OFDIT Newsletter March 2025

Dear Faculty,

Professional development opportunities are in full flower this month! Whether you’re looking for quick tips on setting accommodations for students, want to sign up for a beginning or advanced Brightspace training session, or are interested in attending a CUNY conference or an SPS learning community, check out the info and registration links below. Don’t miss the chance to join the SPS Faculty Fellowship on Teaching and AI, or SPS’s debut Transformative Learning and Development Conference, or the UDL and Open Pedagogy joint meeting with your campus colleagues, or the CUNY-wide Teaching and Learning Conference, or many more opportunities!

Brightspace Updates and Notes


Please save the date! Thursday, May 15th is Brightspace Day! The OFDIT Team is busy preparing a day of activities to deepen knowledge and sharpen skills in our LMS. CUNY SPS faculty and staff will once again be invited to both in-person and virtual sessions on Brightspace Day. You can expect some hands-on workshops, interactive demonstrations, and an “Unsession,” where faculty members can take a 3-minute slot to share their best Brightspace tip or pose a question. Save the date for this opportunity to explore, learn, and ask us anything Brightspace!

Brightspace Highlight: Setting Accommodations

Need to allow extra time or for additional attempts on a quiz for a student, or to allow special access to a student or group of students for an individual assignment after a due date? Check out our Setting Accommodations in Brightspace teaching guide to learn how to provide these common accommodations in your courses!

 

CUNY SPS Events

UDL and Open Pedagogy: Fostering Student Agency

Join us for a joint meeting of the UDL Collaborative and Open for Al

Workshop on Friday, March 21 at 12pm (Register Here). Our discussion will focus on learner agency and explore Open Pedagogy practices that align with this UDL principle.

We invite you to share your experiences as students, instructors, or course developers of voice, choice, and agency in the classroom, considering the following questions:

  • How are students invited to represent themselves within the course? Within the field?
  • How can they be given the chance to contribute to the knowledge community of the classroom and of the field at large?

If you’d like to share out during the meeting, please sign-up on this Google doc with your name and a brief description, thank you. 

UDL Collaborative: Join the OpenLab Site Now!
The OpenLab is open! All CUNY SPS community members can now sign up using your CUNY Login. Once you’ve signed up and logged in successfully, you’ll want to navigate to the UDL Collaborative group profile and click the “Join” button below the group avatar. 

CUNY SPS Faculty Fellowship: Teaching and AI

Applications are now open for the CUNY SPS Faculty Fellowship on Teaching and AI. This fellowship supports faculty in developing innovative responses to AI’s presence in education. In a collaborative peer environment, participants will explore the impact of AI, study current practices in AI and education, and develop projects that integrate AI into coursework, adapt teaching strategies, create educational or policy materials, or leverage AI for instruction.

The fellowship kicks off in May and runs through the summer. Participants will pilot their projects in the Fall semester and present their work to their department and the CUNY SPS community during the 2025-26 academic year. Successful completers will receive a $500 stipend or NTA appointment. Applications are due April 15.

Visit the Teaching and AI Fellowship page for details and to apply.

CUNY SPS Transformative Learning & Development Conference 

Registration is open CUNY SPS’s inaugural Transformative Learning and Development Conference (TLDC) on Wednesday April 30, 2025, 12-3 pm. The goal of the TLDC is to foster a collaborative community and supportive space to share activities, ideas, and best practices for creating transformative teaching and learning experiences at CUNY SPS. 

Register for the TLDC here!

OpenLab Support Hours

Bring your OpenLab questions and ideas for one-on-one support and collaboration! Join the OpenLab team this semester to learn about available tools and features, including building your own site, using our awesome single sign-on plugin, and joining the growing groups and conversations happening with other CUNY SPS community projects.

Join the Open Road for updates!

Think of the Open Road as your hub for SPS OpenLab news, events, and some helpful blogs that explore what’s possible with WordPress, Creative Commons licenses, plugins, BuddyPress, and how to make the most of the OpenLab’s features! We’ve recently published our new Getting Started with OpenLab blog post designed for new users and total beginners. Sign up today and join The Open Road to receive email updates directly from the OpenLab team!

CUNY Opportunities for SPS Faculty

Meet  CUNY’s Chief Academic AI Officer!

Bridging Vision and Action: Setting CUNY’s Academic AI Strategy for Transformative Impact, Ina Wanca, Chief Academic AI Officer, CUNY Central

This virtual session scheduled for Friday, March 21 from 11am- 12pm unveils CUNY’s academic AI strategy—a dynamic, human-centered roadmap designed to enhance education, align with institutional goals, and respond to emerging trends. By building an AI-ready culture, fostering trust, and driving ethical innovation, the strategy turns bold ideas into actionable steps that empower faculty, support student success, and streamline processes. This is an opportunity for CUNY-wide audience members to have conversations with the new Chief Academic AI Officer at Central Office; the session invites collaboration to innovate and lead the future of education. You can find additional details in the flyer. ASL & CART services will be provided. Register Here!

