As the semester winds down, let’s work together to check things off the to-do lists we all have–or take some time to make to-do lists!
The OpenLab Team is hosting a co-working session today, Thursday, December 7th, 2:30-3:30PM. Join us in what we hope is a welcoming space that helps as you focus on accomplishing everything you need to finish. Bring whatever you want to work on, whether it be OpenLab related or not. We’ll bring bring work, too, plus some good energy for checking things off your to-do list.
You can work silently in the main Zoom room or move into a breakout room to talk with a collaborator or with one of our team members if you have specific questions we can help you with.
Please share this opportunity with colleagues and students–all are welcome. And save the date for our next co-working session, on Friday, December 15th at
We hope this co-working session is useful for you–and let us know how else we can help!
Photo credit: “Working together again” by Nick via Flickr is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed
On November 15 we released version 1.7.72 of the OpenLab. It included one feature improvement, minor theme and plugin updates, accessibility improvements, and a bug fix.
Adding social media to your profile
In the August release, we introduced a new way to add social media links to your profile. In this release, we improved the mobile interface so the experience is cleaner and easier to use.
Fixes
We made a number of small accessibility fixes around the site, to improve the experience for people using screen readers.
We also fixed a bug in portfolio creation causing the template chooser containing available site templates to disappear when a template category was chosen from the dropdown menu.
On October 11 we released version 1.7.70 of the OpenLab. It included improvements to new features, minor theme and plugin updates, some retired plugins, and a few bug fixes.
Commenting
When embedding an image in a comment, we added a space to include an alt text description of the image.
We also made some improvements to the way links are added to make it a smoother experience.
Added a notification to show when a change to the content you’re sharing with other groups has been made
Clarified when invitations are pending or there’s an outstanding invitation to accept
Improved the accuracy when searching for groups to send a connection invite
Retired plugins
We retired a number of plugins that are no longer being supported or had other issues:
WP Broken Link Status Checker (Broken Link Checker is a replacement for this)
Edge Suite
Papercite
Watu Quiz
Quiz Maker
Bug fixes
We made some small accessibility fixes around the site, mainly to improve the structure of headings on a few pages.
The Reckoning assessment plugin added in the August release was not visible in the site Dashboard. It now appears, and can be activated in Dashboard > Plugins.
We fixed an issue causing the timestamps in email notifications to be 4 hours ahead of the actual time of site activity.
During Course, Project, Club, creation there was an incorrect error message that could appear when choosing the URL for a site. If there were invalid characters entered, the message would say “Sorry, that URL is already taken.” This has been fixed, and we’ve also made a change so that if spaces are included in a URL, instead of generating an error message they will be automatically converted to dashes.
As the semester begins, the OpenLab team is here to support your work on the OpenLab!
Join a Workshop
Click here to view the full schedule and register to receive the Zoom link for the workshops.
Tuesday, 8/29/23
Getting Started on the OpenLab (express): 1:30-2:00pm
Creating a Course Site: 2:00-3:00pm
OpenLab Q&A: 3:00-3:30pm
Friday, 9/1
Getting Started on the OpenLab for All: 12:00-1:00pm
Want more? Request a workshop for your group, ask a question, or let us know what else we can do to support you!
Get 1-on-1 help
Sign up for Open Hours for a 30-minute Zoom session to work directly with a member of the OpenLab Community Team.
Co-work with us
Last semester, the OpenLab team piloted co-working session for quiet working time with others, with the option to move to a breakout room for conversation or questions. Join OpenLab team members on Friday, 9/8/23 at 12:30-1:30pm to work on anything OpenLab-related or not, and share your positive force for anyone else joining who needs that energy!
Help is here
Use Help materials and screencasts to guide your work. Search for your specific topic in the OpenLab’s Help section or navigate through the different sections. You can also reach out for email support by sending a message to us at OpenLab@CityTech.cuny.edu or via our contact form.
On August 17 we released version 1.7.69 of the OpenLab. It included many new features, as well as updates to all existing themes and plugins, including BuddyPress and WordPress, the two primary plugins that power the OpenLab.
New features
Choose a Template for your Site!
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. Now, instead of one template for each type of site, there can be multiple templates for different types of Course, Project, Club, or Portfolio Sites. For example, there are 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. You can choose the type of site template you want to use when you’re creating your new Site. Templates for Projects, Clubs, and Portfolios are coming soon! Learn more in OpenLab Help.
Collaboration Tools
When you create a new Course, Project, or Club, you now have the choice to activate the collaboration tools that appear on the Profile of your group: Discussion, Docs, File Library, and Announcements. Announcements is enabled by default, but you can enable or disable any of the tools during creation, or at any time in Profile > Settings.
