commons uses

The Commons is widely used to create an online space for hosting courses that encourage discussion, collaboration, and use of open and digital tools and resources to enhance the course.

Courses on the Commons are hosted via a group, a site, or a connected group-site. Read more below and/or check out our extensive Teaching and Learning on Commons Section here.

WordPress Sites

A WordPress site can be linked to the class group and be used to publish reflections, research, and findings. Private group sites can be used to publish syllabi, writing assignments, and course reflections. Public group blogs can be great to communicate outside the classroom, showcase research, and publish articles. Students can also create their own WordPress sites to work on projects, and posts from these sites can be syndicated onto the main group site by using a plugin.

Groups for Classes

Groups work great with classes, and professors typically take advantage of forums, announcements, files, docs, reply by email, email notifications, and privacy settings. Class members can work collaboratively on projects using Docs feature. If working in a sub-group, members can form smaller groups to facilitate private collaboration.

The Commons is increasingly becoming a publication platform for academic journals. The Commons team works closely with the publishers to find suitable WordPress themes and plugins, coordinate domain mapping, and troubleshoot issues.

Our open access publishing platform comes with a built-in social layer. The Commons front page can be used to advertise new journal issues, list blog posts, and provide a discussion platform that keeps the conversation going via comments and tweets. Your My Commons page aggregates journal articles, comments, and news about upcoming issues once you “follow” the site.

Editors can use groups on the Commons to collaborate on new issues and share reflections on manuscripts.

The growing number of academic journals now hosted on the Commons includes:
A growing number of academic journals are now hosted on the Commons; contact our team to learn how the Commons can support your publishing project:

Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT)

Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed journal is now edited by Professors Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson. JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the U.S. – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts.

Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy

The mission of The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (ISSN 2166-6245) is to promote open scholarly discourse around critical and creative uses of digital technology in teaching, learning, and research. Educational institutions have often embraced instrumentalist conceptions and market-driven implementations of technology that overdetermine its uses in academic environments. Such approaches underestimate the need for critical engagement with the integration of technological tools into pedagogical practice. The JITP will endeavor to counter these trends by recentering questions of pedagogy in our discussions of technology in higher education. The journal will also work to change what counts as scholarship—and how it is presented, disseminated, and reviewed—by allowing contributors to develop their ideas, publish their work, and engage their readers using multiple formats.

We are committed first and foremost to teaching and learning, and intend that the journal itself—both in process and in product—provide opportunities to reveal, reflect on, and revise academic publication and classroom practice.

JTDS – Journal of Teaching Disabilities Studies

“The idea of this journal began at a Society for Disability Studies conference almost four years ago, when Beth Haller and I began a conversation about the need for a vehicle to encourage community and advance pedagogy in the field. Matthew Wangeman of Northern Arizona State and Suzanne Stolz, from San Diego State, were also part of that initial conversation. Around this time, Dr. Haller, Professor of Media and Mass Communication at Towson University, and Professor Wangeman created the Teaching Disability Studies Facebook page, which now has over 6,500 followers. Over the last few years, posts on that site became less focused on announcing publications or events and more focused on questions of disability studies pedagogy. Visitors to the site were seeking information about resources, assignments and course syllabi as they developed disability studies courses. It seemed as though the field was ready for a different, but related, vehicle to explore disability studies pedagogy.

When I began teaching in the early 1990’s at The City College, there were only a few programs in the country that offered disability studies courses. Now, according to the list maintained by Syracuse University, over 40 certificates, advanced certificates and degree programs have been developed. In addition to the dedicated disability studies programs, an increasing number of disability studies courses are being offered in many other academic departments, from English and the social sciences, to music and information technology.

What is meant by the term ‘disability studies’ is in itself contested academic ground. Some courses and programs that identify as ‘disability studies’ fall on the more applied side of the spectrum, while many others are immersed in the humanities and disability theory. It is my hope that this journal will help all of us identify and explore pedagogy that prioritizes the experience of people with disabilities of all ages, uses the social model as grounding philosophy, and incorporates principles of universal design in assignment and course development and delivery.”

New Labor Forum

New Labor Forum is a national labor journal from the Murphy Institute, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and SAGE Publishing. Published three times a year, New Labor Forum provides a place for labor and its allies to test and debate new ideas. Learn more about us from the information below.

Who We Are

Read about us, view endorsements from prominent scholars and activists, view our masthead, or contact us if you have any questions or would like more information.

What We Do

Check out our current issue and read past issues from our archives. View our latest featured stories, hear from working-class voices. And be sure to view all of the wonderful poetry and arts contributions.

Get Involved

Interested in writing for us? View our submission guidelines, and be sure to contact us with any questions.

Looking for other ways to get involved? Feel free to drop by one of our upcoming events. And be sure to sign up for our mailing list, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, to stay in the loop on the latest New Labor Forum news and information.

Enclave – Revista de creación literaria en español.

