Author: Jody R. Rosen

A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab

Part 5 of 5: Planning your Semester, Pt. 2

Now that you’ve worked through Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of the OpenLab Summer Series, let’s work through Part 5! In this final installment, we wrap up our summer series with two tasks that will get your course up and running for the start of the semester. These tasks involve setting up your dynamic course content as well as your first few assignments.

Task 1: Customize your Posts

• Read through the posts that come pre-loaded in new courses. By default, these are published all together in the Home page. 
  • Note the function of these posts. Unlike pages, which you used in Part 4 to publish your syllabus and course policies, posts are used to convey dynamic content, new information that will be updated throughout the semester.
  • Note that these pre-written template posts have 6 categories: Announcements, Surveys and Quizzes, Discussions, Student Work, Assignment Instructions, and Class Agendas. These categories can be accessed from the main navigation menu and can always be edited.
• Edit each of these posts, adapting them to your course’s needs. You may decide that you don’t need some of the posts, in which case you can delete them.

Task 2: Design Student Assignments

• Read the Designing Assignments section in OpenLab help for links to example assignments created by your colleagues.
• Decide how you will  collect student work. Consider the following:
  • Do you want students to submit work you can read directly on your Course Site, or files that you can download onto your computer?
  • Do you want students to be able to see and respond to each other’s work?
  • What kind of feedback do you want to provide and where?
  • Read through the different ways you can receive student work on the OpenLab. Based on your answers to the questions above, select the way(s) you will receive student work on the OpenLab.
  • Design your assignments! Remember that you can save these posts as drafts for now, and schedule them to be published at a later date.

You are now well-equipped to start the semester on the OpenLab. The OpenLab Community Team is of course available to help you at any point in your process, so check our Support offerings, read through our Teaching with the OpenLab and OpenLab for Students modules, search through Help, or email the OpenLab Community Team with a question.

A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab

Part 4 of 5: Planning your Semester, Pt. 1

We hope that Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the OpenLab Summer Series have helped you get ready to plan your semester in Part 4!

In this installment, we suggest two tasks to guide faculty in planning their semester. Both tasks help faculty customize the OpenLab course template to communicate with their students. 

Task 1: Explore Student-Instructor Communication in the Course Template

• The template is a suggested model for designing your course. It is informed by known best practices for online and  hybrid teaching, but can and should be customized to suit your vision for your semester. Before you begin further customizing the template, ask yourself:
  • What information do students need from me to be successful this semester?
  • How would I like students to communicate with me this semester?
  • What kind of class dialogue would I like to see this semester?
• Get familiar with the different types of communication facilitated through the course template:
  • The template facilitates communication from instructors to students. Under the Course Info tab, you will notice pages for your syllabus, the course schedule, and your contact information—all crucial content for your students to know and have access to on your site. The template also uses a category archive for your regularly updated announcements to students.
  • The template facilitates communication between instructors and students. For example, the home page includes a survey for your students to fill out at the start of the semester so that you can understand the technology and working spaces available to them as they working both on- and off-campus. Responses to the survey can inform your communication with students throughout the rest of the semester, as well as shape your expectations for course assignments and participation. 
  • The template also uses category archives for students to submit their assignments, and suggests a number of mechanisms through which you can provide feedback and grades on student work. (Note that FERPA protects student record privacy, and student work should not be graded publicly.)
  • The template facilitates communication between students! This is a key part of creating a lively online classroom. A category archive for Discussions creates a suggested space for students to hold class dialogue online. A first assignment is suggested to you in which students introduce themselves to each other, and encourages students to respond to each other’s introductions for extra credit.

Task 2: Customize the Pages on your Course

• Prepare and gather your course materials for your site. These materials convey information from you to your students, and include:
  • Your syllabus
  • Your contact information
  • Your grading policy/ grading rubrics
  • Your course schedule.
• Update the pages on your course site with these materials! 
• If you have course readings that are available online, decide now how you will link to these readings from your OpenLab site. Please make sure to read our copyright guidelines as you do this.
  • Are your readings freely available online? Can you provide links in your syllabus/ class agendas/ course schedule?
  • Are your readings large PDF files? If so, we recommend using an external hosting service to host these files, such as Dropbox, Office 365 or other hosting service provided by the college. You can provide your students with instructions on how to access this service on your OpenLab site. 