CUNY Teaching & Learning Conference 

Registration to attend the 2025 CUNY Teaching and Learning Conference held April 3rd (virtual) and April 4th (in person at the Graduate Center) closes March 21, 2025! Join the conversation about innovative pedagogical practices and celebrate teaching excellence at CUNY! Register here.

CUNY Online Webinars

Thursday, April 3, 3-4 pm

Peer Power Up! Using Collaborative Reviews & Peer Mentoring learn how to create powerful peer review processes that ignite collaboration and propel student learning in your online courses. Register here.

Faculty corner image
Audio and Video Feedback in Brightspace 

– Submitted by Dr. Sarah Ruth Jacobs, Communications and Media

Brightspace gives faculty the option to give students audio or video feedback to assignments, with automatic captioning. This option is through the “Record Audio” and “Record Video” links just below and to the right of the text box when giving feedback. I recently gave students audio feedback with captions on a short assignment, and I found the process to be quick and simple. My feedback was usually about 1 to 3 minutes in length. Out of the close to forty students that I gave feedback to this way, three or four responded with a personalized thank you note, including one student who sent me a three-minute-long video thanking me! I recommend that others try this for short assignments to see if their students will respond similarly.

Did You Know? Make the Most of ZOOM!

Did you know everyone at CUNY SPS — faculty, students, and staff — has access to a fully licensed Zoom account? That means unlimited meetings, no pesky time limits, and full integration with Brightspace!

To get started, simply sign up or sign in at cuny.zoom.us. We’ve also made it easy to bring Zoom into your courses by integrating it directly into Brightspace. If you’re looking for a quick way to add Zoom links to your course, check out our step-by-step teaching guide to get up and running in no time.

OFDIT Spring 2025 Trainings 

OFDIT’s spring trainings can help you learn more about how you can use Brightspace tools and features to support efficient, accessible course delivery and foster student engagement. We look forward to seeing you at some of our upcoming sessions! Refer to our trainings page on the SPS Faculty Community Hub site or use links below to register.

Using ePortfolio in your Course

In this session, you will explore the structure of ePortfolio and learn how to use the platform from the instructor view. You will learn how to navigate the Digication in Brightspace, review your students’ signature assignment submissions, and share the various support resources available for both students and instructors. There will also be time to answer any questions you might have about ePortfolios at CUNY SPS.

Brightspace: Navigating the Gradebook and Grading 

In this training we will discuss how to navigate the gradebook and the options for grading in Brightspace.

Humanize Your Online Course with VoiceThread 

Creating engaging online courses is not easy. In many text discussion-board based courses, students feel isolated and disconnected from their instructors and classmates. VoiceThread bridges the gaps in social presence typically found in online courses. In this workshop, educators will learn how to establish a social presence and connect with their students using VoiceThread to improve course satisfaction and student learning. We will cover all of the basic VoiceThread features, demonstrate how everything works in D2L Brightspace, showcase a variety of examples from actual courses, and have an open Q&A throughout the training.

Advanced Gradebook Topics for SPS Faculty

In this training, we will discuss setting up your gradebook for the semester, how to add items for extra credit, using grade schema for items requiring special circumstances, and more!

Brightspace: Navigating the Gradebook and Grading 

Learn to navigate the Discussions area seamlessly and to efficiently grade student participation in Discussion Boards in your course!

Using Video in Brightspace (Panopto/Video Notes)

Creating video content for your course can be a little overwhelming with the number of options available.  Join this session to learn which tools work best for creating a reusable welcome message or lecture, a weekly update or one-time recordings, like giving feedback to students. In this session participants will be introduced to Panopto, the SPS video platform integrated into Brightspace, which streamlines video production.  Participants will learn how to access Panopto and its features through Brightspace, focusing on a workflow to create, organize, and publish video content.  The Brightspace platform itself has video tools too.  We’ll highlight when it’s beneficial to use one over the other.

The Pedagogy of Social Annotations

Social annotations can radically change the way your students engage with your course materials, each other, and you, combining the benefits of annotation, dialogue, accessibility, and digital accountability. In this one-hour workshop, we’ll look at social annotations across a range of disciplines, platforms, and assignment types, and discuss how this practice can build students’ skills, foster community, and promote intellectual growth.

Advanced Panopto for SPS Faculty

As many of us have learned, Panopto is a handy tool to create video in Brightspace. But many of us have yet to unlock the powerful features inside it.  In this session, participants will learn how to access the robust analytics showing us who watched a video and for how long.  They will see how faculty can leverage the power of a low-stakes quiz with the in-video quiz tool.  A video quiz can be automatically graded and mapped to your grade book. Finally, we’ll demonstrate how a regular assignment can be turned into a video assignment with students as the media creators.  It’s all part of the Panopto platform built into Brightspace.

Brightspace: Notifications and the Pulse App (30 mins)

Brightspace Pulse is a mobile app that can help users stay connected with their courses in Brightspace through a quick view of announcements, grades, course calendars and content. Learn what Brightspace features are and are not available through the app, and how to enable and view Notifications to enhance the app’s functionality.

As always, OFDIT is here to help! We are available for one-on-one support and are also happy to schedule a Zoom call to discuss any questions you may have. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at facultysupport@sps.cuny.edu 

All the Best,
Your OFDIT Team