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Dear Faculty,<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We welcome you to spring ahead into a great month of growth opportunity!<\/p>\n
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<\/h2>\nMark 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!<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
Other training opportunities, both self-paced and facilitated, can be found on the<\/span> training page<\/a><\/strong> of our <\/span>CUNY SPS Brightspace Transition site<\/a>. <\/strong>If you have any questions, please don\u2019t hesitate to contact us at brightspace@sps.cuny.edu<\/a>!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The OER Initiative is sponsoring the Open for All Workshop & Discussion Series (March 1-28)<\/strong>, 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!<\/p>\n For more information and registration, see the link below.<\/p>\n More Information<\/a><\/p>\n Thursday, March 28, 2024 from 12:00-1:00pm ET (Virtual)<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Register Here<\/a><\/p>\n Tuesday, April 2, 2024 from 2:00-3:00pm ET (Virtual) 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.<\/p>\n Register Here<\/a><\/p>\n Theme: Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Creating a Culture of Accessibility and Inclusion Featured speakers this year include CUNY SPS\u2019 own Andrew Marcum, Academic Director of Disability Studies!<\/p>\n See the <\/span>conference website<\/a><\/strong> for the Call for Proposals (<\/span>due: March 25th<\/b>) and to register for the event.<\/span><\/p>\n March 19, 2024 from 4:00-5:30pm 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 <\/span>their website<\/a><\/strong> 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:<\/span><\/p>\n Audit your course materials and make your syllabi more accessible.<\/b><\/p>\n The CUNY Central Office of Faculty Affairs (FA) and the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) are very happy to share with you the<\/span> CUNY Learning Mindset Modules for Student Success<\/a><\/strong>, newly created in the CUNY Academic Commons. The modules are self-paced, asynchronous professional development resources for faculty that cover three learning mindsets (<\/span>G<\/b>rowth mindset,<\/span> P<\/b>urpose and relevance, and<\/span> S<\/b>ense of belonging: collectively called<\/span> Mindset GPS<\/b>) that promote student motivation and success.<\/span> Currently, the modules are set up in a way that they are <\/span>available for<\/span> anyone at<\/span> CUNY<\/span> with an Academic Commons account. <\/span>If you do <\/span>not<\/b> have an Academic Commons account, please follow<\/span> these instructions<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n This workshop series presented by the <\/span>GC Manifold @CUNY<\/a><\/strong> 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 <\/span>custom versions of public domain texts<\/a><\/strong>, <\/span>multi-text course readers<\/a><\/strong>, <\/span>class projects<\/a><\/strong>, and <\/span>journals<\/a><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n 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 <\/span>this post<\/a><\/strong> for more information on this series and related Manifold events.<\/span><\/p>\n Registration:<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nUpcoming SPS Events<\/span><\/big><\/h2>\n
March is Open Spring at CUNY SPS!<\/span><\/small><\/h2>\n
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\nFaculty Forum on Generative AI
\n<\/span>in the CUNY SPS Classroom\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nFacilitators: Richard Schumaker and Kate Moss<\/p>\n
\nHumanizing Online Learning with VoiceThread<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong>Facilitators: Curtis Izen and Matthew Lewis<\/p>\n
\nEngagement Events for SPS Faculty<\/span><\/h2>\n
15th Annual CUNY Accessibility Conference<\/span><\/small><\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong><\/em>One-day, in-person event at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
\nMonday, May 13th, 2024 from 10:00am to 4:00pm ET<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nDisability and Accessibility Training by CUNY Office of Faculty Affairs<\/span><\/small><\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong>March 21, 2024 from 12:00-1:30pm ET<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nCUNY Learning Mindset Modules<\/small><\/span><\/h2>\n
\nIntroduction to Manifold (Two-Part Series)<\/small><\/span><\/h2>\n