We have a brand new online self-paced training module for faculty: Teaching with the OpenLab. The site provides resources and best practices to help you use the OpenLab effectively when teaching online, or (in the future) hybrid or in person.

You’ll find step-by-step help for signing up, creating your course, and setting up your course site, whether you’re creating a course on the OpenLab using the new course template, or cloning a model course provided by your department. 

You’ll also find guidance on every aspect of teaching with the OpenLab: preparing course materials, communicating with your students, designing and receiving assignments, providing feedback and grades, and getting your students started. 

Finally, the site provides a list of common-sense best practices for digital pedagogy that you can use to evaluate your approach.

Let us know what you think! There’s a feedback form at the end of the module: as always, your comments will help us help everyone teaching with the OpenLab. 

Need help? Contact us at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu anytime!

A new look for new courses!

We’ve just introduced a new template for courses on the OpenLab. The OpenLab course template determines how courses appear when they’re first created; existing courses won’t be affected.

Check out the new course template on the Course Template demo site.

Included in the new version:

• A fresh new look (using the Hemingway theme);
• A structured menu to help faculty and students find and organize their work using categories;
• Built-in help and resources for students;
• A set of recommended plugins and widgets, automatically enabled to make working in the course site easier;
• An optional discussion post (introductions) to help faculty and students get to know one another;
• An optional student survey that faculty can use to understand how their students are situated regarding technology, working space, etc.
• Suggested templates for your syllabus, schedule, class agendas, and assignments.

Why now?

The template is designed to support best practices for teaching online and for using the OpenLab platform, such as using categories to organize course content. It’s also designed to provide a more consistent experience for students using courses on the OpenLab.

Want to make changes?

Please do! As always, you can change your course however you like so that it suits you and your students.

Need help?

We have a Course Template Tour and OpenLab Help overview available now, with a faculty training module coming very soon. In the meantime, as always, you can reach the  friendly OpenLab team at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu.

Feedback?

If you have thoughts about the new look for courses, let us know in the comments below or contact us anytime. All feedback – positive or negative – is very welcome!

In December 2018 with the release of WordPress 5.0, the Block editor (also known as Gutenberg) became the new default post editor, replacing the editor that has been around since the beginning, now called the “Classic” editor.

The Block editor is much more powerful than just a text editor, making it easier to build page layouts and integrate text with visual page elements, without any coding needed.

It has been installed on the OpenLab for the past year, but the Classic editor has been the default, until now. After the OpenLab summer release on August 4, the Block editor will become the default for all new sites, but the Classic editor will still be available for use on any site, or on individual posts and pages. Existing sites currently using the Classic editor will not be switched to the Block editor, unless you choose to change editors.

We encourage everyone to start using the Block editor, and explore all that you can do with Blocks! However, we have instructions for how to switch to the Classic editor if you would prefer to keep using it.

The Classic editor will be officially supported by WordPress through the end of 2021, and while it will likely continue to work for some time after that, it will become more obsolete over time. 

We have a number of pages in OpenLab Help, including:

• What is the Block editor?
• Working with blocks
• Writing a post
• Adding images & other media
• Embedding video and other media

There are also many helpful tutorials and introductions online. Here are a few good ones:

• Say Hello to the New Editor (WordPress.org)
• How to Use the New WordPress Block Editor (Code in WP)
• How to Use the New WordPress Block Editor (WP Beginner)
• The Complete Anatomy Of The Gutenberg WordPress Editor (Smashing Magazine)

And as always, feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns, or stop by our virtual office hours!

On June 2, 2020 we released version 1.7.43 of the OpenLab. It included new features and a few minor updates to plugins and themes.

New Features and Changes

We made one small and three large changes to cloning functionality on the OpenLab, as well as one bug fix.

1. We expanded cloning to include clubs, in addition to courses and projects.
2. We expanded shared cloning so that faculty, students, staff, and alumni can clone projects and clubs that have shared cloning enabled. Only faculty can clone courses. All courses, projects, and clubs cloned via shared cloning will display credit to the original author(s).
3. All pages, posts, and menus that were published on sites being cloning will be published on the newly-cloned site. This is a change from previous functionality, where everything was in draft form. Site admins can review published pages and posts and move anything to draft as necessary.
4. Previously, forms created with the Gravity Forms plugin weren’t cloned to a new site. Now all data from Gravity Forms (except any connections made to a personal Dropbox account) will be cloned to the new site.
5. We fixed an issue that prevented folders in the files section of a group profile from being cloned. Now, if folders are being used to organize files, the folders will be cloned to the new site.

