Teaching on the Commons Fellowship – Open Education at Kingsborough

Teaching on the Commons fellows develop, pilot, and revise courses they will teach on the CUNY Academic Commons. Current fellows can access our private Commons Group. Fellows will also blog about their experience on the OE@KCC blog.

Introductions to each other
Fellowship Expectations and LOI
What is the CUNY Academic Commons?
Groups, Sites, and Groups and Sites
Practical: Making our own scholarly website on the Commons (Create Page)
1. Examples: Collins, Ahmed, Spinu, Brandle, Blog post with instructions if you need them later, or to share with colleagues
2. Add your professional site to our Group Library
Exploring classes on the Commons
1. ENG 101
2. True Crime Zines
3. Art 104
4. General Chemistry
5. Comparative Politics
6. KCC Liquid Syllabus
7. Resources of interest that aren’t class sites:
  1. Stories of Work
  2. Planning with Parents who Fear Deportation
  3. Open Literatures Project
  4. Outline by Julie Van Peteghem for 2019 Hunter College Teaching on the Commons Group (original site here)
  5. Brandle’s Commons Fellowship Reflection
Punk Rock Pedagogy/app-smashing
Group and individual goal-setting and discussion

Think about your course currently- what are elements that you want to ensure that you bring with you to the Commons? What are some elements you’d like to revise?
Find 2 classes on the commons to discuss in meeting 2. Be prepared to discuss why you chose those sites with the group- features you like or ideas for your own classes? Cool design or feeling? Ease of use? What else?
Add your personal site to our group forum (works in progress totally okay). You can log into the group to post it, or make a post by email (once you are a member of the group) by emailing kcc-teaching-on-the-commons-fellows-2025-26@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu
Email Your Signed LOI to Shawna
Explore Why Teach on The Commons
Join the CUNY-wide Teaching on the Commons group
Join the OE@KCC group so you can write an introduction/goal-setting blog post for the OE@KCC blog and post it
- Remember, you can set your preferences for how you receive notifications from each group on the commons you join- every message, daily digest, weekly digest- whatever you like!

Show and Share: what 2 commons sites did you find? What was interesting to you about them? What did you like most? What did you like least?
Things we’re looking for/things to consider:
- New site every semester or one site that gets updated every semester?
- Introduction/orientation to the site is helpful
- What else?
Course Functions on the Commons
- Readings
  - on the page or links?
  - Benefits of using OER/fully open materials
  - Accessibility
  - Long scrolling page vs. accordions vs. multiple pages
  - Showing PDFs/google docs
- Student Interaction (whatsapp, Group Forum, BS)
- Grading/collecting assignments (dropbox, google/ms forms, BS, groups, what else?)
- Communication and Calendars (groups, announcement blog with subscription, outlook or google calendar)
- Liquid Syllabus
- What else?
- Potential Challenges:
  - Logins?
  - Public student work or not? Consent? Scaffolding Documents?
Brainstorm: what functions are essential for your class?

Fill in your class site (and group if you’ll be using one). Select a theme you like, and begin to edit the structure/pages/content. Bring questions/stumbling blocks to the next meeting
Decide what, if anything, you will ask your students to do on/with the commons.
Read Anderson, Nikki. Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER), Australian Edition. Prepare to share two highlights from the book to share with the group.

Check-in: how is your site? What’s going well (or not so well)?
Accessibility & Universal Design for Learning
1. Discussion of everyone’s two points from Anderson, Nikki. Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER), Australian Edition.
2. Quick Start to Accessibility:
  1. Use Styles to Add Headings
    1. Use the styles hierarchically
    2. Once applied, you can use use styles for the outline, table of contents, and to easily make font/color/size choices consistently across a whole document
    3. Information & How-To use Styles
  2. Use accessible fonts and make sure any colors are high contrast
  3. Add Alt-text to images (how/why to alt-text)
  4. Make URLs descriptive links, not word salad
    - Option 3 below is best practice; it’s also been used throughout this document))
      - here’s some interesting information on links and accessibility: https://www.nysed.gov/webaccess/create-accessible-hypertext-links
      - For interesting information on links and accessibility, click here
      - Creating Accessible Hyperlinks
3. Resources:

Post your site to our forum. Include any specific feedback you’re looking for in your post.
Peer review at least two sites by making comments on their forum post.
Find or create instructions for your students for anything you’ll be asking them to do.
Revise your site based on the group’s feedback.
Make a welcome video for your site and add it to your site.

Check in
Brief demo of your site to the group
Reflection and Discussion: what did you find in the process of creating your class on the commons? What are you most excited to try this semester? What (if anything) are you nervous about?

Teach your class on the commons!
Make note of any issues as they occur (both things that you fix right away during the semester, and things you’d maybe want to revise for next semester)
Don’t be afraid to reach out to our group (through the forum) or the CUNY-wide Teaching on the Commons group if/when you have questions.

Status update- how is it going? What has gone well? What has gone less well?

Finish teaching your class
Continue to make note of any issues as they occur (both things that you fix right away during the semester, and things you’d maybe want to revise for next semester)

Discussion: how did it go? What went well? What went less well? What revisions are you going to make to your class? What are things on your wishlist for next semester?

Make your site for Fall 2026 with any revisions you think are necessary; send link to Shawna
Write your final reflection blog post on the OE@KCC blog