Author: Fallon Saratovsky

OFDIT Newsletter November 2024

Dear Faculty,

We are thankful that the first Fall semester in our new LMS, Brightspace, has gone so smoothly, evidencing your commitment to learning the system, listening to each other, and leading students through their new “classrooms.”  We invite you to reach out to our Media Team as you work to update your course videos for the coming year, and to join the new SPS Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice to learn more about UDL initiatives on campus. Please take a minute or two to send us your suggestions and reflections in our Brightspace Feedback Survey — we are eager to hear and be guided by your perspectives!

Fall trainings for faculty continue, with upcoming sessions covering using ePortfolio and Social Annotations in your courses, navigating the Gradebook and grading in Brightspace, and exploring a variety of ways to give feedback to students using Brightspace tools. Registration links for all sessions are below, along with a link to register for the upcoming CUNY IT conference. We leave you with a cornucopia of Brightspace tips from your fellow instructors, and our best wishes for a successful conclusion of the semester!

Get Support Making Instructional Videos

The OFDIT Media Team is available to assist faculty with creating instructional video! As we approach the Spring term, now is the perfect time for faculty to update their course videos, especially with the bulk of our transition to Brightspace behind us. With the new platform in place, refreshing the standard videos (ex. course overview, welcome message, and/or faculty introduction) is more pertinent than ever!

    • On-Campus Production Support – Reserve our studio space on campus, equipped with high-quality recording equipment. The OFDIT Media Team will film, edit, caption, and publish your video.
    • Take-2 Tuesdays – Getting to campus might be tricky, but we’ve noticed that Tuesdays often bring faculty face-to-face for meetings. The OFDIT Media Team will prioritize staffing and studio reservations for faculty on Tuesdays.  If you’re on campus anyway, why not record in the studio? Request a time slot for Take-2 Tuesdays: Studio Booking Form
    • Remote Production Support – For faculty looking for remote support, the OFDIT Media Team can help. They will consult with remote faculty to make high quality recordings, offer advice on which recording software to use, and will assist with creating visuals, editing, captioning, and publishing.

Get the Process Started! Email matthew.lewis@cuny.edu or set up a Zoom consultation. Or if you’re coming to campus on an upcoming Tuesday, request a studio reservation!

Brightspace Updates and Notes

Brightspace Feedback Survey

Have you noticed the announcement in Brightspace about a user feedback survey? OFDIT is gathering feedback from faculty, students and staff about their user experience in Brightspace. We plan to use the feedback to make some adjustments for Spring courses, and to improve our training and support resources. We have heard from a good number of students, but not so much from faculty! Please take the opportunity to share what is useful, describe where the points of friction are, and make suggestions for changes in layout, content, or configuration. Thank you!

Brightspace Highlight

From Lilly Matthew: The Pulse app is great for getting notifications about students’ posts in the Q & A forum, so you can answer them quickly from wherever you are. Students really appreciate that kind of responsiveness, which helps them keep their momentum when they’re working on assignments. When you receive a notification on your phone, you can open it and it will take you directly into the Pulse app where you can post a quick reply.

To set up instant notifications:

    1. In the notifications settings of your Brightspace account, in the Instant Notifications section, be sure you’ve ticked the boxes for Discussions. (See Managing Notifications in Brightspace – Teaching Guides)
    2. Install the Pulse App on your mobile device.
    3. Enable notifications from the Pulse App on your device.
    4. In your course, subscribe to the Q & A forum. 
    5. NB: Select ‘Send me an instant notification’.

Events and Announcements for SPS Faculty

Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice

After a successful inaugural meeting in October, join us for our second monthly meeting of the Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice for faculty and staff on Friday, November 22 at 12pm ET via Zoom. We’ll discuss principles of Universal Design in Learning (UDL), brainstorm implementation ideas, and share actionable tips for creating accessible documents. Register here.

The CoP is part of the broader UDL Collaborative by the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion. As part of this effort, the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy is offering a year-long asynchronous training course on UDL guidelines, for which you can register here.

CITA Series on Generative AI

Friday, 11/8, 11:00 am-12:00 pm – CITA Book Club “Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning” by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson

Friday, 11/22, 11:00 am-12:00 pm  – Supporting Students’ Ethical Use of AI: Ideas and Practices in Humanities and STEM Fields

CUNY IT Conference 2024

Registration is now open for the 23rd Annual CUNY IT Conference, December 5-6 at John Jay College. This year’s theme is “Advancing CUNY: Intentional Connections and Smart Collaborations,” with speakers including Aleks Berditchevskaia, Principal Researcher at Nesta’s Center for Collective Intelligence Design.

SPS will be well represented with 4 presentations:

      • Building a Collaborative Strategy for Transfer Student Success Using Navigate360, on Thursday, December 5 at 1 pm, with Angela Francis, Leah Chajeczkis, Joseph Contreras, Cindy Lin, and Ashley Hoyt
      • Harnessing AI, Python and APIs for Smart Data Collection, on Friday, December 6 at 1 pm, with Joseph Foy and Calvester Legister
      • Tech Tools for Fostering Intentional and Engaging Collaborations in Education, on Friday, December 6 at 1 pm, with Lilly Mathew, Olga Kagan, and Mary Joy Garcia
      • The Four Cs: Keys to a Successful LMS Transition, on Friday, December 6 at 2:15 pm, with Ruru Rusmin, Matt Lewis, Lianna Scull, Kathryn Larkins, and Sarah Kresh

 CUNY SPS OpenLab Launches SSO

After many trials and tribulations, single sign-on is available on the CUNY SPS OpenLab! If you already have an OpenLab account, you’ll receive a communique to inform you that your account has been updated, signaling that you’re ready to log into the OpenLab with your CUNY Login credentials. (You use these to login to Brightspace, Outlook, and CUNY First, among others.)

If you’ve been waiting for a streamlined login experience, you can now sign up using your CUNY Login. This officially makes us the first OpenLab integrated with CUNY Login!

OFDIT Fall 2024 Trainings 

OFDIT’s fall trainings can help you teach, assess, and engage your students in high-impact, accessible, and efficient ways. 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 click links below to register.

Brightspace: Navigating the Gradebook and Grading 

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

Brightspace: Feedback (30 minutes)

There are many options in Brightspace for giving students feedback on their work. In this short brown-bag training, we’ll go over how to give feedback on discussions, assignments, quizzes, and group assignments and show you how students access your feedback so you can guide them to making the most of it.

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.

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.