Add to Portfolio
If you have an OpenLab Portfolio, you can turn on an ‘Add to My Portfolio’ button that makes it easier to add work from Courses, Projects, or Clubs to your Portfolio. This Add to Portfolio feature has been around for a while, but many OpenLab members aren’t aware of it. To make it more visible, we’ve added a checkbox to enable or disable it in the first step of Portfolio creation. It can still be found in Portfolio Profile > Settings, where you can enable or disable it at any time.
Option to hide OpenLab Toolbar on Sites
Currently, there’s an OpenLab toolbar that appears at the top of your Course, Project, Club, or Portfolio site. If you would like to hide that toolbar for site visitors who are not logged in (for example, potential employers who are viewing your ePortfolio), there’s now a checkbox where you can do that in Profile > Settings. Logged in OpenLab members will always see the toolbar, as it provides important links to the Dashboard (for site members) or back to other parts of the OpenLab.
Activity Widget & Block
In the January 2023 release, we introduced the Activity page, which appears on every Course, Project, and Club Profile. It includes all activity and can be filtered by type (posts, comments, docs, etc). After feedback from OpenLab members, we created a version of this activity feed that can be included on a Course, Project, or Club Site. This can be done by adding the OpenLab Activity block to a post or page, or the OpenLab Activity widget to the sidebar or footer of your site. Learn more in OpenLab Help.
Non-active Status for Courses, Projects, Clubs, and Portfolios
This new feature allows admins of a Course, Project, Club, or Portfolio to switch it to ‘Not Active’ status if it’s no longer being actively used. This status change means that new members are not able to join or request membership, unless invited by an admin. A notice will be added to the profile and it will display on the last page of My OpenLab > My Courses, Projects, or Clubs. Faculty may wish to set past courses to ‘Not Active’; that way course materials can remain open and available to the community but students won’t be able to join a past course by mistake. Learn more in OpenLab Help.
OpenLab Connections
OpenLab Connections is a new feature that allows you to link related Courses, Projects, or Clubs and share information between them. For instance, members of one course section can follow activity from a connected section without needing to become members of that section (private content will not be shared). Learn more in OpenLab Help.
Membership Privacy in a Course, Project, or Club
This feature allows OpenLab members to hide their membership in a particular Course, Project, or Club, so that it doesn’t appear to others on their profile, and their activity doesn’t appear in activity feeds around the OpenLab. For example, perhaps you joined a Beanie Babies Collectors club, but don’t necessarily want to advertise your love of Beanie Babies to anyone who views your profile. You could switch your membership to private, and no one would see the membership on your OpenLab Profile.
Rich text formatting options for Discussion
We added rich text formatting for Discussion forum posts and replies. This makes it easier to add images and other text formatting to Discussion.
Improvements to image embedding in Site comments
After gathering more information about how people are using media embedding in comments (introduced in the January 2023 release), we made some improvements to this feature to make it clear when images embed properly. When you click on the image embed icon in the comment editor, and paste in the URL for an image, instead of seeing the URL, you’ll now see the image embedded in the comment editor itself. If embedding isn’t supported for the image you’re using, you will just see the URL appear in the comment editor.
Using the image embed iconImage is embedded in comment editor
You can now also embed images from the Site’s Media Library and the Files Library on the Profile. Just click the image embed icon and paste the URL for images saved in either of these places.
Member Profile and My OpenLab improvements
We changed the interface for adding social links to your profile, and updated the list of platforms. We also added Display Name to the top of the profile to make it more prominent. As a reminder, Display Name is the name that you choose to use on the OpenLab. You don’t have to use your real name, unless you want to! (Learn more about privacy on the OpenLab.)
We cleaned up the design of the page in My OpenLab where you can invite new members to the OpenLab (My Invitations > Invite New Members). Now instead of seeing a long list of your Courses, Projects, and Clubs that you can invite the new member to, you can search for them instead.
Embedding for Padlet, Geogebra, and Desmos
After a number of requests for Padlet embedding, we’re happy to have been able to add it in this release. You can find instructions in OpenLab Help.
We’ve made some improvements to the appearance of Geogebra and Desmos embeds in a page or post.
OpenLab Calendar
In preparation for better integration of City Tech campus-wide calendars, we removed the OpenLab Calendar that used to appear in the About section of the site. Soon we’ll be adding a feed for the campus-wide news, events, and alerts so it’s easier to find the information you need in one place. And there is still a calendar included on the Profile of all Courses, Projects, and Clubs.
Plugins
We added six new plugins, and made improvements to the two OpenLab grading plugins.
Editoria11y Accessibility Checker, developed and maintained by Princeton University’s Web Development Services team, checks your posts and pages for accessibility issues, and displays any existing issues with a thorough description of what they are and how you can address them. It is also helpful as a learning tool, providing easy-to-understand information about making your site more accessible.
GTranslate allows you to use Google Translate to offer versions of your website in different languages, using Google Translate’s automatic translation service. You can add a widget with a dropdown allowing visitors to choose their language.
