The Open Road

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!

Recap: The OpenLab at City Tech Tech Day

(Blogger Mandy Mei presents her work on The Buzz. Other OpenLab presenters at City Tech Tech day included, from left to right, Anna Matthews, Laura Westengard, and Tanya Goetz. Image by Kevin Rajaram.)

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.” The 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 to their work on L4: The Living Lab Learning Library. Prof. Tanya Goetz (Communication Design) then 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 of Opening Gateways and the OpenLab rollout of WeBWork. Audience members then brainstormed and shared ideas for their own possible use of the OpenLab.

Thank you to all who presented and attended the session yesterday. We look forward to seeing your work on the OpenLab!

Recap: Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab

Last week’s 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 findings on the OpenLab. There was particular excitement about the possibility of mapping research, as Prof. Jody Rosen’s students did in her2013 course Being in Brooklyn. You can explore her students’ interactive map here.

Our final Open Pedagogy event of the semester, Getting Hands-On with Research Projects on the OpenLab, will serve as a working session to follow-up ideas that emerged from last week’s session. All faculty and staff are welcome, even those unable 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.

In the Spotlight: Rogue Bayron’s ePortfolio

City Tech students, have you wondered what to do with your ePortfolio? If so, head over to Rogue Bayron’s site for an excellent example of an ePortfolio that showcases talent. The site includes all the essential elements of a portfolio that positions Rogue for the job market: a bio, cover letter and resume, and examples of classwork. Rogue takes their portfolio a step further by also including a weekly blog about an internship experience and posts from a student club where they serve as vice president. Any prospective employer needs only visit Rogue’s ePortfolio to capture an immediate snapshot of who they are and what they are capable of. We encourage students of all industries — from graphic design to hospitality management — to take advantage of your free ePortfolio in order to showcase your best work!

This Month on the OpenLab: OL 1.6.6

(Image by Jake Rust of GotCredit)

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 — Category Sticky Post and Gravity Forms Quiz Add-On. The first allows users to choose a post to be displayed (or “stuck”) 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. There’s 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 “draft” until they’re 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!

As always, email us at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu with any questions.

In the Spotlight: New Features on The Open Road

The Open Road has been updated, with new easy-to-use features! Check out our OpenLab Calendar where you can see the month’s upcoming workshops, events, and office hours. See OpenLab News for weekly announcements and updates. And stay tuned for This Month in the OpenLab, a monthly post that will announce new developments on the site, including the plugins that you’ve requested. As always, we will continue to highlight noteworthy courses, projects, clubs, and ePortfolios in the Spotlight, and you will always be able to RSVP to workshops from the Workshops and Events menu item.