Faculty Corner

Faculty corner image

From Hannah Miller (LARTS):

When I reply to student posts in Discussion Boards, I use a “text expander” to always include the same emoji and my name in the subject line of my response, e.g., “🌿 Prof. Hannah to [Student’s name].” This rapidly “flags” my replies visually for students when they are scanning over topic responses, and allows me or students a quick way to pull up my replies by performing a search for that emoji in the Discussion Topic. I use the low-cost text expander “TypeIt4Me” on the Mac.

Submitted by Curtis Izen (BUS):

Recently, I needed to include a text grade item in my course that would allow me to include an “Incomplete” or “Complete” for a student submission not counted towards their final grade. The following steps allowed me to create text-grade items:

    1. On the Navbar, click Grades.
    2. On the Manage Grades page, from the New button, click Item.
    3. Click Text.
    4. In the General area, enter your grade item details.
    5. To attach a rubric to the item, in the Grading area, click Add Rubric.
    6. In the Display Options area, you can override display options for this item.
    7. Click Save and Close.

If you have a pedagogical tip from your new experiences in Brightspace (in 200 words or less!) that you think might help others, we would love to hear from you and add your submission to our next Faculty Newsletter! You can use our Faculty Corner Submission Form to submit.

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 Newsletter October 2024

Dear Faculty,

We’re excited to share many opportunities for professional learning and growth as the semester gets underway! This newsletter issue highlights new features and support resources for some of our Brightspace tools, announces extended registration for our funded Open UDL workshop, and welcomes SPS’s new and returning Faculty Advisory Board members. You’ll also find links to register for many CUNY-wide trainings and discussions on generative AI, Credit for Prior Learning, and online instruction, as well as for the CUNY IT Conference on December 5-6th. Lastly, proposals are due for the CUNY 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference on November 15th – don’t miss your chance to share your considerable and hard-won expertise in online pedagogy, accessible content creation, and approaches to assessment and student engagement with other CUNY faculty!

Brightspace Updates and Notes

Brightspace Highlight: New Demo Student Tool

A CUNY-built tool now allows you to participate as a test student in your course!

As you may know, you can switch to View as Learner in a course in order to see how course content appears for a student, and to test submission of an assignment or quiz. However, in order to test grading and feedback, it was necessary for CUNY to build a custom tool. The new Demo Student tool allows instructors to create a temporary Demo Student in a course. Instructors can impersonate the Demo Student, submit course work, switch back to Instructor to grade, and then impersonate the Demo Student again to view grades and feedback from the student point of view. Please visit this guide for details on how to use the Demo Student tool.

VoiceThread Troubleshooting

With a full semester launch under our belt, we’re pleased with the integration of VoiceThread (VT) in our new Brightspace home. While most users have no issues to report, occasionally they do arise. For troubleshooting, check out the VoiceThread for SPS Students page on the Faculty Hub. We’ve collected solutions for the most common VT errors, usually related to browser settings. In rare cases, students affiliated with another CUNY campus that are now working in VT in an SPS course may run into an issue with access. So far only three students have reported this issue, which we have discovered can be quickly remedied; however, the vendor must be contacted to resolve. For situations like these, please reach out to FacultySupport@sps.cuny.edu for assistance.

UDL at SPS

Open UDL Workshop: Registration extended to Oct. 17th! UDL Workshop Registration Closes Oct. 14

OFDIT and the CUNY SPS OER Initiative are pleased to invite all faculty to participate in the Open UDL Workshop: Making Your Courses Accessible to All (October 21 to November 4, 2024).

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.

Eligible faculty participants will be compensated with 7 NTA hours upon successful completion of the workshop. Registration is extended to Thursday, October 17! For more details, please see our Advanced Workshops page on the SPS Faculty Community Site.

Join our new Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice

We’re excited to announce the launch of the Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice for faculty and staff at CUNY SPS, which is part of the broader Universal Design for Learning (UDL) initiative by the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion.

Join us for our inaugural meeting on October 30th at 12pm ET via Zoom, featuring quick, actionable tips for creating accessible documents and an open forum for your questions and ideas. Register here.

This meeting marks the beginning of a monthly series offered for faculty and staff to learn about accessibility and Universal Design in Learning (UDL) principles, share implementation ideas and challenges, and learn about best practices.

Welcome to the new
OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board members!

A warm welcome to new members of the OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board (FAB), and an appreciative welcome back to our returning advisors! The advisory board kicked off for the academic year last week and are looking forward to working on projects including hosting faculty discussions (both in-person and facilitated on OpenLab) on AI in the classroom, advising on best practice recommendations for instruction in Brightspace, and serving on the selection committee for the Teaching Excellence Award in the spring!

Members of the Board:
Mark Friedman (2024-26) – Disability Studies
Lilly Mathew (2023-25) – Nursing
Hannah Miller (2024-26) – General Education
Faime Moussavi (2023-25) – Business
José Roldan Rivera (2024-26) – HRL / ILAW / Sociology
Norlene Thomas (2024-26) – HIM / HSA
Chris Kchao (ex officio) – Office of Student Disability Services
Mahdu Mammen (ex officio) – Information Technology

ePortfolio: A Journey of Reflection

The ePortfolio Team invites you to our inaugural event of the 2024-2025 academic year. We’re welcoming the CUNY SPS community to learn from students who are building their portfolios this semester. Whether in their first semester, at the final term of a degree, or somewhere in between, this event will capture and showcase students’ work at distinct junctures and discuss the role of reflection along the way.

We need your help!
If your course is using ePortfolio this semester, please fill out this form and help us showcase your students’ portfolios!

Register for event here!

CUNY Opportunities for SPS Faculty

CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy workshops

Teaching Matters series on generative AI is back for the 24-25 academic year.

Participants will be introduced to ideas for how to use generative AI tools in their classroom to enhance student motivation and learning.

Friday, 10/25, 11:00am-12:00pm – Student Motivation and Engagement: AI and Non-AI Assignments to Enhance Learning

This fall, CITA, is also hosting a series of workshops on Credit for Prior Learning (CPL).

In this showcase, presenters from Lehman College and CUNY SPS, who were recognized with CAEL-WICHE Equity Awards, will share examples of innovative Credit for Prior Learning practices that are leveraging faculty expertise and improving student success.