In our final installment, we’ll focus on answering the questions “how can OpenLab sites further facilitate communication between students?” and “how can students submit work on the OpenLab?”

A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab

Part 3 of 5 of: Create on the OpenLab

We hope that Part 1 and Part 2 of the OpenLab Summer Series have helped you get started, and that you’re ready to start creating in Part 3! In this case, “create” can refer to creating sites, but also to creating communities, collaborations, and dialogue by joining other sites, connecting with friends and colleagues, participating in discussion forums, and more. That said, task 2 below is intended for instructors and focuses on the first steps of course creation, taking a particularly close look at the course template.

• Task 1: Create Connections:
  • Join our in-house sites to stay connected and updated about what’s happening on the OpenLab:
    • The Open Road: Our one-stop-shop for all things OpenLab: news, workshops, events, community, and support!
    • Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab: A site for sharing and discussing resources about open digital pedagogy!
  • Connect with your friends and join other groups related to your interests:
    • You can search through people, courses, projects, clubs, and portfolios using the menu at the top and the magnifying glass in the top-right.
    • If you are a student, you may want to join a club and introduce yourself online to its members. Some active clubs include the Prism Alliance, the City Tech Union for Differently Abled Learners, and the VR & AI Club.
  • Whether you are a student, staff member, or an instructor, you may want to look at the projects for different academic departments and school bodies, which often have helpful resources. These include the College Council, the Math Education Major Project, and Peer Advisement, among many, many others.
  • You can also search for courses, projects, clubs and portfolios using the links under the slider on the home page. From the search page, use the filters (top-right) to tailor your search.
  • Want to create a club, portfolio, or project? Learn more here.
• Task 2: Are you an instructor? Create a course site! The tasks below will get you started on the task of building a site.
  • Get familiar with the course template. Take a video tour of the template and read our help documentation, or review the Course Template Tour site.
  • Follow these steps to create a course site that uses this template.
  • Take time to fill out your course profile:
    • Customize your course avatar. If you do not have an image for your avatar in my mind, you can search for reusable images online. You can also create an avatar of your own; Barbara Smith Mishara from Architecture, for example, has created an avatar that clearly features the name of her course and the semester. This is a great way to make your course easy to find for your students.
    • Include a course description and your contact information in the course profile. A good example of an information-rich  but easy to read course profile is John De Santis’ Spring 2020 COMD1127 class.
    • Get familiar with the tools available on your course profile, including Discussion boards, Files, and Docs. You don’t have to decide now whether  you will use any of these tools, but it’s a good idea to play around and see what each can do.
  • Customize your site’s appearance:
    • You can choose a header image.
    • Under Dashboard> Appearance, you’ll have the option of changing the title to your site (we recommend making this your course’s name!), the site’s tag line (we recommend that it feature your name, the course section, and semester), and the site’s identity.
    • You can edit your site’s widgets. You will want to edit the “About this Course” widget to share your name, office hours, contact information, and a brief paragraph about this Course. You may also want to include a picture of yourself in the “About this Course” widget.
    • As always, as you begin the course creation process, we recommend consulting other courses on the OpenLab for inspiration and model work. You can browse through the Courses section, use the filters to find other examples in your department, or check out these example courses.

In our next installment, we’ll look at facilitating communication between instructors and students–and among students–in courses for Fall 2022.

A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab

Part 2 of 5 of: Explore the OpenLab and Learn How to Get OpenLab Help

Welcome back–we hope you had an easy time following along with Part 1 last week and now have your account set up!

This week, for Part 2 of the 5-part self-guided series, we focus on how do others use the OpenLab and how you can get help using the OpenLab. The tasks below will help everyone explore how members of the City Tech community use the OpenLab to learn, teach, build community, and pursue other scholarly, pedagogical, and extra-curricular interests. These tasks will also show how to get support using the OpenLab.

• Task 1: Check out In the Spotlight, our blog series that features a different exemplary site each week. Begin with the  Spotlight Archive:
  • If you are a student, you may want to scroll through some student ePortfolios and clubs.
  • If you are a faculty member, you may want to scroll through some spotlighted courses. 
  • If you are a staff member, you may want to look at some spotlighted projects.
    
