Winter 2022 Support Schedule

Hello, OpenLab Community!

We are happy to announce our Winter 2022 Support Schedule, for everyone working the winter session and/or preparing for Spring 2022. We offer two types of synchronous support: workshops and Open Hours.

Winter Workshops:

Click here to view the full schedule and register to receive the Zoom link.

Getting Started on the OpenLab (1/24, 1/27, 2/2)

Using the Course Template for Course Design (1/24, 1/27)

Using the Block Editor (2/2)

Winter Open Hours:

Click here for instructions on how to sign up for a one-on-one appointment with a Digital Pedagogy Fellow during our Open Hours.

Thursday, 1/13, 10:00am-12:00pm

Tuesday, 1/18, 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday, 1/27, 10:00am-12:00pm

New Screencast: Editing Menus on Your Site

In our latest screencast, Digital Pedagogy Fellow Olivia will show you how to edit your site’s menu to add (or delete, or re-order) pages, posts, and categories.

For a written version of these same instructions with screenshots, you can also visit our Help documentation here.

In the Spotlight: Finding Inspiration on the OpenLab

Welcome to spring semester! Getting started on the OpenLab, even if you’ve used it before, can sometimes be overwhelming- there are so many different options for what you can do! On this edition of the Spotlight, we’re spotlighting one way to get inspiration and learn cool things you can do on the OpenLab without feeling overwhelmed. What is it? The Spotlight itself!

What is the Spotlight?

Every Monday, we feature a different site, project, or activity that someone is doing on the OpenLab that we’ve specially selected for you to check out. For example, last semester, we Spotlighted:

The OpenLab Tutorial for Students page (recommended for students and anyone interested in building online tutorials)
The Student Technology Survey (recommended for all faculty teaching online)
The Fifth Annual Science Fiction Symposium (recommended for anyone who might want to host an event using the OpenLab)
The Experiential Art and Design Club (recommended for students running student organizations)

However, we also suggest checking out Spotlighted sites that don’t directly relate to what you want to do on the OpenLab. For example, in her spotlight of the Connect Days template, Claire explains some design choices the creators made that help make the site work so well as an admissions tool, such as an easy-to-digest home page, profiles to help prospective students get a sense for who is in each academic department, and multimedia tours.

How Else Can You Use the Spotlight?

Whether you’re faculty, staff, or a student, you can also check out our Spotlight archive to look for other sites on the OpenLab specifically tailored to your interests.

Students:
Our Student Archive contains featured course sites so that you can preview classes you might want to take in the future, tips for professional development and presenting yourself online, learning resources, and sites created by other students.

Faculty and Staff:
Our Faculty and Staff Archive is arranged to make it easy to find inspiration for online pedagogy and class sites across disciplines, tips for how to guide students in making e-portfolios for your classes, community opportunities at City Tech, and tips for publicizing and coordinating your scholarship!

What Else is on the Open Road?

Aside from the Spotlight, this OpenLab site also contains OpenLab News, so you can learn about new features and our upcoming events, information on how to attend our OpenLab Open Hours, and screencasts for audiovisual guidance on the nuts and bolts of editing your OpenLab site.

You can always see our Spotlighted content for the week on the home page of the OpenLab, or you can join our project profile to get updates sent directly to your email. We hope you’ll come back each week to see all of the cool stuff your colleagues and classmates are doing on the OpenLab!

New Screencast: Customizing Your Site’s Appearance

In this screencast, the latest in our Site Building Blocks series, digital pedagogy fellow Olivia will show you how to edit your site’s appearance using the “Appearance –> Customize” feature on the site’s Dashboard.

You can view our other screencasts by visiting us on YouTube.

In the Spotlight: Wrapping Up Fall 2020 on the OpenLab

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 2020 Spotlight Posts

We also began releasing a series of OpenLab screencasts, providing audiovisual guidance to using different features of the OpenLab.

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:

For everyone (By type of site – course, project, club, portfolio)
For faculty/staff
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 Fifth Annual Science Fiction Symposium

This week, we spotlight the Fifth Annual Science Fiction Symposium on Race and Science Fiction, to be held on Thursday, Nov. 19 from 9:00am-5:00pm online via Zoom Webinar.