Friday, 10/25, 2:00pm-3:00pm – Showcase: Lessons from CAEL-WICHE Equity Award Winners

Dr. Wendy Kilgore, Senior Director of Research at AACRAO, will share key insights from Enhancing Accessibility and Inclusion: The 2024 Landscape of Credit for Prior Learning in US and Canadian Higher Education, a report of AACRAO’s recent survey of 399 colleges and universities about the relevance and impact of CPL as a mechanism for enhancing student success and accessibility and equity.

Friday, 11/15, 11:30am-12:30pm – The Importance of CPL in Today’s Higher Ed Landscape

CUNY Online Webinar Series –
Creating a Positive Student Experience in Your Online Course

Maximize Student Growth: Effective Feedback Strategies for Online Courses

Learn how to turn feedback into a catalyst for student success. This session will explore techniques to provide meaningful feedback that enhances student engagement and fosters academic growth in your online courses.

Tuesday, 10/22, 3:00pm – Registration Link

Engage and Inspire: Creating Impactful Short Videos for Online Courses

Say goodbye to monotonous presentations! Discover how to create short, dynamic videos that capture attention, boost engagement, and improve knowledge retention in your online courses.

Thursday, 11/21 at 3:00pm – Registration Link

Also available is the recording of the 9/26 webinar Engaging Your Students in Online Courses.

CITA Book Club

Interested in “emerging and powerful research on the seismic changes AI is already creating in schools and the workplace” and how that might affect your instructional design and practice? Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson will be the focus of CITA’s next book club meeting! 

Friday, 11/8, 11:00 am-12:00 pm – CITA Book Club

CUNY IT Conference 2024

Registration is now open for the 23rd Annual CUNY IT Conference, December 5-6 at John Jay College. This year’s theme is “Advancing CUNY: Intentional Connections and Smart Collaborations,” with speakers including Aleks Berditchevskaia, Principal Researcher at Nesta’s Center for Collective Intelligence Design.

CUNY 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference 

Share your pedagogy! Proposal submissions for the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) CUNY 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference (April 4 and 5, 2025) are due 11/15! 

Click this link to submit a proposal by Friday, 11/15

Faculty Corner

Faculty corner image
From Business faculty Curtis Izen 

“Here’s a Brightspace tip I’ve found quite useful.  There may be times when you would like to contact students who have not submitted a particular assignment.  In just 3 clicks, Brightspace will pull together an email with only those students in need of a reminder.  You can type your message, add an attachment and hit send.  I’ve written a teaching guide showing you how here: Contacting Students with Missing Assignments.”

If you have a pedagogical tip from your new experiences in Brightspace (in 200 words or less!) that you think might help others, we would love to hear from you and add your submission to our next Faculty Newsletter! You can use our Faculty Corner Submission Form to submit.

OFDIT Fall 2024 Trainings 

OFDIT’s fall trainings can help you teach, assess, and engage your students in high-impact, accessible, and efficient ways. 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 click links below to register.

Anthology Ally: An Introduction

Learn how Anthology Ally can increase access and improve the overall learning experience in your course by providing choice and flexibility for how students consume content and access media. We will cover both alternative file formats and the accessibility gauge features that are now available to all in your courses and the support Ally provides in addressing any areas where accessibility can be improved, often very quickly!

Brightspace: Managing Groups

In this training we will discuss how to set up groups, group discussions, and group assignments in Brightspace. 

Brightspace: Navigating the Gradebook and Grading 

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

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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 2024 Training Schedule

Level up, with Brightspace tools and other pedagogical technologies! OFDIT’s fall trainings can help you teach, assess, and engage your students in high-impact, accessible, and efficient ways. We look forward to seeing you at some of our upcoming sessions!

Anthology Ally: An Introduction

Learn how Anthology Ally can increase access and improve the overall learning experience in your course by providing choice and flexibility for how students consume content and access media. We will cover both alternative file formats and the accessibility gauge features that are now available to all in your courses and the support Ally provides in addressing any areas where accessibility can be improved, often very quickly!

Brightspace: Managing Dates and Visibility of Items

In this training we will discuss due dates, start and end dates, the calendar, and the date management tool and how the visibility toggle interacts with start and end dates.

Brightspace: Managing Groups

In this training we will discuss how to set up groups, group discussions, and group assignments in Brightspace. 

Brightspace: Navigating the Gradebook and Grading 

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

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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 Newsletter September 2024

Dear Faculty,

We hope you have had a great start to the semester! Faculty and staff have worked incredibly hard to update courses and get themselves and the curricula ready to deliver in our first fall in Brightspace, and student feedback so far has been very positive! We recommend inviting students to collaborate with you by sharing feedback about what is working, what could work better, and if they spot any residual mentions to Blackboard in directions, files, videos, or anywhere else in your course site.

In this newsletter issue, we share updates and tips about various Brightspace features, information about ongoing training and support for teaching in Brightspace available for faculty, an upcoming ePortfolio showcase, and an Open UDL workshop. We’re excited to support ongoing teaching excellence at CUNY SPS, and proud of our faculty’s agility and dedication to the student experience. Thank you!

Brightspace Updates and Notes

Instant Messaging tool deactivated system-wide

At the request of the University Faculty Senate, CUNY CIS has disabled the Instant Messaging (IM) tool across the entire CUNY Brightspace system, due to concerns about student privacy.

Module Start, End, and Due Dates

Please note that these work differently than availability dates in Blackboard.For modules with start dates in the future, learners will see the list of module content, but none of it is clickable (grayed out). Once a module end date has passed, the content is similarly inaccessible (grayed out). You can instead use a module due date, which will still appear in the calendar, but keeps content accessible. Of course, you can also manually set a module to active/inactive, by clicking on its eye icon, which will display/hide the module entirely.

OFDIT is working on training and documentation on this topic, particularly the technical aspects. While there is no one size fits all suggestion for using start/end/due dates, pedagogical best practice is to keep course materials such as readings and videos available to students.

Notifications settings

Like and subscribe – and notify! You may have subscribed to discussions in your course (such as a course Q and A topic), but in addition to subscribing, you may need to update your notification settings in your profile in Brightspace if you want to receive an email alert of new posts. Check part 4 of the Notification guide for directions and specifics!

Brightspace Highlight: Emailing Your Class

Posted an announcement and want to then send the announcement out as an email to your class as well? Wanting to email the whole class a file or other information all at once? You can do so quickly using either the Classlist or the Gradebook email tool.

Emailing using Classlist:

    • In the course homepage, click Tools > Classlist:

    • Tick the top box on the far left of the Classlist, and then click the Email icon directly above this box:

    • In the Compose New Message window that opens, enter the text you want to send in the Body field. You’ll see the classlist emails (including your own!) populate automatically into the Bcc field (which protects student privacy), so you may just click the “Send” button when you finish composing, and the email will go to you and all students!

