The Open Road

(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!

 

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.

(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.

 

 

 

Please join us for our next Open Pedagogy event:

Exploring Research Projects on the OpenLab 
Thursday, March 17, 5:00-6:30pm (N227)

Interested in learning more about how the OpenLab can support your research? Previous events have focused on courses, but we’re seeing more research projects appear on the OpenLab. This session showcases this exciting work happening at City Tech, and explores some of the ways faculty and staff are using the OpenLab to collaborate with colleagues and students on research projects.

Part-time faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for participation. Refreshments will be served.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Image credit: janneke staaks

 

Have you seen the beautiful photography taken by our student photo-bloggers and featured on The Buzz? If not, the work is a must-see. Check out examples of segments from the team members’ posts below, and make sure to follow the site for more!

__________________

Jessica: What’s Been Cooking in the Kitchen

Happy March everyone! This post is going to be a little different because instead of a typical restaurant review, I will actually like to show you what I’ve been cooking lately. I’ve had extra time on my hands the last two months, so I’ve used that time to blog and cook. Here’s what I’ve been making lately and prepare to salivate –

__________________

Jean-Luc: NYCFC Winning the Hearts of New Yorkers

New York City Football Club (NYCFC) is back representing New York City in the Major League Soccer (MLS) again. Last season in 2015, NYCFC started playing and they won the heart of many New Yorkers including myself. Many football (soccer) fanatics gathered at Yankee Stadium whenever they played to watch and support our beloved team. The first year we did not really care if the team was a title contender team or winning every games, we were just happy that we finally had a football (soccer) team in New York City that we could passionately support weeks and weeks out.

__________________

Konyca: Foggy Nights

“Learn to appreciate the finer things in life”

It’s something I’ve always try to live by. Instead of fussing and feeling ‘blue’ when it rains, I’m often filled with euphoria. Why? Because I get to be creative with the photos I take.

As some of you may have seen before, I took pictures when it was foggy in daylight. A few months ago my friend I and decided to take advantage of the rain and fog at night.

On Friday, the Living Lab General Education Fellows gathered for an Open Pedagogy workshop hosted by Prof. Karen Goodlad, Prof. Nora Almeida, and the OpenLab Community Team. Fellows discussed student skill development for information literacy, brainstormed open pedagogy strategies in the classroom, and even got to play the famous OpenLab open pedagogy game. Thanks to Profs Goodlad, Prof. Almeida, and the Living Lab General Education Fellows for joining us!