for a fuller overview. 

Welcome Back & Spring 2020 Programming

Welcome back to all City Tech faculty, students, and staff!  As you all sink into your semesterly routines, we want to take a moment to highlight the different ways we’re here to support your work on the OpenLab this semester.

Spring 2020 Drop-in Office Hours

Meet with a member of the OpenLab Community Team for face-to- face support. No RSVP necessary.

Tuesdays 12:00-2:00pm: 2/25, 3/17, 4/21, 5/5

Wednesdays 1:15-3:15pm: 2/5,  3/4, 3/25, 4/1

Thursdays 10:00am-12:00pm: 2/20, 3/12, 4/30, 5/14

Office hours are held in the conference room of the Faculty Commons, N227.

Spring 2020 Student Workshops 

More information regarding our Spring 2020 programming is now posted on the Open Road- you can  learn more about Spring events and view their full  schedule on our calendar.

Below is a list of workshops we are offering this spring for students. Note that our first workshop begin this week! 

GETTING STARTED ON THE OPENLAB

  • Thursday January 30, 2020, 1:00pm-2:30pm, L540

STUDENT WORKSHOP

  • Thursday April 2, 2020, 1:00pm-2:00pm, L540

Spring 2020 Faculty Workshops 

Below is a list of faculty workshops we are offering this spring. RSVP for any and all of these workshops here or by clicking the links below!

GETTING STARTED

  • Thursday January 30, 2020, 1:00pm-2:30pm, L540

 ACCESS OPEN HOUR ON THE OPENLAB

  • Wednesday, 2/19, 1:30-3:30 PM, Room G604

 DESIGNING AND ASSESSING STUDENT WORK ON THE OPENLAB

  • Wednesday, 3/11, 1:30-3:00 PM, Room G604

PLUGINS AND WIDGETS ON THE OPENLAB

  • Thursday, 4/2, 2:30-4:00 PM, Room G604

 OPEN HOUR ON THE OPENLAB

  • Thursday, 5/5, 2:00-4:00 PM, Room L540

Support Documentation

We have help(ful) documentation on the OpenLab that offers step-by-step guides for everything from getting started, to thinking about specific plugins that build out the functionality of your sites and portfolios.

Email

We are available to support you via email: openlab@citytech.cuny.edu.

Join Our In-House Sites

We encourage you to become members of our in-house sites (you can do so by visiting the profiles of each site). These sites will keep you up-to-date with all things ‘OpenLab’ and offer opportunities for deeper investment with City Tech’s community.

  • Learn more about the OpenLab, including workshops, events, community, and support opportunities on The Open Road. (Profile)
  • Share and discuss resources about open digital pedagogy with other City Tech and CUNY-wide staff and faculty on Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab. (Profile)

Spring 2020 Open Pedagogy Events – Faculty and Staff

As in semesters past, we will have two Open Pedagogy events in Spring 2020. The dates are set for Thursday February 27 and Thursday April 23 – from 4:30pm to 6:00pm in the Faculty Commons (N227). Learn more here.

We hope to see you around soon! Wishing you all a happy semester!

 

 

In the Spotlight: Winter Greetings from the Openab

Brooklyn Bridge lit up at night. Dark, cloudy winter skies over hed.,
Photo Credit: Lerone Pieters

Holiday greetings from the OpenLab and congratulations to all on the closing of another semester! 

While our weekly “Spotlight” blog series will go on hiatus for the season, we wanted to remind you of the sites we featured this past semester and encourage you to check them out if you haven’t already done so.

Fall 2019 Spotlight Posts

We also continued a retrospective series, looking back at the OpenLab’s evolution over the past (quasi) decade. This time we focused on the OpenLab’s work to improve accessibility, spotlighting:


and improved our practices and incorporated some new functionalities and features:

In addition to reviewing these posts from this past fall, you can find a full curated list of all sites that have been spotlighted in our  Spotlight Archive. This archive offers visitors 3 curated lists to help them sort through the posts:

  1. For everyone (By type of site – course, project, club, portfolio)
  2. For faculty/staff
  3. For students

As always, we also encourage you to check out our in-house sites:

The OpenLab Community Team will continue to offer email support over winter break– please contact us with questions or concerns.

We will also soon announce our winter programming. We will be in touch as we get more events and workshops on our calendar!

Wishing you all a very happy holiday season!

The OpenLab Community Team

 

In the Spotlight: the Fourth Annual Science Fiction Symposium

This week, we spotlight the Fourth Annual Science Fiction Symposium, to be held on Thursday, Dec. 12 in the Academic Building (285 Jay St, A105). Organized by Jason W. Ellis (City Tech) and Emily Hockaday (Analog Science Fiction and Fact), the Symposium will be held in partnership with Analog Science Fiction and Fact and its publisher Penny Publications. It will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Analog Science Fiction magazine.

All are welcome to drop by! The Symposium is all day long but you can dip in and out as your schedule permits. It’s also open to the public, with no RSVP required. The schedule with the editors/writers panels and scholarly presentations is available here. 

Hope to see you there!

The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.

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