Emailing using Gradebook:

    • In the course homepage navbar, click Grades
    • Follow the steps as above, clicking the same box and Email icon found at the far left of the Gradebook list, and then entering text in the Compose New Message window and clicking the “Send” button when complete:

    • NOTE: You’ll notice that when you email from Brightspace, the CUNYfirst login email is what populates for you and students. This is how the system is designed, and will connect the communication directly to the “regular” CUNY email the user has in the Brightspace system for delivery and receipt.

Brightspace Training for Faculty

CUNY Central’s ongoing series of facilitated training sessions are still available for faculty who want guided training on getting started, creating quizzes, engaging students, the Brightspace gradebook, and more! Register for as many sessions as you like – you’ll receive a recording of the session in case your schedule changes or just as a helpful reference later on. You can also find recorded training sessions on Central’s YouTube channel playlist. Check out recently added videos addressing frequently asked questions on assignments, quizzes and discussions!

Brightspace Open Office Hours

Throughout the fall semester, OFDIT will continue to offer Open Office Hours in morning, afternoon, and early evening sessions. Drop by office hours as often as you like to get a question answered! Check our Brightspace Office Hours page for the weekly schedule and the link to join.

Brightspace Teaching Guides

The OFDIT team has been working on building out the Teaching Guides site on the CUNY SPS OpenLab. Peruse the site to find helpful content on using Brightspace and external tools including Zoom, Panopto, and others.

SPS Events and Announcements

Policy Updates

With a new academic year comes new and updated policies. Please review CUNY policies as well as CUNY SPS-specific policies. You and your students can always find a link to CUNY SPS academic and student policies in the Student Resources menu on the Brightspace home page.

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 (October 21 to November 4, 2024).

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 14. For more details, please see our Advanced Workshops page on the SPS Faculty Community Site.

ePortfolio: A Journey of Reflection

The ePortfolio Team invites you to our inaugural event of the 2024-2025 academic year. We’re welcoming the CUNY SPS community to learn from students who are building their portfolios this semester. Whether in their first semester, at the final term of a degree, or somewhere in between, this event will capture and showcase students’ work at distinct junctures and discuss the role of reflection along the way.

If you would like to nominate a student who has a stellar ePortfolio, please fill out this form.

Register Here

CUNY Faculty Development Opportunities

CITA Teaching Matters Special Series on Generative AI

Friday, 9/27, 11:00am-12:00pm – Engaging with Generative AI: Which Tool Does What? (register here)

Friday, 10/25, 11:00am-12:00pm (registration opens on 10/1) – Student Motivation and Engagement: AI and Non-AI Assignments to Enhance Learning

Friday, 11/22, 11:00am-12:00pm (registration opens on 11/1) – Supporting Students’ Ethical Use of AI: Ideas and Practices in Humanities and STEM Fields

Save the dates for the Spring AI sessions: 2/21, 3/21, 4/25 (all 11:00am-12:00pm)

Friday, 11/8, 11:00am-12:00pm – CITA Book Club “Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning” by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (register here)

Faculty Webinar Series for Online Instruction

Thursday, 9/26, 3 pm – Engaging Students in Your Online Courses (register here)
In this webinar, you will learn how to transform your online courses into dynamic spaces where students feel connected and motivated to participate. With Dr. Brett Christie, Dr. Breana Bayraktar, CUNY Faculty Dr. Heath Grant, and CUNY Online Instructional Designer Chelien Brown.

CUNY Survey to Assess Need
for Video Hosting

As you know, CUNY SPS offers Panopto as a video recording, storage and streaming service. CUNY Central is now collecting information about how video/multimedia is used throughout CUNY by faculty, students, staff, librarians, etc. to better assess the need for a CUNY-wide video hosting system. If you would like to provide input, you can complete the survey here.

Faculty Corner

Faculty corner imageFrom Business faculty Robin Whitney:
“I noticed that when you send an email to the whole class using the Classlist or Gradebook email tool, the subject line defaults to the long version of the course name each time. Since this isn’t specific (or helpful if students want to search for an email from you later), I make it a practice to delete out that default subject line and replace with the Headline for the announcement I’ve posted and am emailing out, or a phrase related to the actual content of the email I’m sending.”

If you have a pedagogical tip from your new experiences in Brightspace (in 200 words or less!) that you think might help others, we would love to hear from you and add your submission to our next Faculty Newsletter! You can use our Faculty Corner Submission Form to submit.

 

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 Newsletter August 2024

Dear Faculty,

Our new LMS, Brightspace, made quite a splash this semester, with predominantly positive reports from students and faculty about ease of use and visual appeal. We were happy to see everyone diving right into designing and delivering content in summer courses, and we look forward to Fall semester going swimmingly, too! This month’s newsletter includes guidance for prepping your Fall course sites, links to additional training resources and to registration for our new Brightspace Basics training course, along with a call to join our Faculty Advisory Board for the coming year and to submit any Faculty Tips you might have to share after your first experiences with Brightspace! Finally, we invite you to our virtual event, Brightspace Day in August on 8/15! We look forward to continuing to pool our knowledge of our new LMS as the year unfolds, so we can support and exceed our goals of excellence in teaching and learning at CUNY SPS!

Steps for Course Prep

You can refer to our Migration Checklist and Migration Guide when preparing your course site for the new semester. While many of the adjustments listed in the Checklist will have been completed by the time your live site is ready to personalize, you’ll need to make sure you:

  • Post your welcome announcement
  • Fill out your Instructor Profile Widget
  • Upload your Fall syllabus/course schedule
  • Ensure all due dates reflect upcoming semester’s calendar

On the SPS Faculty Community site, you will find an array of SPS quick guides from our OFDIT team, and you can refer back to Brightspace Essentials units on adding content, rubrics, discussions, quizzes, grading, and video to assist you with finalizing your courses for the Fall semester. Thank you for your work to give students the best experience possible as they start the term!

Brightspace Day August 15th – Please Join Us!

Are you ready for Brightspace? All students, faculty, and staff are invited to join us for Brightspace Day on Thursday, August 15th.

The OFDIT Team will facilitate activities to ready you for a smooth transition to our new learning management system, Brightspace. Drop by and take the opportunity to log in, explore the environment, and ask us anything! For Faculty/Staff, are you working on your course or have questions?  Drop in and ask us anything about Brightspace.  For students, come by to see half-hour demos of the new Brightspace learning environment and explore the Getting Started in Brightspace course.

