Dear Faculty,
Now that classes are officially underway, we hope your term is off to a smooth and productive start. We’re reaching out to share a few timely updates, exciting news to further your accessibility practice, a call for proposals, and upcoming events to support you and your courses this term. Thank you for all your hard work getting the semester started, and as always, we’re excited to work alongside you this term.
Digital Accessibility Day
Digital Accessibility Day is right around the corner on Thursday, September 24th and filled with opportunities to Level Up your accessibility practice.
Join us for a series of demos, speakers, and collabs. Need something a little later in the evening? Come to our Q&A Clinic with a question ready! Whether you need quick fixes or big-picture strategies, there’s something for every schedule:
-
- Afternoon Sessions (12 PM – 3 PM): Experience screen reader demos, learn practical tips for Word, PowerPoint, and Brightspace, and catch a keynote by Laura Todd (CUNY CIS) on new CUNY initiatives. Plus, get hands-on strategies for Anthology Ally and video captioning.
- UDL Collaborative (3 PM – 4 PM): Connect with colleagues to discuss inclusive teaching strategies, share insights, and explore the OpenLab community.
- Evening Accessibility Clinic (5:30 PM – 7 PM): Drop in later with your syllabi, slides, videos, or course questions for direct, interactive support.
This event will be held virtually. For a full schedule, check out our Digital Accessibility Day Event Site. Ready to get started? Register below!
Level Up! Accessibility Challenge
Looking for an easy way to Level Up! accessibility in your online course? Join us for a three‑week challenge, starting October 5, designed to make accessibility improvements simple and doable—one small step at a time.
How it works: Each week, you’ll receive one 5-minute warmer and two short prompts with:
-
- a quick overview of one accessibility topic,
- a bite‑sized action you can complete in minutes, and
- recommendations for planning ahead for next semester.
Whether you’re new to accessibility or already familiar, the Challenge offers practical wins that fit your schedule, as well as the opportunity to earn a certificate for successful completion.
The challenge is open to CUNY SPS faculty and staff, and you can sign up by enrolling in the Level Up! Accessibility Challenge Brightspace site. The site will open on October 5, but sign up now to join!
Open UDL Workshop: Making Your Courses Accessible to All
OFDIT and the CUNY SPS OER Initiative are pleased to invite all faculty to participate in the Open UDL Workshop (November 2 to November 16, 2026).
This fifteen-day, asynchronous online workshop provides an in-depth introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and to the intersection of UDL and Open Educational Practices (OEP), which include OER and Open Pedagogy. Participants will review the principles of UDL and explore how OEP can help reduce accessibility barriers for all learners, including those with disabilities. Participants will also learn about best accessibility practices in online courses, including identifying and fixing common accessibility issues. For their workshop project, participants will complete an inventory of one of their courses from a UDL perspective and create a plan for implementing UDL principles and open practices.
Eligible faculty participants will be compensated with 7 NTA hours upon successful completion of the workshop. Registration is open through Monday, October 26. For more details, please see our Advanced Workshops page on the SPS Faculty Community Site.
VoiceThread Workshops
Looking for new ways to engage students and assess learning in Brightspace? Check out a new series of workshops designed for instructors who wish to use VoiceThread within Brightspace. Sessions include “Thinking Out Loud: Assessment That Can’t Be Faked” on Oct. 6th at 1pm, which explores how VoiceThread can support authentic, asynchronous oral assessments that help instructors evaluate student thinking beyond AI-generated responses. Other workshops include “Using VoiceThread in Brightspace” for both non-graded uses (on Sept. 29th at 1pm) and for graded uses and rubrics (Oct. 20th at 1pm). To view workshop details and to register, visit the VoiceThread Workshops page.
Explore Brightspace Lumi AI
& other New tools
Through October 31, CUNY faculty and staff can explore Lumi Pro (AI-powered course design tools) and Creator+ (enhanced content authoring tools) in a special D2L sandbox environment and help shape CUNY’s decision about whether these tools should be purchased and adopted for broader use.
