PLAN week is upon us! From November 1-5, students can meet with advisors to plan their next steps at City Tech. The PLAN week OpenLab site has all the information you need, “from choosing classes and learning how to register to finding out where to get support and make connections within the college.”
You can make also learn more by going to academic advising website. The PLAN week committee recommends you spend 20-30 minutes a day this week planning your academic trajectory. You can start today by watching this short video introduction to advising.
Make sure to check the site out, and happy planning!
This week, we spotlight Anne Marie Sowder’s OpenLab Portfolio, which highlights her teaching, service and research in innovative ways. It can serve as a great model for faculty who want to use the OpenLab to communicate their accomplishments to colleagues, students and employers. Some things to note about the portfolio:
The Welcome page begins by highlighting Professor Sowder’s teaching! Though the main menu links out to her full Teaching Portfolio, Professor Sowder gives readers a sense of who she is as an educator on the landing page. Beginning with her teaching experience signals to the reader that this work is just as important as her research. Smartly, her teaching goals are listed in concise bullet point form, and readers are pointed to the Teaching Portfolio if they would like to know more.
The Teaching Portfolio is complete with syllabi, student evaluations, and a teaching philosophy. But I particularly love that Professor Sowder’s Student Researchers are highlighted as well! On the one hand, one of the best ways to communicate to the outside world who you are as an educator is to convey who your students are. On the other hand, students deserve acknowledgement for all of the contributions they make to faculty projects: this is a lovely way to give them the credit that they are due.
A research statement can be a lot to take in. But on her Research & Production page, Professor Sowder smartly bolds the information that is most important for readers to know: “I specialize in the analysis of past building practices (recent and distant past) in service of creating a stronger and more resilient built environment”. As evidence, Professor Sowder then links out to publications and just as importantly, provides well-captioned images of the projects she has worked on.
All in all, this is a strong model of a faculty portfolio that mixes visual elements with a clear and concise narrative. It paints a vivid picture of Professor Sowder’s work and contributions! Visit Anne Marie Sowder’s site if you would like to know more.
On October 19, 2021 we released version 1.7.55 of the OpenLab. It included a new quiz plugin, updates to existing plugins, and a few bug fixes. We also added .docx and .xlsx files to the types allowed for upload on OpenLab sites (.doc and .xls were already permitted).
Plugins
The new quiz plugin is called WatuPro, and has many features, including the ability to:
Use images in questions and answer choices
Use LaTeX in the questions and answer choices
Mix graded and ungraded questions
Show a progress bar for quiz takers
Randomize the question order
Show correct/incorrect answers on results page or after each question
Export to CSV
OpenLab help documentation is coming soon! In the meantime, the plugin site has a thorough user manual.
In addition to the usual minor updates, we updated Gravity Forms and all Gravity Forms add-on plugins. The Gravity Forms updates fixed some issues in the Quiz and Dropbox plugins caused by the outdated versions.
We also retired Gravity Perks, and its associated GP Media Library plugin. These will still be visible on sites where they’re activated, but we recommend that you deactivate them because we’ll no longer be able to apply updates, and over time this may cause issues.
Bug Fixes
We fixed the following bugs:
In OpenLab Gradebook, sometimes after creating a new gradebook and attempting to add all users, only a single user called “John Doe” was added.
The Akismet plugin (used for spam prevention) was showing an error message on certain sites.
Some site admins were experiencing an issue with duplicate comments being submitted on their sites. The fix included in this release should address that problem.
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.Â
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!Â
We hope this was helpful. Please reach back out to us here if you run into trouble!
We’re excited to announce the release of WeBWorK Q&A, a free WordPress plugin that creates a community forum where students can get help with WeBWorK problems.
WeBWorK Q&A brings together two powerful free and open source platforms: WordPress’s publishing software powers 42% of sites on the internet, and WeBWorK is a widely-adopted platform used to give online assignments in math and science courses.
The plugin is based on work that’s been happening here on the OpenLab for a while as part of the Opening Gateways project. Some of you may have used the OpenLab’s version of the software on the WeBWorK on the OpenLab site.
Now we’ve packaged up this software and made it available for anyone in the world to use!