Register Here

Brightspace Basics

We are pleased to announce the launch of Brightspace Basics for CUNY SPS Faculty, a self-paced course hosted in Brightspace that is designed to help you learn how to navigate Brightspace and use its tools to optimize your teaching experience. This is another option for anyone who would like to enhance their comfort using the Brightspace instructor tools. If you choose to complete all the modules and quizzes, it should take about 4-6 hours and you can earn a Certificate of Completion.

To enroll in Brightspace Basics, from the CUNY SPS home page navbar, choose Discover, then select from the list of courses, or search for “Brightspace Basics for SPS Faculty.” Once you find and enter the course, you can submit an enrollment request. Please see these detailed enrollment instructions.

Brightspace Open Office Hours

Throughout August, OFDIT is also offering Open Office Hours in morning, afternoon, and early evening sessions. Drop by office hours as often as you like to get a question answered! Check our Brightspace Office Hours page for the weekly schedule and the link to join.

Brightspace Training for Faculty

CUNY Central’s ongoing series of facilitated training sessions focus on getting started, creating quizzes, engaging students, the Brightspace gradebook, and more! Register for as many sessions as you like – you’ll receive a recording of the session in case your schedule changes or just as a helpful reference later on. Central also maintains a YouTube channel playlist of training sessions, and new videos have recently been added that address frequently asked questions on assignments, quizzes and discussions!

Brightspace Resources for Students

You may want to take note of these resources for students so that you have them at your fingertips to share with your students if they run into difficulty using Brightspace in the first few weeks of the semester.

All SPS returning students are enrolled in Getting Started in Brightspace for SPS Students, a Brightspace course that covers how to navigate, how to stay organized, how to communicate with peers and instructors, how to complete assignments and quizzes and post in discussions, accessibility features, and how to get help. All new students are enrolled in New Student Orientation, an analogous course. You can remind students that these courses are a great way to learn about Brightspace.

For Brightspace support questions, students, like faculty, can use the virtual assistant chatbot that is available throughout Brightspace (it’s the speech bubble icon on the bottom right corner of the screen) or contact Brightspace’s CUNY-dedicated support line anytime at 1-888-895-2511. Students can also get help by contacting the SPS Help Desk at helpdesk@sps.cuny.edu or (646) 664-8592. (Faculty should contact OFDIT at facultysupport@sps.cuny.edu).

Events and Announcements
for SPS Faculty

OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board:
Call for Nominations (2024-26 Cohort)

Nominations are now open for the 2024-2026 cohort of the OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board. Established in 2021, the board plays a crucial role in shaping our programming and event planning. Consisting of six faculty members from diverse academic programs, along with two ex-officio members from the Office of Student Disability Services and IT, the board actively engages in assessing faculty needs, promoting faculty development, and participating in the selection process for the annual Adjunct Teaching Excellence Award.

Interested in serving on the FAB? Nominate yourself (or a colleague) by filling out our nomination form. Three new members will join the board in the fall, and your involvement is highly valued.

Virtual Workshop: Learning Mindsets for Student Motivation

This month and next, check out the CUNY Learning Mindset Modules for Student Success, a series of professional development modules developed by CUNY faculty members and the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) team. The asynchronous, self-paced workshop focuses on three learning mindsets (Mindset GPS) that enhance student motivation and success. You will receive a certificate of completion after finishing all course activities!

Call for Faculty Corner Submissions

Faculty corner image

If you have a pedagogical tip from your new experiences in Brightspace (in 200 words or less!) that you are excited about, we would love to hear from you and add your submission to our next Faculty Newsletter! You can use our Faculty Corner Submission Form to submit your pitch.

 

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 Newsletter June 2024

Dear Faculty,

We have launched into the Brightspace! Thanks to everyone’s hard work, students and faculty are making good starts in Summer semester courses! OFDIT is partnering with programs to begin course preparation for Fall, and below you’ll find a few links and support resources to assist you. We also announce a call for nominations for our Faculty Advisory Board and share information about a summer module series on fostering student motivation. We end with a general faculty tip to invite student feedback as they experience our new LMS in order to help us with continuous improvement for Fall semester and beyond!

Brightspace Updates

Brightspace Open Office Hours

Throughout the months of June and July, OFDIT continues to offer Open Office Hours in morning, afternoon, and early evening sessions. Drop by office hours as often as you like to get a question answered! Check our Brightspace Office Hours page for the weekly schedule and the link to join.

Guidance Resources for Faculty

CUNY now has its own dedicated Brightspace support hotline! The phone number is 1-888-895-2511, which will connect callers to agents familiar with CUNY’s portfolio of schools and our version of Brightspace.

We also have been busy updating our Migration Guide and Migration Checklist and have added a few additional units to our Brightspace Essentials self-paced micro course, including Video in Brightspace, Rubrics in Brightspace, and Quizzes in Brightspace so check these out for even more support!

Events and Announcements
for SPS Faculty

OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board:
Call for Nominations (2024-26 Cohort)

Nominations are now open for the 2024-2026 term of the OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board. Established in 2021, the board plays a crucial role in shaping our programming and event planning. Consisting of six faculty members from diverse academic programs, along with two ex-officio members from the Office of Student Disability Services and IT, the board actively engages in assessing faculty needs, promoting faculty development, and participating in the selection process for the annual Adjunct Teaching Excellence Award.

Interested in serving on the FAB? Nominate yourself (or a colleague) by filling out our nomination form. Three new members will join the board in the fall, and your involvement is highly valued.

Virtual Workshop: Learning Mindsets for
Student Motivation

This summer, check out the CUNY Learning Mindset Modules for Student Success, a series of professional development modules developed by CUNY faculty members and the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) team. The asynchronous, self-paced workshop focuses on three learning mindsets (Mindset GPS) that enhance student motivation and success. You will receive a certificate of completion after finishing all course activities!

Inviting Student Feedback

For those faculty teaching this summer, we share a suggestion that you invite student feedback (perhaps as replies to a dedicated thread in your Course Q and A discussion board or as an additional part of your Midterm Feedback Survey) as they move through this first wave of instruction in our new LMS. It can be helpful to ask students to let you know if they spot any remaining outdated references to Blackboard in instructions, labels, or other course areas, or if they have suggestions about what could improve their user experience in course sites! We will be eager to hear how our SPS learners engage with the tools, platforms, and features so we can hone our pedagogy and practices going forward. Send an email to brightspace@sps.cuny.edu with your observations or to share any student suggestions!