Lumi Pro includes tools that can help instructors generate quiz questions from course content, create assignment and discussion prompts, build content pages from existing documents or presentations, generate module summaries, and revise existing content to adjust complexity or improve readability. It can also provide AI-generated study support recommendations for students based on quiz performance.
Please note that D2L’s sandbox site is separate from CUNY Brightspace and is intended for exploration only. It should not be used for teaching or other official purposes. The environment includes three courses: a Creator+ tutorial course, a Lumi Pro tutorial course, and a blank course for experimentation.
CUNY faculty and staff can sign up for access (MFA required) and explore the sandbox while it is available through October 31, 2026. Share your feedback with CUNY as your input will help inform decisions about whether these additional tools should be purchased and made available to CUNY’s Brightspace.
Brightspace Update:
New Instructor Profile Widget Buttons
Brightspace’s Instructor Profile widget now supports additional contact and social media options. Instructors can add buttons for Instagram, LinkedIn, and email, in addition to the existing Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) links. The OFDIT team recommends listing your email address in the profile text rather than using the email icon. The email icon opens the default email application on a student’s device, which may not always be the preferred experience. Including your email address in the profile text provides clear and direct contact information.
To add social media links, enter your profile’s direct URL in the appropriate field. If you do not want a social media icon to appear, delete any default text from that field.
For details, see our teaching guide: Placing Instructor Info in Brightspace.
CUNY IT Conference Call for Proposals
Share your work with colleagues across CUNY! Submit a proposal for the 2026 CUNY IT Conference, AI Disruption and Opportunities, taking place December 3-4.
“We encourage proposals that share real implementation experiences, emerging practices, difficult questions, policy challenges, instructional experiments, and lessons learned. We are especially interested in proposals that help the CUNY community think more clearly, act more intentionally, and collaborate more effectively in this fast-changing landscape…
“Strong proposals will offer participants something useful to take away—whether that is a practical model, a policy framework, evidence from implementation, a replicable classroom strategy, a critical lens, or a roadmap for next steps.”
Proposal submissions are due September 24, and registration is now open for this in-person event at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Faculty Corner: Track Completion with a Dropdown Menu
Submitted by Curtis Izen, CUNY SPS, Online Business Program
Not every course requirement needs to impact a student’s final grade. Sometimes, you simply want an easy way to track whether something has been completed. A great example is the ePortfolio/Digication submission for a signature assignment, where the goal may be to confirm completion rather than assign additional points.
I found this effective: create a Brightspace grading item with a Pass/Fail dropdown, making it easier to enter the grade.
Go to Grades → Manage Grades → New → Item and choose Selectbox as the grade item type. Give the item a name and select “SPS Pass/Fail” or “SPS Complete/Incomplete” grade scheme.
For an item that is being used purely to track completion:
- Set Maximum Points to 1. Brightspace requires a point value, so it should not be set to zero.
- Check the box “Exclude from Final Grade Calculation.” This is the important step that prevents the item from affecting the student’s final course grade.
You can then simply select “Pass/Fail” or “Complete/Incomplete” from the dropdown for each student. The result remains visible in your gradebook, but it does not change the student’s overall grade.
OFDIT Media Studio Spotlight
From either our studio on campus or through remote recording, the OFDIT Media Team helps faculty create engaging video content for SPS courses. Here are two videos we’d like to highlight:
The NURS 499 Course Overview (requires CUNYFirst login) was recorded in our campus studio, where an 11-foot by 8-foot LED backdrop creates a clean, professional setting for faculty presentations.
The BUS 626 Course Overview (requires CUNYFirst login) demonstrates how our remote production support helps faculty create high-quality video content from any location.
Both projects feature polished graphics and visuals developed with Adobe Express and enhanced by a rich library of royalty-free media assets. If you are planning a video project for an SPS course, visit the Media Team Vault to explore available services and how to get started.
As always, OFDIT is here to help! You can always check out our Faculty Hub page on Brightspace at CUNY SPS, and 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
