CUNY Academic Commons

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for attending the first meeting of our LAGCC OER Working Group. So many great ideas and exciting projects! The following are some brief notes from our discussion and a few resources based on the conversation.

Math, Engineering, and Computer Science (MEC): Jeanne Funk and Tao Chen
Math piloted a handful of open platforms for gateway math classes in Fall I 2017.
They selected MyOpenMath to pilot 25 sections in Spring I 2018 and might bring the pilot to scale in Fall I 2018, which could cover 150 sections!
Administration of the MyOpenMath platform is under discussion. Unsure if they will contract with Lumen Learning for technical support or purchase their own servers and administer internally. These are important considerations with such an undertaking.

Education and Language Acquisition: Habiba Boumlik
Adopting an OER textbook for French (nb: Habiba, can you please share the title and a link?). There is some concern over the OER textbook since it doesn’t contain the ancillary materials available in commercial products. For example, quizzes and the ability to track student work. The textbook does contain videos and is centered around student experiences abroad in France.
Habiba also suggested that the working group have a representative from each department, perhaps several for depts like humanities with diverse needs.

Humanities, Communications: Joni Schwartz
Interested in using OER, especially for public speaking classes taught online. Communications currently uses commercial products/major publishers (Cengage, McGraw Hill) for the ancillary materials. But there are questions around how much those materials are used/necessary in relation to the ongoing costs.

Humanities, Philosophy: Payal Doctor
Teaches survey of world religions and uses an open source course pack: Reading for Philosophical Inquiry. Payal, please confirm that this is the right book, thanks!
Payal, Cheri Carr, and Shannon Proctor are writing reviews of Open Textbook Network Library titles.

Library: Thomas Cleary and Ian McDermott
Thomas is the data liaison for the library and can assist with various educational technology issues, especially as it relates to CUNY Academic Commons.
Ian is teaching LBN105: InfoCity in Spring I 2018 and is hoping to use Academic Commons as an open pedagogical tool.
The library received a grant from the CUNY Office of Library Services (OLS) to develop a student assessment tool for OER textbooks.
The library previously received a grant from OLS to hold OER workshops at LaGuardia. We plan to hold more workshops in the spring and Habiba expressed interest in holding one for ELA.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Getting to know the CUNY Academic Commons: https://vp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2017/12/18/getting-to-know-the-cuny-academic-commons/

Reflections from Spring 2017 CUNY Academic Commons Faculty Fellows:  https://vp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2017/08/18/reflections-from-spring-2017-cuny-academic-commons-faculty-fellows/

Open Education Group, review project: http://openedgroup.org/review
This website is a review of all the empirical research on the impacts of OER. The broader OEG website contains loads of OER info and research (nb: Lumen backs this website).

ENG298: Technologies of Reading, Prof. Andie Silva (2017 Commons Fellow): https://eng298.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Course website using CUNY Academic Commons

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Ian McDermott.