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 Newsletter May 2024

Dear Faculty,

What a spring it’s been! We know wrapping up our last Blackboard semester while prepping for Brightspace rollout this summer has kept everyone busy, and we are all learning more about our new LMS each day. We hope you can take a minute to celebrate all your progress so far!

Speaking of celebrating, there’s still time to sign up to participate with commencement preparations or at the in-person ceremony on May 23rd! Sharing this proud moment with students can be a great reminder of the meaning and the impact of our work together.

Brightspace Updates

Brightspace Day in May

All students, faculty, and staff are invited to join us for Brightspace Day in May on Wednesday, May 15th, 2024!

The OFDIT Team will facilitate activities during virtual sessions for faculty (10am-12pm and 2-4pm) to ready you for a smooth transition to our new learning management system, Brightspace. Drop by and take the opportunity to log in, explore the environment, and ask us anything!

Brightspace Open Office Hours

Throughout the month of May, OFDIT is also offering Open Office Hours in morning, afternoon, and early evening sessions. Drop by office hours as often as you like to get a question answered! Check our Brightspace Office Hours page for the weekly schedule and the link to join.

CUNY Instructor Training Series Continues

In addition to exploring our asynchronous, self-paced training mini-course, Brightspace Essentials, you can attend CUNY Central’s ongoing series of facilitated training sessions, which focus on getting started, creating quizzes, engaging students, the Brightspace gradebook, and more! Register for as many sessions as you like – you’ll receive a recording of the session in case your schedule changes or just as a helpful reference later on. Central also maintains a YouTube channel playlist of training sessions.

Brightspace launches May 29 for summer courses! For more information visit the CUNY SPS LMS Transition site or email brightspace@sps.cuny.edu.

Events and Announcements for SPS Faculty

OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board:
Nominations for 2024-26

Interested in serving on the OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board in the next two academic years? The Advisory Board plays an important role in planning and organizing OFDIT events, and guides the direction of our programming and activities.

If you are interested or would like to nominate someone else, please fill out our nomination form. We are looking for new members to join our board in the fall and would value your participation. Thank you!

2024 CUNY SPS Adjunct Faculty
Teaching Excellence Prize

Congratulations to SPS faculty Jill Johnson, who teaches in the Psychology program and was recognized for her excellence in teaching with the 2024 CUNY SPS Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence Award this May! Her skill at supporting success in statistical methods and Senior Capstone courses was recognized as key contributions to the program and student achievement. We are proud to work with such dedicated and adept instructors here at SPS!

Universal Design for Learning Series

If you missed the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives and Disability Program’s Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles to Your Teaching series, you can still learn more about providing multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression into course design, instructional materials, teaching methods, and assessments. Check out the session slides and recordings and get inspired as you prep your summer and fall courses!

Entering Final Grades in CUNYFirst

Finally, as you get ready to wrap up the Spring semester, you can refer to this guide for entering final grades into CUNYFirst. If you have questions or encounter technical issues with CUNYFirst, helpdesk@sps.cuny.edu is available to assist.

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 Newsletter April 2024

Dear Faculty,

It was great to have so many of you in attendance in various ways for OFDIT’s Brightspace Day event this week! We admire the dedication and spirit of adventure with which folks are finding their way through the new LMS landscape, and we’ll be here providing support for all your discovery in the coming year as we move through the transition.

This month, we share additional upcoming training activities and registration links to help you continue to develop proficiency in all things Brightspace, as well as upcoming CUNY professional learning events to inspire your course design as you prep for summer and fall teaching.

Brightspace Updates

As we approach the summer launch of teaching in Brightspace at CUNY SPS, the work has begun to prepare courses. The schedule for preparing dev sites, course copying, and customizing live sites will remain much the same, and we will be using the same systems to conduct quality review of courses over the next six weeks so that things are student-ready. Students will also be connected with training opportunities and resources by the beginning of May – watch this space for more info!

Spring Break Camp

OFDIT will be offering Brightspace support sessions during Spring Break.

You can join us for:

    • Teaching in Brightspace: basics of communication and grading
    • Preparing your Course: bring your questions while getting your course ready
    • Open Office Hours: ask us anything

Morning, Midday, and Afternoon sessions will be available. See the schedule and registration links here.

Additional sessions will be offered through May if you can’t make Spring Break Camp.

Brightspace Day in May

Missed Brightspace Day, or want to come again? We will be holding another Brightspace Day on May 15, virtual sessions only, for students, faculty, and staff.

Other training opportunities, both self-paced and facilitated, can be found on the training page of our CUNY SPS Brightspace Transition site.

Upcoming CUNY Events
2024 BX EDTECH SHOWCASE

Date: Friday, May 3
Time: 9 AM – 4 PM
Location: Hostos Community College
Audience: SPS Faculty

Let’s Talk: Rethinking Authentic Learning & Assessment in the Age of AI
Get inspired as you design your new Brightspace courses! Innovators from the three Bronx CUNY colleges, Lehman College, Hostos, and Bronx Community Colleges, demonstrate their exemplary models for integrating and infusing technology into their fully online, hybrid, and traditional teaching methods.

Register Here

CITA’s Applying Universal Design for Learning 

Date: Friday, May 3
Time: 2:30 – 4:00 PM
Location: Virtual
Audience: SPS faculty and staff

As you begin to prepare your upcoming course sites, join the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) for the third workshop in a 3-part series on Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles to Your Teaching: How to Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression. The session will start with a presentation about this key UDL principle, explaining the accompanying guidelines, and providing examples. After a Q&A session, attendees will have a chance to work with colleagues to brainstorm ways to apply it in their courses.

Register Here

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 Newsletter March 2024

Dear Faculty,

We are looking forward to the Summer semester launch of course delivery in Brightspace, and excited to share information about upcoming trainings and workshops for you to get ready to do your best teaching in our new LMS. We also want to announce the SPS Brightspace Day event, remind you of a Friday lunchtime Open Spring discussion session, and highlight a Faculty Forum on Generative AI in the SPS classroom.

We welcome you to spring ahead into a great month of growth opportunity!

Brightspace Update 

Brightspace Day is April 15th – Save the Date! 