This week, we spotlight the excellent CMCE Career OpenLab site, which offers “career information and opportunities for construction management and civil engineering students and graduates.” Overall, the site offers a fantastic model of a job resource for City Tech students, both showcasing the work of City Tech alumni and directing current students to job postings and additional resources. I highlight some of what makes the site so effective below:
An engaging, media-rich home page: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have gotten all of us used to a long, vertical scroll. That said, the best way to keep a reader’s attention with this format is to break up chunks of texts with images or other forms of multimedia. The CMCE Career home page does this very well. For example:
Below the header image, the site includes an important note to students that is bolded and in a bigger font to catch their attention. The note reads: “Whether you are just getting started, are currently working, want to switch from field to office work or office to field work, or are switching industries entirely, there are people like you in our department and among our alumni.” It foreshadows what students will find on this site, which is alumni stories, job and internships postings, and information about CMCE.
Spotlight boxes with CMCE “talking heads” give students a compelling visual and brief descriptions of possible job options and alumni success stories.
A search functionality at the top of the page allows readers to easily find what they are looking for once they’ve skimmed the home page.
Pie-charts and graphs provide visual breakdowns of CMCE career paths, helping break-up long chunks of texts.
The Jobs & Internships page takes advantage of the block format to direct students toward public agencies and private companies that have job opportunities. Each company has its own block on the page: its title is bolded, the full description of the company is prominently included, and a button links you out to the company’s site. Note that this lay-out makes it easy to digest information. It is also more effective than simply featuring a bulleted list of hyperlinks to various companies. We encourage OpenLab users to to follow this kind of model when linking out to other resources: it is always more engaging for readers to have the full description of what they are being linked out to than to just see a link on a page.
The footer gives more information about the site’s creator, A.M. Sowder, including a brief bio and professional headshot. But it also features recent news from the department, linking out to blog posts updating visitors on the activities of faculty, students and alumni. This is a great use of widget space: remember that footers appear on all site pages, which means they are unlikely to get overlooked.
These are just some of the many innovative features of the CMCE Career site. It is a great model of a jobs and internship site that is reader-friendly and replete with information.
Many of you are probably getting used to the new(ish) Block Editor this semester. The Classic editor will be supported by WordPress through at least 2022, but we encourage you to gain some familiarity with the Block editor now before the alternative becomes obsolete. One of the advantages of the Block editor is that it makes it easier to integrate text with visual page elements, without any coding needed. It can be especially useful if you have an image-rich site, as it allows you to embed media hosted on external sites (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, your own personal site) and therefore can help you save some of that precious OpenLab storage space! In the remainder of this post, I spotlight how to 1) upload and embed an image to your post; 2) embed externally-hosted image.Â
Upload and Embed Images
To upload and embed an image to your page/ post follow these steps:
1. To upload images or other media (e.g. pdfs, Word docs, txt files) to a post or a page, go to your Dashboard > Posts > Add New or Pages > Add New. Click the Add block button. A block library will appear: click Image to add an image to your page or post.
2. You can select files saved to your computer or flash drive by clicking Upload. Then, either drag-and-drop files from saved to your computer or select a file. You also have the option to select an image or other files from your media library by clicking the Media Library tab, or inserting an image from a URL by clicking the Insert from URL tab.
3. Once you have uploaded or inserted your image, you can make adjustments to the file using the options in the block toolbar. You can add a caption to appear underneath the image, change the “Alignment” of the image, and choose between the default rectangular style and a rounded image style. You can change the “Size” of the image by dragging its edges.
Embed Externally-Hosted Images
Please note that each site has a size limit and unnecessarily large images can take up more of your space than you’d like. If you are sharing many large images, we suggest hosting them with an external storage solution, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Flickr, among others. Instructions for embedding externally hosted images are as follows:
On the “Add New Post” or “Add New Page” screen, click the Add block button. A block library will appear: click Image to add an image to your page or post.
2. Click Insert from URL. Paste or type the URL for the image.
3. Click enter or the black arrow to Insert into Post.
4. Once you have inserted your image, you can make adjustments to the file using the options in the block toolbar. You can add a caption to appear underneath the image and change the “Alignment” of the image.
Want to try your hand at the Block editor? Please visit our Help documentation to learn more!
