Welcome fellow Commoners!

This week I want to highlight two courses that are running on the Commons this semester whose expressed goal is sharing content beyond their classrooms. As the course site for Free Queer CUNY proudly declares “If it can’t be shared, it can’t be taught!”

What is unique about these courses is that they push coursework to not only engage with on-going discussion in their fields, but to produce actual tools that can be used. Students are producing genuine work product geared towards a very public audience.

• The first site is a clearing house for the Independent Study projects created by students in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Students in the program participate in a two-part seminar in which they work together to create digital tools and projects. You can find these projects all over the Commons, but on this site you can see a collection of many of the most recent projects. It’s an exciting place to browse for inspiration but also you might discover tools useful to your research or classes: https://itpis.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
• The second site is the course site mentioned in the introduction. The course, IDS 70100 at the Graduate Center, asks students to design Queer Studies courses that can be used for undergraduates at CUNY campuses. It’s hard to imagine a collaboration that is more perfect for the CUNY Commons. It’s early in the semester, but students are already sharing resources, brainstorming ideas, and scaffolding assignments. This shared process work, along with the final syllabuses will be of tremendous help to educators in the future here at CUNY and elsewhere. https://freequeercuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Look out for a post next week about an experiment I’m trying with a colleague with teaching on the Commons and using discussion forums across multiple classes.

That’s all for now, keep exploring the Commons!

Best,
Paul