Mark your calendar, Monday, April 15th – it’s Brightspace Day! The OFDIT Team is busy preparing a day of activities to ready SPS faculty and staff for a smooth transition to our new learning management system, Brightspace, where all classes will be delivered starting Summer 2024. You can expect both in-person and virtual support sessions with interactive demonstrations, a showcase of best practices and strategies, and hands-on work with your dev site or course site. It will be a good opportunity to log in, explore the environment, and ask us anything!

Brightspace Evening Training Sessions

Feeling ready to prep and teach your courses this summer and fall? CUNY Central will be running their cycle of Brightspace trainings on the following dates and times. Register using the links below:

Other training opportunities, both self-paced and facilitated, can be found on the training page of our CUNY SPS Brightspace Transition site. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at brightspace@sps.cuny.edu! 

Upcoming SPS Events

March is Open Spring at CUNY SPS!

The OER Initiative is sponsoring the Open for All Workshop & Discussion Series (March 1-28), a hybrid online (sync/async) workshop on best practices at the intersection of Open Education and Inclusive Pedagogy. There is still time to catch the last synchronous online discussion on the theme of representation, accessibility and inclusion, and student agency. Open to the whole SPS community!

      • Friday, March 22 (12:00-1:30pm ET) Meeting 3: Student Voice and Choice: 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?

For more information and registration, see the link below.

More Information

Faculty Forum on Generative AI
in the CUNY SPS Classroom 

Thursday, March 28, 2024 from 12:00-1:00pm ET (Virtual)
Facilitators: Richard Schumaker and Kate Moss

Organized and sponsored by the OFDIT Faculty Advisory Board, this discussion will focus on your experiences as faculty with generative AI (such as ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E2) in CUNY SPS classrooms. There have already been a number of informational and how-to sessions both CUNY-wide and at SPS about generative AI, so our focus in this session will be on the AI policies, experiences, questions, and needs of our faculty.

In this one-hour interactive session, we would like to acknowledge the wide range of approaches faculty are already taking with generative AI. You will be invited to share your class AI policies (if any), to share your experiences with using generative AI in your 2023-24 classes, and to share your questions and support needs with generative AI going forward.

Depending on the number of participants, this forum may include participation in discipline-specific breakout rooms where faculty can articulate their questions, concerns, and suggestions.

Register Here

Humanizing Online Learning with VoiceThread

Tuesday, April 2, 2024 from 2:00-3:00pm ET (Virtual)
Facilitators: Curtis Izen and Matthew Lewis

Join us to see how VoiceThread can transform the virtual classroom through fostering human connections. For over eight years, Curtis Izen, Senior Computer Information Associate at Baruch College and Adjunct Faculty with the CUNY SPS Online Business Program, has taught with VoiceThread, a tool that makes asynchronous conversations feel live and in-person. By incorporating VoiceThread into various course components, Curtis has seen distant boundaries between students eliminated, a strong community element built, relationships among students both academically and professionally flourish, and an increased self-confidence in presentation skills among his students. And in the age of generative AI, VoiceThread interactions help to ensure authentic student work through the spoken word. Assessing students is pedagogically thorough.

Register Here

Engagement Events for SPS Faculty

15th Annual CUNY Accessibility Conference

Theme: Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Creating a Culture of Accessibility and Inclusion
One-day, in-person event at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Monday, May 13th, 2024 from 10:00am to 4:00pm ET

Featured speakers this year include CUNY SPS’ own Andrew Marcum, Academic Director of Disability Studies!

See the conference website for the Call for Proposals (due: March 25th) and to register for the event.

Disability and Accessibility Training by CUNY Office of Faculty Affairs

March 19, 2024 from 4:00-5:30pm ET
March 21, 2024 from 12:00-1:30pm ET

In partnership with the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives and Disability Programs, the CUNY Office of Faculty Affairs is offering faculty training and development on Disability & Accessibility this semester, including three sessions on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles (see their website for more details, session dates, and links to register), as well as several faculty drop-in office hours for hands-on support and feedback. Upcoming drop-in hours will focus on the following:

Audit your course materials and make your syllabi more accessible.

CUNY Learning Mindset Modules

The CUNY Central Office of Faculty Affairs (FA) and the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) are very happy to share with you the CUNY Learning Mindset Modules for Student Success, newly created in the CUNY Academic Commons. The modules are self-paced, asynchronous professional development resources for faculty that cover three learning mindsets (Growth mindset, Purpose and relevance, and Sense of belonging: collectively called Mindset GPS) that promote student motivation and success. Currently, the modules are set up in a way that they are available for anyone at CUNY with an Academic Commons account. If you do not have an Academic Commons account, please follow these instructions.

Introduction to Manifold (Two-Part Series)

This workshop series presented by the GC Manifold @CUNY team will begin with an overview of the Manifold digital publishing platform, including the new authoring feature, and explore how it is being used at CUNY to create beautiful, dynamic, multimedia-rich digital projects and Open Educational Resources (OERs) such as custom versions of public domain texts, multi-text course readers, class projects, and journals.

Part II is the hands-on portion where participants will create their own Manifold project, learn how to customize the layout and add texts and resources. Facilitators will provide all the digital materials needed but participants are welcome to use their own epubs, Word .docx files, Google docs, images, YouTube videos, etc. See this post for more information on this series and related Manifold events.

Registration:

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 Newsletter February 2024

Dear Faculty,

We hope you’ve had a good start to the semester, and we are excited to share several updates and opportunities coming this spring! Thank you in advance for providing your feedback on some of our Brightspace LMS menu and homepage proposals, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at some of the Brightspace demo sessions OFDIT and CUNY will be offering over the next few weeks (links below!). 

This Thursday, you can get new pedagogy perspectives by attending the SPS Student Roundtable session or a CEID workshop delivered by SPS faculty from our Business program. Other professional opportunities we want to share include application deadlines for a new CUNY faculty fellowship and an NEA publishing institute opportunity at the end of the month. Last, please find details and registration information about SPS’s Open Spring workshop in March, the upcoming SUNY Online Summit, the D2L Connection one-day event, and the 2024 CUNY-wide Teaching and Learning Conference. We hope this round-up of offerings helps you spring forward into new skills, connections, and inspiration!

Brightspace Update

We are in the exciting phase of customizing our Brightspace environment for the SPS community. As part of this project, we are sharing some mockups of the home pages and navigation menus (or navbars) for SPS and SPS courses. This first pilot attempt will be followed by iterative development as needed in the future. 