Lettuce and herbs grown by the Garden Club at City Tech’s Hospitality Garden.
This week, we spotlight The Hospitality Garden, “a project that teaches students and faculty about the excitement and nuance of growing flowers and vegetables for the Culinary and Pastry Labs at NYC College of Technology.” The Garden Club tends to the garden, which was on hiatus the past 1.5 years, but it is back in action this semester. Students who are interested in volunteering are invited to help set up the new Hydroponic system. Currently the club is working with the new technology to plant lettuce and herb seeds.
Some other noteworthy aspect of the site:
The home page is the project’s blogroll, meaning that posts appear there in reverse chronological order. Prof. Mark Hellerman, who runs the project, uses regular blog posts to keep members abreast of garden news and, most importantly, club meeting times. The club currently meets during club hours, from 12:45 -2:30pm on Thursdays, in Namm 201. Note that these blog posts are a smart way to remind members about club or project meetings. Another strategy is to feature club meeting information in the sidebar in the widget, such that it will be displayed on every page of your site.
The tag line–or the text featured next to or below the site title–is customized. It reads “Growing flowers and vegetables for the dining room, and for fun.” This tells the readers precisely what the project is about and is exactly how a tag line should be used. Because it’s more of a detail than a prominent feature on OpenLab sites, members sometimes forget to customize their tag lines and end up with the default text that reads “A City Tech OpenLab site.” This isn’t nearly as descriptive as what the Hospitality Garden has drafted. As a reminder, if you would like to customize your tag line, you can do so by going to Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Site Identity. You will see an option to type in free text for your tag line.
The site’s menu links to a photo gallery. The photos featured show students and faculty planting herbs, vegetables and fruit on the rooftop garden, with the Brooklyn waterfront in the background. It is, indeed, a very picturesque setting. It also features photographs of the finished products– pastries and appetizers the Hospitality Department has made from the Garden Club’s produce. Note that the reader gets a vivid sense of what the club does by scrolling through these pictures and is given the (visual) context needed to imagine themselves volunteering for the club. This is a fantastic way to draw people into your work and projects.
Are you interested in joining the Garden Club and Hospitality Garden Project? Visit the site to learn more!
This week we spotlight Accordions, which can now be easily added to your site with the PublishPress Blocks plugin. Those of you who have worked on the OpenLab a while know that we advocate keeping content on a single page brief. It is always easier for the reader to digest information in smaller chunks, and pages or posts that are text heavy can be visually overwhelming. Accordions are a great way to keep a page/ post short, while still making available additional information that might be useful to your reader.
But, first, you might be wondering: what are accordions? And how can I create them?
Accordions are collapsible lists: the header for each item on the list is always displayed, but the text and multimedia below the header can be opened and closed. For example, in the image below, the Experiential Art & Design club features an FAQ accordion at the bottom of their home page. Each accordion item takes the form of one FAQ, such as “Do I need to bring a laptop?” When you click the question, the accordion expands, and the answer becomes visible. This is a great way for the club to save space; it also invites the reader to interact with their site!
To create an accordion of this kind, first activate the PublishPress Blocks plugin in your Dashboard. Then, in your page/ post editor, select the Advanced Accordion block. You now have a fully customizable accordion! The block settings that appear on your right allow you to do things like change the icon of the accordion, the color of the header, the size of the font, etc. Note that beneath each header you can include images as well as text.
We encourage you to play around with Advanced Accordions. While you probably won’t want to hide crucial information in an accordion (e.g. an assignment prompt), they can be a great space-saving design tool for information that might be thought of as “additional” or “further reading.”
Do you already use accordions on your site? What are some of your use-cases?
On September 15, 2021 we released version 1.7.54 of the OpenLab. It was a small release that included a few bug fixes and some minor plugin updates.
We fixed a bug causing acknowledgements to appear on portfolio profiles, when they should only appear for Courses, Projects, and Clubs. We also updated the acknowledgements widget that is added to cloned sites. The widget will now include changes we made to the format of acknowledgments on group profiles, added in the August release. It will show any additional group creators added, as well as any additional text. In a future release, we’ll make the widget available on sites for non-cloned groups that include acknowledgments.
