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;Ā 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 toĀ our schedule of office hoursĀ or to our OpenLab calendar. We hope to see you soon!
We released version 1.6.7 of the OpenLab on April 18th, which included a number of behind-the-scenes updates, as well asĀ two improvements you mightĀ notice.
Weāre especially excited to have added the ability to search our Help section, which should help youĀ find the answers thatĀ you’reĀ 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!
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, theĀ collaborative Opening Gateways site, and Prof. Jody Rosenās 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!
Remember to bring your devices on ThursdayĀ — hopefully one a little less dated than this.Ā (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.eduĀ or comment below to let us knowĀ 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!
(Blogger Mandy Mei presents her work onĀ The Buzz. OtherĀ OpenLab presenters at City Tech Tech day included, from left to right, Anna Matthews, Laura Westengard, and Tanya Goetz. Image by Kevin Rajaram.)Ā
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.” TheĀ 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 toĀ their work on L4: The Living Lab Learning Library. Prof. Tanya Goetz (Communication Design) thenĀ 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 ofĀ Opening Gateways and the OpenLab rollout ofĀ WeBWork. Audience members then brainstormedĀ and sharedĀ ideas for their own possible use ofĀ the OpenLab.
Thank you to allĀ who presented and attended the session yesterday. We look forward to seeing your work on the OpenLab!
Last week’sĀ 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 findingsĀ on the OpenLab. There was particular excitement about the possibility of mappingĀ research, as Prof. Jody Rosen’s students did in her2013 course Being in Brooklyn. You can exploreĀ her students’ interactive map here.
OurĀ final Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab, will serve as a working session toĀ follow-up ideasĀ that emerged from last week’s session. All faculty and staff are welcome, even those unableĀ 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.
We released version 1.6.6 of the OpenLab on March 16, which included a few additions and improvements we think our users will find helpful.
We added two plugins ā Category Sticky PostĀ and Gravity Forms Quiz Add-On. The first allows users to choose a post to be displayed (or āstuckā) to the top of any category archive page. Anyone interested can read more about this here.
The Gravity Forms Quiz Add-On also allows you to create automatically graded quizzes (or tests, really, depending on how you define those terms!). You can find a tutorial on how to use it here. Thereās also a handy video tutorial here:
We also released our first plugin to the broader WordPress community! Our developer, Boone Gorges, made some updates to the OpenLab Grade Comments plugin to make it functional outside of the OpenLab, and added it to the WordPress plugin directory, where it can be found with a slightly different name, WP Grade Comments. Any OpenLab members who are currently using the plugin may also notice the name change on their site but, other than that, the functionality is the same.
Finally, we added a message to the Dashboard of newly-cloned courses reminding the site administrator that posts and pages from the newly-cloned site are set to ādraftā until theyāre published or deleted, and custom menus will need to be reactivated. This is something that can be easy to forget, so we hope this helps make the cloning process even easier!
Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLabĀ
Thursday, March 17, 5:00-6:30pm (N227)
Interested in learning more about how the OpenLab can support your research? Previous events have focused on courses, but we’re seeing more research projects appear on the OpenLab. This session showcases this exciting work happening at City Tech, and explores some of the ways faculty and staff are using the OpenLab to collaborate with colleagues and students on research projects.
Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation. Refreshments will be served.
Have you seen the beautifulĀ photography taken by ourĀ student photo-bloggers and featured on The Buzz? If not, the work is a must-see. Check out examples of segments from theĀ team members’ posts below, and make sure to follow the site for more!
Happy March everyone! This post is going to be a little different because instead of a typical restaurant review, I will actually like to show you what Iāve been cooking lately. Iāve had extra time on my hands the last two months, so Iāve used that time to blog and cook. Hereās what Iāve been making lately and prepare to salivate ā
New York City Football Club (NYCFC) is back representing New York City in the Major League Soccer (MLS) again. Last season in 2015, NYCFC started playing and they won the heart of many New Yorkers including myself.Ā Many football (soccer) fanatics gathered at Yankee Stadium whenever they played to watch and support our beloved team. The first year we did not really care if the team was a title contender team or winning every games, we were just happy that we finally had a football (soccer) team in New York City that we could passionately support weeks and weeks out.
āLearn to appreciate the finer things in lifeā
Itās something Iāve always try to live by. Instead of fussing and feeling āblueā when it rains, Iām often filled with euphoria. Why? Because I get to be creative with the photos I take.
As some of you may have seen before, I took pictures when it was foggy in daylight. A few months ago my friend I and decided to take advantage of the rain and fog at night.
On Friday, the Living Lab General Education Fellows gathered for an Open Pedagogy workshop hosted by Prof. Karen Goodlad, Prof. Nora Almeida, and the OpenLab Community Team. Fellows discussed student skill development for information literacy, brainstormed open pedagogy strategies in the classroom, and even got to play the famous OpenLab open pedagogy game. Thanks to Profs Goodlad, Prof. Almeida, and the Living Lab General Education Fellows for joining us!
