Category: Tips, Tricks & Tools

You may have noticed in the August edition of This Month on the OpenLab that one of the new features from the summer updates is a template chooser. When you create a new Course, Project, Club, or Portfolio, the site created uses a template that is appropriate for each type of site. For example, new Course sites come with pre-created pages for Syllabus, Assignments, etc. The template chooser makes it possible to have more than one template for each type of site. In the spotlight on Fall 2023 Welcome, for example, we highlighted the two templates for Course sites: Interactive, intended for use with active student posting and commenting, and Informational, for sites containing course materials, with instructor posts.

So what does that have to do with student research projects?

When student researchers create a Project, they can now choose the template designed for student research projects! This template was designed with City Tech’s Undergraduate Research programs in mind–and was launched at the Undergraduate Research Workshop on Using OpenLab for Your Research Project.

The site features spaces for students to write about themselves and their research project, include an abstract, and feature any achievements like the poster session, conference presentations, or awards. Additionally, the blog page has been turned into a research log, where students can chronicle their work, track the sources they read, and reflect on their experience.

As you can see, the site is very streamlined with a clean look. Students can customize it, but they can also get started with their work right away, without needing to first decide about how to design and organize the site.

We can’t wait to spotlight some great student research projects using this template!

Exciting news about comments!

If you added formatted text, links, or media to your comments on OpenLab posts or pages recently, you probably noticed some changes. If you read our This Month on the OpenLab posts on The Open Road (in the OpenLab News category), you probably already knew about this change to add rich text and media embedding for comments. Here’s what’s new:

The OpenLab now has enhanced commenting functionality, allowing you and your site members and visitors to write comments with rich text (bold, italics, links, etc), and easily embed media by simply pasting the URL, as you would in a post.

When you add a comment, you’ll see buttons to add rich text styles to your comment – bold, italics, underline, and numbered and bulleted lists. There’s also a button for adding a link, and one for embedding media. 

These plugins are already activated on all OpenLab sites, so if you’re a site admin, you don’t need to do anything on your site. We have help for Commenting on a Site, which includes the new rich text and media embedding functionality.

We hope this helps to make discussions on the OpenLab even more vibrant! 

This week, we spotlight three different sites where you can find public domain/ creative commons images to use on the OpenLab. As a reminder, when you add images to your OpenLab site or posts, it is important to make sure you respect copyright guidelines (see the library’s OpenLab module on copyright and fair use). This can be tricky! Just because an image can be grabbed online doesn’t mean it’s free to use or repost. The safest (and, in my opinion, best) way to source images is to look for media that is either in the public domain or licensed as part of the Creative Commons. Below are three repositories where you can search for such images:

1. Flickr: When you go to flickr.com/explore, you’ll see an option to search for images on the Commons. You can search by keyword to find what you need. You can also search in the top right toolbar and filter your results to limit these to images that have Creative Commons licenses, as pictured above.
   
   
2. Unsplash: Unsplash is a repository of strictly freely-usable images. Any image on here is free for you to use. Unsplash is a wonderful resource. Bookmark it!
   
   
3. Pixabay: Like Unsplash, Pixabay is a repository of thousands of free images. Use their search tool to find what you need!

Don’t forget that some Creative Commons licenses still require attribution, and, as a general rule, it is always nice to give an author credit for their work, even if it is openly-licensed. This attribution tool makes it really easy. If you’re using the OpenLab, you can also use this attribution plugin.

We hope this helps! Happy-image searching!

This week, we spotlight the OpenLab favorites functionality, which makes it easy to bookmark courses, projects, clubs, and portfolios. 

Using the favorites functionality is easy: when logged-in users visit the profile of a group, a new menu item appears beneath the avatar, below the “Join Now/Request to Join” menu. This item reads “Add to Favorites” and is accompanied by a bookmark icon. 

In order to favorite a course/project/ club/ portfolio, click the “Add to Favorites” menu item. The page will reload and the menu item will be updated. Note that you can favorite a group even if you are not a member.

Going forward, you can access all of your favorites by hovering over the favorites icon in the black toolbar that appears at the top of every page (as long as you are logged in). 

We suggest adding your courses for this semester to your favorites list. This should make them easier to find!

Please also note that the option to add groups to your favorite doesn’t appear yet on mobile, only on desktop. We hope to add a mobile version in the future.

This week, we spotlight how to create reusable blocks in your block editor. What is a reusable block, you ask? Great question! A reusable block is a way to easily access content that repeats on your site. For example, do your assignments frequently end with the same set of instructions (e.g. Please post by Sunday at midnight. Make sure to include relevant citations and end your post with a discussion question to the class)? Does your club frequently post reminders about when and where to meet? This is content that you can save as a reusable block. This will save you from having to create the content anew or copying and pasting it.

To create a reusable block:

1. Select a block.
2. Click on the three dots that appear in the toolbar.
3. Click Add to Reusable blocks.
4. Give the block a name.
5. Click Save.

When you want to add your reusable block to a page or post, you can retrieve it by:

1. Typing a forward slash in your editor, followed by the block’s name (e.g. /assignment block).
2. Finding it in your block toolbar.

You can learn more about reusable blocks here. 

Ready to try your hand at this? Feel free to reply to this post if you have any trouble!

Over the next two months, we will be sharing tips and tricks to using the new(ish) block editor. These posts will be short and focus on just one best practice at a time, giving you space to experiment. 

If you’ve tried your hand at the block editor already, you know there are multiple ways to add new blocks to a page or post. We find, however, that one of the best ways to add a new type of block is to type a forward slash followed by the block name. For example, as pictured below, “/image” or “/heading”.

Then, choose the type of block you want to use. That’s it! This is an easy way to avoid the “pointing and clicking” options, which can interrupt your writing process. Please note though that this only works if you have no other text in the block! 

We hope this was helpful. Please reach back out to us here if you run into trouble!