• Task 2:  Check out our in-house site Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab: A site for sharing and discussing resources about open digital pedagogy. This site will help you understand what we mean when we talk about learning/ teaching online and in the “open”:
  • In the Open Pedagogy blog, the OpenLab Team takes on some of the pressing debates concerning technology, learning, and virtual classrooms, including whether to offer flexible grading and deadlines during the pandemic and how to make digital work accessible to all.
  • Throughout the site, the OpenLab Team makes resources available, shares information about events, and seeks input from community members.
    
• Task 3: Continue to explore the community using various search and filter options:
  • You can search through people, courses, projects, clubs and portfolios using the menu at the top and the magnifying glass in the top-right.
  • You can also search courses, projects, clubs and portfolios using the links titled by type of site (courses, projects, clubs, portfolios) under the slider. From the search page, use the filters (top-right) to tailor your search. Here’s some help showing how you can use the filters, in this case to find a project.
    
• Task 4: As you explore, you may find yourself inspired to start creating your course, project, club, or portfolio. To get help with these tasks and using the OpenLab you can:
  • Check out our extensive Help section – it has everything you need to get started joining and building sites on the OpenLab. Get help with everything from Creating a Course, inviting students, sharing materials, and using the WordPress block editor to create content on the OpenLab.
  • Throughout this summer, we have virtual office hours that we call open hours: these  one-on-one consultations with a member of the OpenLab team are open for anyone to sign up for and participate in. You’re welcome to meet with us at any stage of your work, whether you are just starting to think through how you will set up your site or whether you’re at a more advanced stage.  
  • We are available to support you seven days a week via email at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu or via the Contact Us form on the Help page.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of 5, when we create a site on the OpenLab!

A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab

Part 1 of 5 of: Get to Know the OpenLab

Every summer, the OpenLab Community Team publishes a 5-part series that provides short tasks to help everyone in the City Tech community get to know the OpenLab, especially new students, staff, and faculty members–we’re hoping that if you’re new, you’re finding your way here to learn more! The OpenLab team has been impressed and moved by the creativity, adaptability, and compassion that faculty, staff, and students have shown on and off the OpenLab; we also recognize that in some ways, as the pandemic wears on, finding connection on campus and online continues to be difficult. We hope that as this series introduces everyone to the OpenLab, it also highlights strategies for cultivating and growing an online community. 

Each week, we will guide everyone through different tasks to start or reinvigorate their work on the OpenLab.  For this first installment, the tasks below will help you create an account and set up your OpenLab profile. 

• Task 1: Before joining the OpenLab, learn more about the platform. Read the OpenLab’s brief About page to learn more about the ethos and values driving the OpenLab. Take some time to browse through the courses, clubs, projects and portfolios on the OpenLab.

• Task 2: Sign up for an OpenLab Account. To sign up, you’ll also need access to your City Tech email account. See the OpenLab’s help documentation on Accessing your City Tech email if you need help. If you’re eager to get started but know your email account is still not available, reach out to us to see if we can help you get started sooner!

• Task 3:  Set up your OpenLab profile. You’ll notice as you do this that only some fields are required. You can always come back and complete missing information later when you have time to learn how to manage your account and profile. Your OpenLab profile communicates who you are to the OpenLab community; it can also be indexed in internet search engines. 
  • If you are a student, you may want to specify your major/minor, contact information (remember, this is publicly available, so consider what you include carefully!), pronouns, extracurricular interests, any awards or honors you have received, and even a brief overview of your projects and goals. 
  • If you are faculty or staff, in addition to including your pronouns and contact information (remember, this is publicly available!), you may also choose to detail some of your academic interests, as well as your experiences and roles within the college. 
  • Finally, profiles provide the opportunity for OpenLab members to include a photo associated with their OpenLab display name: please note that your photo can be of anything that you feel represents you adequately, and does not have to be an actual photo of yourself. This avatar will appear wherever you contribute on the OpenLab.

• Task 4: Practice logging in to your account. Sign out of your account and close your browser. Then open a new browser window, navigate back to the OpenLab, and log in to your account.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of 5, when we look at how others use the OpenLab!