(image by BUNYAMIN NAJMI via Creative Commons license)
4000!
Last week, on the 21st of November at 10:36 am to be exact, the OpenLab officially welcomed our 4,000th student member. Â We’re simply thrilled, want to have a party, danced a while in our seats, etc. Â And then we went on Thanksgiving break, ate too much, etc. Â But now we celebrate, here on the OpenLab, the growth of our little site into a large, vibrant, and wonderful community. Â Much thanks to all of you who are members, and congratulations to all.
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Upcoming Event: Â 11th Annual CUNY IT Conference
As we said last week,  the 11th Annual CUNY IT Conference is coming, and the OpenLab will be there!  We’ll be presenting the following at 9:30 am on Friday morning:
The OpenLab and Its Community: Fostering a Place to Learn, Work and Share
City Tech’s OpenLab is an open source digital platform for teaching, learning and collaboration for students, faculty and staff to use for courses, projects, clubs, and portfolios. Built by and for the City Tech community using BuddyPress and WordPress softwares, the OpenLab is a thriving online space. This presentation highlights best practices in managing, maintaining and expanding the OpenLab, and showcases how its use extends the classroom, conference room and student lounge into the virtual realm.
All your favorite City Tech OpenLab folk will be there.  Attendance is free, but you do have to register.  You can find out more information and register here.
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You Might Also Be Interested In These Other Sessions…
OpenLab folk are all over the CUNY IT Conference. Â Here are a few of their presentations. Â Come to one, come to all!
(2:15 Thursday)
The Online Journal System: Implications for Scholarly Publishing in CUNY
A dozen CUNY journals are being published using the Open Journal Systems (OJS). The Urban Library Journal has migrated from print and subscription-based to an open access, online-only journal through OJS. The change has increased visibility of the title and streamlined the process of publishing. Learn about the system back-end, how to produce an issue and how to archive issues using OJS. Implications for journal publishing in an online-only environment will be discussed.
Monica Berger, Associate Professor, Library, New York City College of Technology
The CUNY Hybrid Initiative Site: An Open Resource for Hybrid Teaching and Learning
The CUNY Hybrid Initiative site is designed to be an open resource for everyone from new professors contemplating online teaching to students wanting to get the most out of their online learning experience. The resources and tools presented on the site are a culmination of ideas, suggestions and best practices from the colleges that participated in the CUNY Hybrid Initiative. In this session, members of the site’s editorial and design team will show how users might make use of the information in their online or partially online classrooms.
Karen Lundstrem, Director of Instructional Technology & the Technology Enhancement Centers (iTEC), New York City College of Technology
Maria Pagano, Associate Professor of Psychology, New York City College of Technology
(9:30 am Friday)
An Open Access Repository for CUNY: Why We Need It and How You Could Use It
CUNY’s University Faculty Senate recently voted to create an open access institutional repository (IR), which would allow faculty and staff to share scholarly writings, instructional materials, college documents and more. This session will provide an overview of open access, IRs and emerging best practices, as well as a report on possibilities for and progress toward a CUNY IR. Come learn why IRs are important and share how you might use an IR.
Matthew K. Gold, Associate Professor, English, New York City College of Technology / Director, CUNY Academic Commons
 (1:00 pm Friday)
Open Ecosystems: Community-focused Development and the CUNY Academic Commons
The CUNY Academic Commons team will discuss its efforts to create a development workflow that is potentially more agile, rapid, responsive and community-focused than traditional client-services models. The open nature of Commons development, its active participation in free software communities and its communication strategies aim to create transparent workflows that involve robust user engagement. This presentation uses several recent case studies to argue the advantages of such a model of open platform development within the university.
Matthew K. Gold, Director, CUNY Academic Commons, New York City College of Technology and Graduate Center
Boone Gorges, Lead Developer and Director of Research Projects, CUNY Academic Commons
The Writing Studies Tree: An Interactive Composition and Rhetoric Archive
The Writing Studies Tree (WST), writingstudiestree.org, is a crowd-sourced database developed at CUNY to study disciplinary growth by tracing relationships among scholars and institutions. Combining a fixed data structure with open editing privileges, the WST aggregates small data entry efforts into scalable network visualizations, thereby positioning users as active participants in disciplinary history and knowledge-making. We will discuss the process of creating the site, demonstrate its key features and suggest pedagogical and research applications.
Jill Belli, Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology
What’s Price Got To Do with It? Open Access Course Materials at CUNY
Despite dramatic changes in how educational content is created and accessed, textbook publishers appear reluctant to change their existing pricing models. Recent years have seen the proliferation of Open Access (OA) curricular materials, yet while a clear demand exists for these materials from budget-constrained students and colleges, wide adoption has lagged. How might CUNY create its own infrastructure to coordinate and share the intellectual and pedagogical OA resources that exist at various colleges?
Johannah Rodgers, Assistant Professor, English, New York City College of Technology
Maura A. Smale, Associate Professor, Library, New York City College of Technology
(2:15 Friday)
From Data Mining to Mobile App Development: Digital Scholarship across the Disciplines
In spring of 2012, the CUNY Graduate Center inaugurated a new grant program aimed at fostering cutting-edge digital projects by graduate students. In this session, representatives from the ten winning grant proposals will provide overviews of their projects and discuss their progress so far. Funded projects include a range of disciplines, including Musicology, English, Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, History and Computer Science, and incorporate a range of methodologies from text mining to data visualization to mobile app development.
Jill Belli, Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology
Matthew K. Gold, Advisor to the Provost for Master’s Programs and Digital Initiatives, Graduate Center
A Cloud-based Tutorial System Integrated with a Center for Performative Design
City Tech received a National Science Foundation grant to create and develop a Center for Performative Design. This center, housed in shared visualization, computation and fabrication facilities, will offer students the ability to work together in teams, problem-solving like engineers, architects and industrial designers. It will feature a cloud-based tutorial system using modern social media and game-based learning assessment approaches. Presenters will discuss its development and how it will be integrated with the physical laboratories.
Iem Heng, Assistant Professor, Computer Engineering Technology, New York City College of Technology
Anne Leonhardt, Assistant Professor, Architectural Technology, New York City College of Technology
John McCullough, Assistant Professor, Entertainment Technology, New York City College of Technology
David B. Smith, Chair, Entertainment Technology, New York City College of Technology
Gaming across the Curriculum
This workshop will provide a fun, hands-on introduction to the principles of game-based learning. The session will begin with examples of learning games designed and tested by CUNY faculty across multiple disciplines and continue with “What’s Your Game Plan?,” a game designed by members of the CUNY Games Network to help educators brainstorm learning games for their students. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore the fundamentals of game-based learning and educational game design.
Maura A. Smale, Associate Professor, Library, New York City College of Technology
