The Open Road

In the Spotlight: ENG2003 – Intro to Literature: Poetry

Prof. Cecily Iddings’ course ENG2003 – Intro to Literature: Poetry offers a great example of OpenLab use to encourage student writing and feedback. Students blog on assigned topics like close reading or language, sound, and form in poetry. They are also required to comment on each other’s posts, creating an ongoing discussion about course readings that extends from classroom to site. Especially exciting too is the course Glossary that students continually upgrade with definitions, examples of word use in poems, and their own analysis of the word in context. Be sure to check out the course site for new ideas to generate student engagement online!

Recap: The OpenLab at Teach@CUNY

On Monday, May 2nd, members of the OpenLab team led a workshop on digital open pedagogy at Teach@CUNY Day, a series of workshops and events hosted by the Teaching & Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Living Lab Project Co-Director Charlie Edwards opened the workshop with a warm welcome and introduction to the OpenLab, followed by an overview of the site’s design and infrastructure by OpenLab Co-Director Prof. Jenna Spevack. Fellow OpenLab Co-Director Prof. Jody Rosen then oriented participants to the openness and the ‘lab-iness’ of the site, which together allow students, faculty, and staff to communicate, collaborate, and experiment within the college community and with the broader world. Then Prof. Rosen, OpenLab Instructional Technology Fellow Bree Zuckerman, and OpenLab Community Facilitator Destry Sibley presented examples of the exceptional digital pedagogy taking place on the site: Prof. Rosen’s own walking tour assignment; a film in food assignment from the Art of Food Learning Community; and Profs. Montgomery and Leonard’s Farragut Houses Wikipedia article assignment for their interdisciplinary course Learning Places.

Participants then had the opportunity to play the famous OpenLab Open Pedagogy game, which is designed to help faculty discover new strategies for integrating digital pedagogy in the classroom.

Thank you to all who participated, and special thanks to OpenLab Community Facilitator Andy McKinney, who helped to coordinate Teach@CUNY!

Canceled: Monday 5/2 Office Hours

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; 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 to our schedule of office hours or to our OpenLab calendar. We hope to see you soon!

In the Spotlight: COMD Internship Coordination Site

It’s that time of year when students are searching for internships. Luckily, Prof. Tanya Goetz’s Communication Design Internship Coordination Site is a one-stop shop designed to help students in the COMD Department find internships to meet fieldwork and study requirements. These internships can include placements at advertising agencies, graphic design firms, corporate design offices, and more. The site is self-explanatory, with pages for necessary internship documents, links to resources and databases for finding an internship such as the City Tech Professional Development Center, support for student networking, and resources for both academic and professional writing. Have no fear, students. The COMD Internship site is here.

This Month on the OpenLab: OL 1.6.7

We released version 1.6.7 of the OpenLab on April 18th, which included a number of behind-the-scenes updates, as well as two improvements you might notice.

We’re especially excited to have added the ability to search our Help section, which should help you find the answers that you’re 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!

Recap: Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab

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, the collaborative Opening Gateways site, and Prof. Jody Rosen’s 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!

In the Spotlight: PSY3405 – Health Psychology

The course site for Prof. Amanda Almond’s interdisciplinary PSY3405 – Health Psychology offers students both course documents and extensive multimedia resources to think about race and health. In addition to the course syllabus, requirements, and grading procedures, Prof. Almond provides her students with a course outline detailing weekly lectures, assignments, readings, film viewings, quizzes, and deadlines. On the home page, she rightly tells students that this course outline will be their best friend. Assignments for the course are also nicely organized under one easy-to-find drop-down menu. For added benefit, Prof. Almond has linked to further resources for the students’ reference. These include the New York Times’ Patient Voices feature and particularly important case studies of psychology experiments, which students can comment on for extra credit. If you’re wondering how to use an OpenLab site to equip students with tools for success in your course, Prof. Almond’s site offers a great example to guide you.

In the Spotlight: HMGT1102 – Intro to Hospitality Management

In Prof. Michael Krondl’s section of HMGT 1102 – Introduction to Hospitality Management, students can easily find the course syllabus, assignments, and readings. But most exciting about the site is the space it offers for students to blog about their visits to Smorgasburg and the Chelsea Market, complete with descriptions of the venues and mouth-watering photographs of the food. As a final project, teams of students will further use the OpenLab site to complete a concept of a New York City food truck, including a menu, standardized recipes, and spec sheets for the central ingredient of each menu item. Check out this site for a great example of student reflection, photography, and teamwork on the OpenLab — but not if you’re already hungry.

Join us for Open Pedagogy: Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab

Remember to bring your devices on Thursday — hopefully one a little less dated than this. (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.edu or comment below to let us know 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!

In the Spotlight: MAT2540 – Discrete Structures and Algorithms II

STEM faculty, have you ever felt unsure about how to use the OpenLab for your coursework? If so, check out Prof. Kate Poirier’s course site for MAT2540 – Discrete Structures and Algorithms II. With a highly functional site design, Prof. Poirier’s course information is arranged by Course Policies (including grading guidelines), Calendar, Homework, Quizzes, Discussion, and Links offering further resources. All information is clear and accessible. An especially exciting innovation is the test review that Prof. Poirier has students do. Here each student explains how they solved one particular problem on a recent test, thereby exposing their peers to their thought-processes and creating room for suggestions and discussion. Be sure to check out the site if you would like to see a useful example of Math coursework happening on the OpenLab!