Enclave tiene como objetivo difundir el trabajo literario en español en los Estados Unidos desde Nueva York y, más concretamente, desde la City University of New York (CUNY). Igualmente, divulgar la obra de los autores y artistas del mundo hispánico, a fin de generar un diálogo que dinamice la proyección de nuestra cultura, dentro y fuera del ámbito norteamericano, y promueva el intercambio con otras publicaciones literarias del circuito internacional. En este número, el material gráfico ha estado a cargo del artista chileno Felipe Érrez Èras y de la escultora argentina Betina Sor, aproximándonos con sus obras a las expresiones del ser, a fin de crear conciencia acerca de los males exteriores y los fantasmas interiores que afectan a los individuos en esta contemporaneidad, plagada de violencia, especialmente contra los integrantes más frágiles de nuestras sociedades.

Editores:

Nora Glickman (Queens College)

NGlickman@gc.cuny.edu

Alejandro Varderi (BMCC).

avarderi@bmcc.cuny.edu

Diagramación y diseño:

Marcos Wasem (ANEP-CFE, Uruguay).
contacto@marcoswasem.net

Enclave está auspiciada por el CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences.

cc-licensed photo “Evening” by flicker user aloucha

Members can have as many WordPress “sites” on the Commons as they want. We have over 1,300 sites on the Commons, many are dedicated to academic group collaboration or professional partnerships. These fall under different use cases. This page deals with personal sites (or “blogs”) – one person posting her/his thoughts, research, articles, poems, images…

We offer domain mapping if you choose to purchase your own domain name – your site will be hosted on the Commons, but your URL will be your own.

Examples of Personal Sites:

Tony’s Thoughts – where the Anthony Picciano, professor and executive officer of the Ph.D. program in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, reliably publishes his thoughts every day, many times focusing on pedagogical issues and current events.

Shehzad Nadeem – Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lehman College, uses a Commons blog as a portfolio site.

Orienting Statements – Perspectives on Black Music of the Americas by Dean S. Reynolds, a Ph.D. candidate in Ethno-musicology at the CUNY Graduate Center shows how someone can use a Commons site to gather resources and write incisive, personal blog posts. He also uses the site to post his CV and Bio.

Helldriver’s Pitstop One of our oldest ongoing blogs Helldriver’s Pit Stop is written by an Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College. By turns a music review, a personal diary, and an ongoing meditation on the nature of blogging, it’s been seven years foot sliding.

My Commons provides an easy way to stay current with the network of friends, groups, and sites you develop on the Commons. It constantly aggregates information that is relevant to you – what your friends are doing, what’s going on in the groups you belong to, and what content and discussion is happening on the sites you follow.

mycommonspage

Getting Started

“My Commons” (boxed in red, in the image above) is a new Commons tab. It only appears when you are logged into the Commons and is the only tab that is blue. If you login from the Commons “Home” page, you will be redirected there automatically. This may be a little jarring at first, if you are used to going to the Home page to explore site-wide activity, but you can still go to the Commons “Home” page and shop around for like-minded scholars to become friends with, find interesting groups to join, and sites to follow.

“My Commons” makes it easier to keep track of the circles of interest that you’ve already developed on the Commons.

If you generally log in directly to your site or group on the Commons, you may not notice the new “My Commons” tab. You will only be redirected there when you log in from the Commons “Home” page.

We hope you take some time to explore this convenient and focused way to browse the Commons.

Understanding the “My Commons” Activity Stream

Every time members do things on the Commons such as join a group, make a friend, upload a file, post to a site (or comment on a site post), follow a site, or participate in a forum discussion, that activity is recorded on the Commons site-wide activity stream. “My Commons” picks out items from that stream which is relevant to you.

My Commons and Privacy

Different for every member, “My Commons” aggregates feeds according to your privileges on the Commons. (For more information on privacy, please see Managing Your Privacy.)

For a public, private, or hidden group, you will only see feeds if you are a member of the group.
You will only see member activity if you have established a friendship with that member.
You will only see site activity if you are a member of a site, or if you have elected to “Follow” the site.

“My Commons” is not visible to people who are not logged into the Commons or who are not members of our community. “My Commons” is a personal page that other members can’t see (unless they are looking over your shoulders).

Filtering “My Commons” Activity By Type
You can filter “My Commons” items by specific types of activities, or just see everything. Items are presented in descending date order. myCommonsFilters

At the top of the page you will see the available filters – by default, you will see “Everything” but you can winnow down stream results by “Friends”, “Groups” and “Sites.”

Each item has convenient hyperlinks to the author, and to the content posted. Clicking the hyperlinks will take you right to the place where the activity took place. So, for example, you can read a comment written on a recently published post, and click the link, and be taken to the site’s post and be able to read the post, and comment as well.

If group-related, the icons to the left of each entry will have two overlapping images that show the group’s avatar and the group members avatar. See an example, below:

If the item relates to a newly published post, and that post has an image, a thumbnail of the image will also appear.

Load Newest / Load More

My Commons displays activity in descending order by date. You activity is likely to span many pages so as you scroll down, you can use the “Load More” button at the bottom. If you want to go back to the most recent activity, there is a convenient “Load Newest” button on the top of the page.

Enjoy!

My Commons is an exciting new feature on the Commons, and we hope you find it a convenient way to keep in touch with what matters to you the most on the Commons. Let us know if you have any questions.