Reckoning is an assessment plugin developed for Blogs@Baruch, and built on by the CUNY Academic Commons, that we’ve brought over to the OpenLab. Made for Course Sites, it allows the instructor to view all member posts and comments in one place. It also incorporates grades from WP Grade Comments, and allows you to export all data to CSV.
WeBWorK Problem Embed is a new mathematics plugin created as part of City Tech’s “Connect the DOTS” grant that allows faculty to embed WeBWorK math problems on an OpenLab site. Students can interact with the problem directly on the site, rather than having to navigate away to the WeBWorK site.
Improvements
We made a few changes to WP Grade Comments to clarify when a private vs. public comment is being made. Now, whenever a grade is included, the comment is automatically private. In addition, we’ve added a checkbox for private comments for post authors as well as admins to ensure no one accidentally leaves a public reply to a private comment.
In OpenLab Gradebook, we updated the options for Midterm Grade to incorporate the recent changes in City Tech’s new grading scale.
On Tuesday, May 23rd from 1:30 P.M. to 3:30 PM, join the OpenLab team for the final co-working session of the Spring. As with the previous co-working hours, this space can help support you focus on finishing everything for the end of the semester. If you’re teaching, bring your grading! Or invite a student to join so you can co-work as they finish their project or study for that last exam. Or bring a friend and race to finish your to-do list!
Although our focus for this session is on supporting faculty members finish out the semester, all are welcome. You bring the work, we’ll bring the friendly presence in the Zoom session (plus we’ll bring work, too).
You can work silently in the main Zoom room or move into a breakout room to talk with a collaborator or with one of our team members if you have specific questions we can help you with.
Not able to make it but want to suggest a day and time for Fall 2023 co-working hours? Please leave a comment to let us know what works for you. And before the start of the new semester, we’ll post our new co-working hours and other support schedule information right here on The Open Road.
Finals end on Tuesday, May 23, and grades are due Friday, May 26th. We hope this co-working session is useful for you–and let us know how else we can help!
Here’s another co-working session–please help spread the word!
Have you heard of “body doubling”? Do you get more work done when working in the company of others? This practice of working on a task while others are also working on their own projects is becoming very popular on social media. It’s a trend because it works!
With “body doubling” comes accountability and knowing that others are also working, creates some positive stress. And when one is focusing for a short period, while intentionally putting the phone away and avoiding emails, a lot can be done!
As the end-of-semester stress mounts, the OpenLab is holding a co-working session for students just before Finals week. Join us on Tuesday, May 16th. The Zoom room will be open from 1:30 P.M. to 3:30 P.M. for students to work silently in the same space. Join anytime with that final paper or project and work on tightening its loose parts. Or your study notes for your exam. Or anything else from your to-do list you want to accomplish!
Do you have other productivity or stress management hacks? Share them in the comments below!
“springtime” by willi_bremen via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The OpenLab team added a new option for support: co-working sessions each Tuesday through the end of the semester.
Today’s session, like those in the past, is open to anyone: students, staff, and faculty. Join the co-working session via Zoom anytime in the 1:30-3:30 co-working hours. We will work together silently, and can open breakout rooms for conversations or questions.
The remaining sessions after this week have a particular focus. Next week’s session, on Tuesday, May 16, 1:30-3:30, is focused on students, in anticipation of finals week beginning. Please spread the word!
In the final session, Tuesday, May 23, 1:30-3:30, faculty are invited to join for some time to work on responding to student work, grading, and finishing the work of the semester.
Like the idea of coworking and the related idea of body doubling but can’t make it on a Tuesday? Suggest a date and time for other sessions by adding a comment on this post or by reaching out via email to OpenLab@citytech.cuny.edu.
I hope everyone is hanging in there as the semester wraps up!
We’re trying to understand more about how OpenLab members are using annotation, and what people’s needs might be.
If you’ve used an annotation tool in your teaching or other work, we would appreciate if you could take a moment to fill out a short survey about annotation. (Please note that if you’re not already logged into the OpenLab, you’ll be prompted to log in to fill out the survey.)
On April 12 we released version 1.7.68 of the OpenLab. It included a new plugin, support for embedding Yuja videos, and number of bug fixes.
New features
Yuja videos can now be embedded on OpenLab sites. City Tech has its own Yuja site, so members of the City Tech community can upload videos to embed on their OpenLab sites. To embed a video, simply paste the URL as you would for YouTube or Vimeo.
TablePress Automatic URL Conversion is an add-on to the TablePress plugin that will automatically convert URLs in a table to links, avoiding what can be a tedious process of creating links in a large table.
Bug fixes
Invitations to join the OpenLab were not being sent out. This has now been fixed. We also fixed two bugs in My OpenLab. One was causing friend lists to not display all members that had been added as friends. The second caused the information for Major, Department, or Office to be removed from a member’s profile after the profile was edited.