We made a number of improvements to the Education Pro theme:

1. We made the main navigation “sticky” so that it remains visible at the top of the page, as you scroll down.
2. We streamlined the available menus so it’s more intuitive to create menus and understand where they will appear on the site.
3. The widget area at the bottom of the theme is now activated, so you can add widgets to both the sidebar, and the bottom (or footer) of the site. We also removed the OpenLab footer when this theme is activated in order to reduce the cluttered appearance of two footers.
4. Previously, if you uploaded your own custom header image, there was an automatic transparent color overlay added to the image. We’ve removed this overlay so that the image will appear with the original colors. This means you’ll need to be careful that it doesn’t make the site title—which appears over the header image—unreadable.
5. We enabled the featured image functionality, so you can upload a featured image for different pages and posts.

We made two improvements to the OpenLab Attribution plugin:

1. The plugin is now network activated plugin so it’s automatically active on all sites.
2. For block editor users, it’s now more visible in the block editor, so the button to add an attribution is on the top level of the block toolbar.

We made a few small fixes to the OpenLab Gradebook plugin:

1. There was a bug causing letter grades with a ‘+’ or ‘-‘ to appear with only the letter grade visible in Firefox, and with the +/- slightly cut off in Chrome. This was just for the instructor view; students could see all grades with + or -.
2. The rows in gradebooks with more than 5 students were becoming progressively more misaligned farther down the page.
3. We added a deletion warning when deleting an assignment to double check before it’s actually removed. This will help prevent the accidental deletion of assignments from a gradebook.

New Plugins

1. DCO Comment Attachment: This plugin allows commenters to attach files, such as images, or even PDFs, Word docs, and others, to their comments. There’s also automatic embedding for YouTube and Vimeo videos, as well as Twitter and Facebook posts. For security reasons, this functionality is only available to logged in members of the OpenLab.
2. Wonder Gallery: This plugin allows you to create playlists and other galleries that include videos embedded from YouTube, Vimeo, and other hosts, as well as images, and posts from your site.
3. NextGEN Gallery: This photo gallery plugin provides many different options for creating beautiful and responsive photo galleries.
4. Category Tag Pages: This plugin allows you to add categories and tags to pages. Note that the categories and tags won’t appear on individual pages, as they do for posts, but the pages with categories or tags will appear in category and tag archives.

Accessibility Fixes

We made a few small accessibility fixes to improve color contrast ratios in the following themes:

1. Hemmingway
2. Lingonberry

As always, please contact us with any questions!

Welcome to the OpenLab!

As we shift to distance learning, the OpenLab is here for you, and the OpenLab team can support you through this semester. Below are three steps to help you get started on the OpenLab.

Step 1: Join!

• Sign up for an OpenLab Account. To sign up, you’ll also need access to your City Tech email account. See the OpenLab’s help documentation on Accessing your City Tech email if you run into problems. Complete the required fields–you can come back later when you have time to learn how to manage your account and profile,.including updating your information, settings and avatar.
• Practice logging in to your account. Sign out of your account and close your browser. Then open a new browser window, navigate back to the OpenLab, and log in to your account.

Step 2: Get help and support with using the OpenLab

• Check out our Help Documentation – it has everything you need to get started joining and building sites on the OpenLab. Get help with everything from Creating a Course, inviting students, and sharing materials.
• Throughout the rest of this semester, we have virtual office hours. We are also creating additional help materials. We are available to support you seven days/ week via email at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu.

Step 3: Create!

• Follow instructions to create a Course to support your teaching this semester.
• Remember that even though courses are shifting to online, you do not need to recreate your physical class in virtual space, nor do you need to be an expert online instructor. This archive of exemplary courses might inspire you, but remember that this is a good time to keep things simple and manageable!
• Help students join your Course by sending them the URL for the course profile–it starts https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups…. Students can then click Join Now! or Request Membership (depending on the privacy setting you chose when setting up your Course).

Now that you’ve joined the OpenLab community, you can join some of the collaborative communities that support your use of the OpenLab, such as the Open Road, where you can find updates, highlights, and announcements from the OpenLab, the Open Pedagogy project, where City Tech faculty and staff trade digital teaching resources, and L4, where instructors share sample digital assignments. You can also look for other Courses and Projects in your department to see examples and find resources.