Destry – Page 2 – The Open Road

Canceled: Monday 5/2 Office Hours

Students, Faculty and Staff: Please note that our office hours scheduled for Monday, May 2nd from 2:00 to 3:00 PM have been cancelled. Please join us instead for office hours this week on Wednesday, May 4th from 5:00 to 6:00 PM. We also have office hours scheduled next week on Tuesday, May 10th; Wednesday, May 11th; and Thursday, May 12th. All office hours take place in the conference room of the faculty commons, N227. As always, you can refer to our schedule of office hours or to our OpenLab calendar. We hope to see you soon!

In the Spotlight: COMD Internship Coordination Site

It’s that time of year when students are searching for internships. Luckily, Prof. Tanya Goetz’s Communication Design Internship Coordination Site is a one-stop shop designed to help students in the COMD Department find internships to meet fieldwork and study requirements. These internships can include placements at advertising agencies, graphic design firms, corporate design offices, and more. The site is self-explanatory, with pages for necessary internship documents, links to resources and databases for finding an internship such as the City Tech Professional Development Center, support for student networking, and resources for both academic and professional writing. Have no fear, students. The COMD Internship site is here.

This Month on the OpenLab: OL 1.6.7

We released version 1.6.7 of the OpenLab on April 18th, which included a number of behind-the-scenes updates, as well as two improvements you might notice.

We’re especially excited to have added the ability to search our Help section, which should help you find the answers that you’re looking for more quickly.

We also changed the format of email notifications for site activity so that the entire text of posts and comments is included in the email. Before, some users only saw the first few lines of a post.

We look forward to hearing your feedback about these updates. Stay tuned for more next month!

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!

In the Spotlight: PSY3405 – Health Psychology

The course site for Prof. Amanda Almond’s interdisciplinary PSY3405 – Health Psychology offers students both course documents and extensive multimedia resources to think about race and health. In addition to the course syllabus, requirements, and grading procedures, Prof. Almond provides her students with a course outline detailing weekly lectures, assignments, readings, film viewings, quizzes, and deadlines. On the home page, she rightly tells students that this course outline will be their best friend. Assignments for the course are also nicely organized under one easy-to-find drop-down menu. For added benefit, Prof. Almond has linked to further resources for the students’ reference. These include the New York Times’ Patient Voices feature and particularly important case studies of psychology experiments, which students can comment on for extra credit. If you’re wondering how to use an OpenLab site to equip students with tools for success in your course, Prof. Almond’s site offers a great example to guide you.

In the Spotlight: HMGT1102 – Intro to Hospitality Management

In Prof. Michael Krondl’s section of HMGT 1102 – Introduction to Hospitality Management, students can easily find the course syllabus, assignments, and readings. But most exciting about the site is the space it offers for students to blog about their visits to Smorgasburg and the Chelsea Market, complete with descriptions of the venues and mouth-watering photographs of the food. As a final project, teams of students will further use the OpenLab site to complete a concept of a New York City food truck, including a menu, standardized recipes, and spec sheets for the central ingredient of each menu item. Check out this site for a great example of student reflection, photography, and teamwork on the OpenLab — but not if you’re already hungry.

Join us for Open Pedagogy: 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!

In the Spotlight: MAT2540 – Discrete Structures and Algorithms II

STEM faculty, have you ever felt unsure about how to use the OpenLab for your coursework? If so, check out Prof. Kate Poirier’s course site for MAT2540 – Discrete Structures and Algorithms II. With a highly functional site design, Prof. Poirier’s course information is arranged by Course Policies (including grading guidelines), Calendar, Homework, Quizzes, Discussion, and Links offering further resources. All information is clear and accessible. An especially exciting innovation is the test review that Prof. Poirier has students do. Here each student explains how they solved one particular problem on a recent test, thereby exposing their peers to their thought-processes and creating room for suggestions and discussion. Be sure to check out the site if you would like to see a useful example of Math coursework happening on the OpenLab!

Recap: The OpenLab at City Tech Tech Day

(Blogger Mandy Mei presents her work on The Buzz. Other OpenLab presenters at City Tech Tech day included, from left to right, Anna Matthews, Laura Westengard, and Tanya Goetz. Image by Kevin Rajaram.)

On Wednesday, March 30th, the OpenLab presented a session at City Tech Tech Day entitled “City Tech’s OpenLab: Innovations in Teaching, Learning, and Collaboration.” The OpenLab team, together with members of the OpenLab community, highlighted new and creative ways that the site is being used to help students and faculty work together, both at City Tech and beyond. After an introduction to the OpenLab by project co-director Charlie Edwards and OpenLab community facilitator Scott Henkle, Profs. Laura Westengard (English) and Anna Matthews (Dental Hygiene) oriented audience members to their work on L4: The Living Lab Learning Library. Prof. Tanya Goetz (Communication Design) then presented her use of the OpenLab for the COMD Internship Program. Blogger for The Buzz Mandy Mei and OpenLab community facilitator Destry Sibley introduced The Buzz student blogging site, and OpenLab project director Jonas Reitz gave an overview of Opening Gateways and the OpenLab rollout of WeBWork. Audience members then brainstormed and shared ideas for their own possible use of the OpenLab.

Thank you to all who presented and attended the session yesterday. We look forward to seeing your work on the OpenLab!

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.

Author: Destry