This year’s symposium is co-organized by Wanett Clyde, Jason W. Ellis, Lucas Kwong, and A. Lavelle Porter, and features a keynote address by Jonathan W. Gray on “Past Tense, Future Perfect: American Atrocities in HBO’s Watchmen and Lovecraft Country.”

To participate in this free event, attendees will need to (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!

For those who would like to watch the event without registering, you can join the YouTube Livestream here.

You can also click here to view the full conference program and learn more about the presenters.

Hope to see you there!

New OpenLab Screencast: Pages and Posts

We are pleased to offer a new set of support materials for OpenLab users: screencasts! With video, audio, and captions, these screencasts provide step-by-step instructions for how to use different OpenLab features in a multimodal format.

Today, we’re introducing a new video in our series on the basic building blocks of OpenLab sites. In this one, we’ll focus on how to create pages and posts. This series could be particularly useful for students creating eportfolios in the second half of the semester, for staff beginning new projects, or for faculty designing course sites for the winter term.

To see our other screencasts, click here or visit our YouTube channel.

Introducing OpenLab Help Screencasts

Our screencasts are an ongoing project, so more will be released in the coming weeks! Right now, we have two screencasts available. The first is the Introduction to the Block Editor (used to edit both pages and posts on the OpenLab), and the second is the first part of a Site Building Blocks series. This series could be particularly useful for students creating eportfolios in the second half of the semester, for staff beginning new projects, or for faculty designing course sites for the winter term.

Check out the screencasts below, and keep an eye on The Open Road and/or our YouTube channel for more as they are ready!

Site Building Blocks: The Front End of Your Site

Intro to the Block Editor

In the Spotlight: OpenLab Mobile Shortcuts

This week, we spotlight a feature built into most smartphones that can facilitate mobile work on the OpenLab!

At our workshops, people sometimes ask if we can develop an OpenLab app, similar to the Blackboard app. They say they are pleased with the OpenLab’s mobile functionality, but it’s a pain to have to pull up your phone browser, then navigate to the OpenLab, then navigate to where you want to go. An app on the home screen would provide a handy shortcut. Luckily, you can do that already!

While app development is not currently in the works, there’s a very easy way to create your own shortcut to the OpenLab on your phone’s home screen. In this post, we will outline how to do it on both iOS and Android.

Creating an OpenLab Mobile Shortcut on iPhones

Navigate in your phone browser (usually Safari, unless you use another browser) to the OpenLab page you want to create the shortcut to. This might be the OpenLab home page, or your own profile, or the profile or site of a particular course.
Scroll up so that the bottom menu appears, revealing the forward/back buttons, the bookmark button, the share button, and the “view all tabs” button. (See Screenshot 1)
Screenshot 1: OpenLab on mobile with Safari navigation menu visible
Click on the “Share” button. It looks like a square with an arrow pointing upwards out of it. (See Screenshot 2)

Screenshot 2: Share Button circled in yellow.
Scroll down until you see the option “Add to Home Screen.” Click on it! (See Screenshot 3)

Screenshot 3: “Add to Home Screen” option in Sharing menu
Adjust the name of the shortcut if you wish.
Click “Add.” Now the shortcut to the page will appear as an icon along with your apps! You can delete it or move it around like you can with any of your apps. (See Screenshot 4)
Screenshot 4: Your new shortcut to the OpenLab

Creating an OpenLab Mobile Shortcut on Android
1. Navigate in your phone browser to the OpenLab page you want to create the shortcut to. This might be the OpenLab home page, or your own profile, or the profile or site of a particular course.
2. Tap the “menu” button on your phone. (The Square button of the three white shapes pictured in Screenshot 1)
  Screenshot 1: Android navigation buttons
3. Then click “Add to homescreen.”
  Screenshot 2: Menu for webpage with “Add to Home screen” option
4. Change the name of the shortcut if you wish, and then click “Add.”
  
  Screenshot 3: Name change dialog box
  
  5. Now you will see a shortcut to your OpenLab page!

We hope this helps you use the OpenLab even more easily on mobile platforms. Many CUNY students, as well as faculty and staff, use their phones for academic work, and creating a shortcut (or more than one!) to the OpenLab can make that work even more streamlined.

Author: OliviaWood