{"id":6081,"date":"2023-11-15T10:04:29","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T15:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spsfaculty.commons.gc.cuny.edu\/?p=5969"},"modified":"2026-03-03T16:20:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:20:29","slug":"ofdit-newsletter-november-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.sps.cuny.edu\/sps-faculty-community-hub\/2023\/11\/15\/ofdit-newsletter-november-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"OFDIT Newsletter November 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dear Faculty,<\/span><\/p>\n

Fall ahead with OFDIT as we give updates about our OER initiative and our LMS transition and share registration links for an info session on DEI in the SPS Course Review Rubric, the November CUNY IT Conference, and two Disability and Accessibility series events. We want to announce an RFP for the CITA Teaching and Learning Conference and invite your participation in a brief survey about our faculty onboarding programs. Finally, you\u2019ll find both OFDIT\u2019s new captioning request form and a tip about creating accessible hyperlinks in your course materials. We wish you a great month, and we are always thankful for SPS faculty\u2019s demonstrated commitment to student learning needs and preferences!<\/span><\/p>\n

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OER Initiative Update<\/span><\/h2>\n

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The SPS OER Initiative is excited to share that Zero-Textbook-Cost and OER courses have now saved SPS students over $3 million! SPS currently offers three undergraduate <\/span>Z-degrees<\/a>, allowing students to graduate without any textbook costs at all, and we have a fourth Z-degree in the works.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Check out our new <\/span>Z-Degree badge<\/span> designed by OFDIT\u2019s Sharon Jorrin! This badge will appear on the program pages for our Z-degree programs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The research on OER and open education, such as <\/span>this recent talk at OpenEd23<\/a>, consistently demonstrates that ZTC is associated with higher student retention, higher student persistence, and higher overall grades, so we appreciate <\/span>you<\/span>, SPS faculty, for your work in support of our OER Initiative. OFDIT is here to help you reduce textbook costs and develop open pedagogical practices–just reach out at\u00a0 <\/span>facultysupport@sps.cuny.edu<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Upcoming OER Initiative Workshops<\/span><\/h2>\n

Mark your calendars! For <\/span>Open Spring at CUNY SPS 2024<\/strong>, we\u2019ll once again be presenting the <\/span>Open for All Workshop & Discussion Series<\/a> (March 1-28)<\/strong>. This hybrid workshop covers the intersection of Open Education and Inclusive Pedagogy. Live online discussions featuring the themes of representation, accessibility and inclusion, and student agency will take place Fridays at lunchtime and are open to the whole SPS community. Over the course of this 5-week workshop, faculty participants review their own courses with the help of a course review rubric annotated with suggested DEIA educational practices, culminating with a proposal for increasing inclusivity and student belonging in their course design and instruction. The discussion series portion will be open to our whole community of SPS faculty, staff and students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Interested in boosting student engagement? Consider interactive videos!<\/span><\/h3>\n

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In January, we\u2019ll be running the <\/span>Open & Active Video Workshop<\/a> (January 8-22, 2024)<\/strong>. This 2-week workshop covers how to source and create openly-licensed content for an educational video, how to film and edit the video, how to add interactive components to the video by incorporating questions right into the Panopto player or by incorporating the video into an interactive VoiceThread, and how to openly license and share the video. Faculty who complete the workshop are eligible for compensation of 7 NTA hours and are invited to produce a second video for an additional 4 NTA hours. <\/span>Registration <\/a>is open now!<\/span><\/p>\n

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LMS Transition News<\/span><\/h2>\n

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The core staff managing the transition at SPS have been working with D2L and CUNY CIS to set up our SPS Brightspace organization within the CUNY-wide platform. We have been exploring how to manage courses and users, and have been testing the third-party applications we use at SPS (Panopto, VoiceThread, Digication, etc.).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The CUNY LMS Transition team is making progress on providing access for faculty and staff to explore the Brightspace platform. Once you have access, you will be able to work in practice course sites so that you can get some hands-on experience with Brightspace. The course migration test from Blackboard to Brightspace is also in process. The university plan is to migrate past course content, and SPS has also requested migration of our course development sites.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the OFDIT team is preparing training resources tailored to SPS, while the CUNY team still has a few more sessions of the CUNY Brightspace Demo and Q&A workshops scheduled:<\/span><\/p>\n

Brightspace Demo for Faculty:<\/span> Register Here<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n