    • We welcome feedback on the Brightspace landing page for SPS students, faculty and staff (College homepage and College navbar)
    • We also welcome feedback on the home page for SPS courses (Course homepage and Course navbar)
    • The home pages and navbars we decide on will become the default for SPS.  Navigational consistency within our LMS is very important to our students. However, faculty are able to make adjustments to meet learning needs.
    • Programs may also decide to customize their own versions going forward to better match the needs of their courses.

Please view mockups of the pilot homepages and navbars on this website. If you would like to share any feedback, please follow the survey links on the webpage and complete the Brightspace Environment Feedback form by Monday, February 19.  We’ll keep the form open over the long weekend to allow for the maximum time for input. Your thoughtful consideration is much appreciated! 

Training also continues this month with the addition of Brightspace demos for SPS faculty and staff (see below).  Other options include facilitated CUNY workshops and the self-paced SPS Brightspace Essentials. Please visit our Brightspace training page for all current offerings 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at brightspace@sps.cuny.edu. 

SPS Spring 2024 Events

Brightspace Demos for SPS Faculty

Join us over Zoom for a live demonstration of the new Brightspace learning environment.  Led by our very own OFDIT team, this 1-hour session will demo the most common features for those new to the platform. Starting with how to access Brightspace, the session will go on to demonstrate accessibility features, basic navigation, the student experience, and the instructor experience. 

Let’s Talk AI: SPS Student Roundtable 

Join our panel discussion about SPS students’ experiences with generative AI tools in their learning. Learn about some ways students might leverage generative AI, and their motivations and concerns. Understand student perspectives on the support and resources necessary for an optimal learning experience that acknowledges the presence of generative AI. 

Open to students, faculty, and staff

CIED Workshop

The Committee on Institutional Equity and Diversity (CIED) is pleased to offer a workshop on “Pedagogy Grounded in Reality: Incorporating Chattel Slavery’s Contribution to Higher Education.” 

Presenters: Dr. Tara Barca and Dr. Linda L. Ridley

About the workshop:
Traditionally, the fundamentals of management teaching have been aligned with the belief that conventional management theories were developed separate and apart from the institution of chattel slavery and the management of race (Aufhauser, 1973; Blackmon, 2008; Cooke, 2003; Roediger & Esch, 2012). This workshop will incorporate the results of a qualitative study that examined the exclusion of chattel slavery in the teaching of the history of American business (Baptist, 2014; Katznelson, 2005). Participants will be encouraged to enhance their research knowledge and reshape their pedagogy to include the true origins of educational concepts and theories, and through workshop activities and guided discussion, gain cutting-edge tools to facilitate inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible pedagogy.

Open to all CUNY SPS students, faculty and staff. 

March is Open Spring at CUNY SPS!

The OER Initiative is sponsoring the Open for All Workshop & Discussion Series (March 1-28), a hybrid online (sync/async) workshop on best practices at the intersection of Open Education and Inclusive Pedagogy. Synchronous online discussions on the themes of representation, accessibility and inclusion, and student agency will take place Fridays at lunchtime and are open to the whole SPS community!

    • We are seeking proposals for participation in the discussion from students, faculty, and staff by Feb. 21. Please share this invitation with your students!
    • Registration for the workshop is open to faculty and staff through Feb. 26.

For more information about the workshop or the discussions, please see bit.ly/OpAll or come to our info session Friday, February 16, 12-1 pm, in which we will discuss the DEIA Annotations to the SPS Course Review Rubric that we created as a tool for reflecting on how to build inclusivity and belonging into online courses.

Engagement Events for SPS Faculty

Call for Applications: CUNY Strategic Innovation Faculty Fellowship

New Faculty Fellowship Opportunity! From Summer 2024 – Fall 2024, CUNY Strategic Innovation Fellows help to advance the development, delivery, and governance of university-wide solutions in a number of areas that will strengthen the academic enterprise and outcomes for CUNY students.  Strategic Innovation Fellows work in a variety of Offices within the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) at CUNY Central, informing policies and initiative while earning valuable professional development and exposure. 

Depending on the Fellows’ host office, sample responsibilities include: creating a fellowship focused on supporting high school students enrolled in College Now courses; integrating career connections into degree pathways; informing educational technology deployments; developing experiential learning opportunities in healthcare sectors; and participating in other projects as determined by Office leadership. 

Application deadline: February 29, 2024 at 5pm EST – Click here for more information about the Strategic Innovation Fellowship and a link to the application portal

SUNY Online Summit

Attend for a fee in-person at the SUNY Global Center (116 East 55th Street), or for free online with live-streamed sessions about online program administration, instructional design, pedagogy and student support. Links to recordings will also be provided to registrants. Open to all!

February 28 and 29, 2024 – Click here to register

D2L Conference 

D2L, parent company of our new LMS, Brightspace, is having a free one-day, in-person event at the SUNY Global Center on March 1. Held in conjunction with the SUNY Online Summit, this event is an opportunity to learn more about accessibility, inclusive learning, student engagement, ways to establish instructor presence, and other tips and tricks. 

March 1, 2024 from 8:45am- 2:20pm –  Click here to submit a proposal or to register to attend  

National Endowment for the Arts Open Education Publishing Institute:
Collaborative Knowledge and Social Justice

Interested in giving your students transferable skills in writing, research, and publishing while disrupting the canon and centering diverse voices? The Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities will support faculty in creating Open Educational Resources, designing classroom assignments, or developing publications from June 2024 – May 2025. 

Proposals due March 1, 2024  –  Apply here

CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy – Generative AI Series

This series is a monthly, free, one-hour summit of CUNY faculty and staff devoted to sharing innovative teaching strategies and student-centered learning methods.  Save the dates below, more details to come:

    • Session 1: Teaching and Learning ABOUT and WITH AI: Discipline-Specific Ideas | Friday,  February 16, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM ET – event registration full, but keep an eye out on the  CUNY Innovation Teaching Academy website for session recording.
    • Session 2: Using AI Collaboratively with Students: UDL, Open Pedagogy, and Student Motivation | Friday, March 8, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM ET – Register here
    • Session 3: What AI Cannot Do: Equipping Students with Humanistic Skills in the Age of AI | Friday, April 12, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM ET – Registration will open March 14th on the CUNY Innovation Teaching Academy website 

Save the Date: March 22 is the CUNY-wide 2024
Teaching and Learning Conference 

Want to share or learn more about outstanding teaching practices, exchange innovative ideas, strategies, and research findings? The CUNY Teaching and Learning conference is a great chance to present your research, facilitate connections, and network across the system. Event is free, open to all, and will be held in–person at the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Sign up to attend by March 14, 2024 – Click here to register

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