OFDIT Newsletter November 2025

Dear Faculty,

In this month’s newsletter, you’ll find a reminder about Blackboard retirement, an invitation to apply for OFDIT’s Spring AI Faculty Fellowship, trainings and guides about finalizing your gradebook for the end of the semester, and registration links for a City Tech workshop on using Notebook LM to support your teaching and for the CUNY IT Conference this December, along with a faculty tip about using intelligent agents in your courses.

Blackboard Retirement 

A final reminder that CUNY will officially retire the Blackboard LMS on December 18, 2025, after which the platform and its contents will no longer be accessible.

Key dates:

December 15, 2025:

Final day to retrieve any remaining course content or resolve outstanding issues in Blackboard (e.g., copies of course materials, Collaborate recordings, etc.).

December 18, 2025:

Blackboard access will be permanently discontinued across all CUNY campuses.

Want to preserve materials from a past Blackboard course? Steps to archive can be found in our teaching guide, Downloading Blackboard Content.

CUNY SPS Faculty Fellowship: Teaching and AI

Interested in adapting pedagogy in the age of AI? Consider applying 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.

Two cohorts of the fellowship are planned for spring and summer 2026. The spring cohort kicks off in February 2026 and runs through May. Participants will pilot their projects in the summer or fall 2026 semester and present their work to their department and the CUNY SPS community during the 2026-27 academic year. Successful completers will receive a $500 stipend or NTA appointment. Applications for the spring cohort are due December 30, with preference for projects intended for piloting in summer 2026  Visit the Teaching and AI Fellowship page for details and to apply.

Brightspace: Finalizing your Gradebook

Feeling ready for the semester’s end? Attend one of OFDIT’s training sessions on preparing your gradebook for the end of the semester and learn the options to apply when you are preparing final grades, as well as the steps for automatically transferring final grades from Brightspace to CUNYfirst. (30 mins)

Brightspace Office Hours

Questions as you get ready for final assessments and grading or while you work to prep your sites for upcoming WIN and SP sessions? 

OFDIT’s open Brightspace office hours continue Tuesday evenings (6-7pm) and Wednesday afternoons (1-2pm) through Dec 17th. A note that we will be adding additional sessions for end-of-semester assistance on the following dates:

Monday, Dec 8, 12-1pm
Thursday, Dec 11, 10-11am
Monday, Dec 15, 12-1pm
Thursday, Dec 18, 10-11am
Monday, Dec 22, 12-1pm

Did you know?

November is a good time to check that your gradebook and assessments are ready for the end of the term. You can use our Teaching Guides to help you make sure grade items are linked to Activities, reset Quiz attempts for students who need an additional attempt, quickly fill in zeros for missing student work so final grade calculations are up to date, or easily reach out to students with missing assignments. 

Finally, if you want to test out a final exam or see where feedback appears, you can activate the Student Demo Tool in any course section and preview these items to make sure everything is ready for students.

CUNY Opportunities for SPS Faculty

Designing Assignments with Notebook LM

This New York City College of Technology interactive workshop introduces faculty to Notebook LM, an AI-powered tool for curating knowledge bases that support assignment creation. Participants will explore how to organize course materials, scaffold assignments for deeper learning, and integrate generative AI into their workflow. Whether you’re new to Notebook LM or an experienced user, this session offers practical strategies to enhance your assignment design with clarity and creativity. Register Here

Thursday, November 20, 2025 | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm | Virtual

Create Explainer Videos with Notebook LM

This hands-on workshop will introduce educators and instructional designers to Notebook LM, a powerful AI tool for organizing content and generating engaging explainer videos. Participants will learn how to transform complex topics into clear, concise visual narratives using curated sources, structured outlines, and AI-assisted scripting. The session emphasizes pedagogical strategies for storytelling, accessibility, and learner engagement. Register Here

Friday, December 12, 2025 | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm | Virtual

CUNY IT Conference

This year’s CUNY IT Conference, Moving Forward: Reimagining CUNY in an AI-Enhanced World, will include sessions from CUNY SPS’s Matt Lewis and Fallon Saratovsky (Deconstructing Multimedia: Human/AI Approaches to Instructional Video), Online Business Programs Assistant Professor Joseph Foy (AI’s Disruption of the Concrete Experience in Learning: A Gradual Decay of the Senses) and Data and Information Science instructor Jason Bryer (Creating a Custom AI Bot for Your Class). Register Here to attend either day. 

Thursday December 4, 2025 |11:45 am – 5:00 pm | John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Friday, December 5, 2025 | 8:30 am – 3:30 pm | John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Faculty Corner:

Faculty corner imageCustomizing Intelligent Agents Settings
Submitted by Curtis Izen, CUNY SPS, Online Business Program

If you didn’t already know, within Brightspace you can automatically monitor student activity using the Intelligent Agent tool. For example, I use it to notify students that have not logged in for several days. The Agent will email students automatically when the specified criteria is met, but by default, students receive an email from: Brightspace-DoNotReplyemail@cuny.brightspace.com  

My fear is that students may overlook or decline to open the email because it’s not personalized. Here’s the tip! After creating your agent, you can navigate to the “Settings” and customize the “Name that emails come from,” and the “Reply-To address for responses.”  Now, when the Agent sends the email, it has a touch of personalization:

Note: The email address that agent emails originate from cannot be set to your personal address, i.e. to a non-CUNY email, due to how spam filters operate.

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

OFDIT Fall 2025 Trainings
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. (60 mins)