Registration / Exhibits Open

4th Floor Gym

Note: Room assignments for all sessions will be available on site at the conference.

Concurrent Sessions I

"Wait, You Can Do That?": A Year-Long Journey into Coding in Python

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: learning, library, automation, process improvement

In her day-to-day library work, Rebecca Hyams regularly deals with complex data projects or repetitive workflows that can’t always be simplified within the tools already in use. While she had heard of concepts like scripting and using APIs, as someone without a background in computer programming, her previous attempts to make use of such tools were impeded by confusing documentation. However, a passing comment one day made something finally click and lead her to attempt to learn Python, a language known for flexibility and clear syntax.

While her journey only began this year, Rebecca has already been able to draw from her projects and daily tasks to drive her study of the language. Though still a novice programmer, she has been able to write small scripts that automate some time-consuming processes, as well as deal with analyzing increasingly complex datasets – all while building fluency in Python. Each project has taught valuable lessons that have made each successive project a little easier to tackle.

In this presentation, Rebecca will discuss her journey so far, the strategies used to get a footing in Python and the impact the scripts she has been able to develop have had on her and her colleagues.

Rebecca Hyams, Web and Systems Librarian, A. Philip Randolph Library, Borough of Manhattan Community College

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CodeControl: Diversifying CS1 Student Retention through Cloud Gameplay

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: DEI, industry skills demand, gamification, innovative pedagogy, educational resource

Retention poses a significant challenge in Computer Science, where attrition rates in Introductory Programming (CS1) can be as high as 30 to 50 percent. Students who withdraw often describe lower self-assessment and less motivation than their peers who remain, regardless of actual demonstrated skills and across programs of varying academic rigor.

Groups underrepresented in STEM fields, including women and non-traditional students, appear to exhibit greater susceptibility to declining self-efficacy belief, indicating a need for targeted approaches that can address heterogeneous challenges.

The CodeControl digital game is a tool for faculty to develop and present programming problem-sets to their students, in the context of a fun animal search-and-rescue video game. After numerous iterations, it has taken shape as a “cozy” 3D adventure game, set in a familiar urban environment, with diverse options for player-customizable character appearance.

Notably, we sought to avoid the pedagogical inflexibility of prior studies by using a database-backed cloud framework to feed the game’s live-coding lessons and a web-based Instructor Portal for cohort assessment. Our talk will provide a high-level overview of the game’s technical framework (Unity, Judge0, Google Cloud/Firebase) and discuss the pedagogical challenges encountered and potential for extensibility.

Project grant supporters: CUNY Open Educational Resources Initiative, Google Cloud Research Innovators, Break Through Tech (formerly WiTNY), SIGCSE Special Projects Initiative.

Mandisa Washington, Lead Mobile Developer, ITS, Brooklyn College

Devorah Kletenik, Associate Professor, Computer and Information Science, Brooklyn College

Deborah Sturm, Professor, Computer Science, College of Staten Island

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Enhancing Data Literacy Across the University Using Tableau Server

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: data-driven decision-making, data analytics, data literacy

Data-informed decision-making requires access to timely and actionable information. Learn how the CUNY Central Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics (OAREDA) is leveraging University data resources and Tableau Server to share data and information about enrollment, student progress, program participation and success with University and College leaders to inform and improve policies and programs at all levels. OAREDA uses scripts to collect, manage and transform data into structures that support the University’s reporting requirements, including daily refreshed and frozen extracts.

Through OAREDA’s implementation of Tableau Server, OAREDA’s Tableau Dashboard developers use scripts to select data elements and present information to targeted audiences across CUNY in a set of interactive dashboards. Further, scripts are used to manage access to Tableau Server and specific content for different groups of data consumers. OAREDA’s dashboards are comprised of tabular and visual displays of data to help decision-makers see patterns and make decisions intended to advance strategic and operational goals. Presenters will demonstrate a variety of interactive dashboards and will present OAREDA’s vision for expanding the use of Tableau across the University, including plans for a pilot expansion program to CUNY colleges, with the goal of advancing data culture and literacy at CUNY.

Cheryl Littman, Chief Data Strategist

Zun Tang, Assistant Dean, Institutional Research

Mervin Williams, Senior Director, Data Management and Analytics

All of Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics, CUNY Central Office

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We’re Going to Need a Better Boat

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: virtual and hybrid best practices, organizational, change

The post-pandemic world has grown to accept and expect remote and hybrid employees. Hybrid teams across all departments and campuses have become the norm, but have we kept up with the leaps in technology to ensure that our hybrid teams are the most effective they can be? In this presentation, CISTraining will discuss common mistakes and best practices of hybrid teams – both from soft-skills and technological perspectives.

Anastasiya Fatiy, Manager of Technology Training

Chandra Cherry, Director of Technology Training

Kim Coleman, Manager of Technology Training

Shozer Dawn, Technology Training Coordinator

All of CISTraining, CUNY Central Office

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Flipping the Script: Getting Faculty, Classrooms and Students Ready for HyFlex

(Scripts for Developing Curriculum and Courses)

Keywords: hyflex, innovative pedagogy, faculty training

Supporting HyFlex teaching and learning requires a balanced approach to address the complexity of this instructional method while simultaneously considering the relationship of pedagogy and technology, which inevitably leads to new teaching and training scripts. To ensure quality teaching and learning during the pandemic, faculty had to innovate in their pedagogical approaches. Leveraging technology, many faculty tried out HyFlex, allowing students to choose how they will participate in each class session.

Attendees of this session will learn about the dos and don’ts of HyFlex teaching, as well as the resources and support offered by the Office of Online Education. The Information Technology Division, in collaboration with Academic Affairs and Administration & Finance, made sure that HyFlex capabilities are enabled in the classrooms with a Rapid Response Team in place to assist the faculty. The Audio and Visual Infrastructure behind the new HyFlex-enabled classroom technology relies extensively on scripts to make the technology user-friendly, interactive and seamless. The support offices collaboratively provided guidance to faculty on how to get ready for HyFlex teaching. The presenters will share lessons learned from this experience and offer recommendations for supporting HyFlex. Additionally, a faculty member who taught HyFlex will share their experience, including how to address student preparation for learning in a HyFlex class.

Olena Zhadko, Director, Office of Online Education

Dermot Foley, Associate Director, Office of Online Education

Asma Neblett, Educational Technologist & Online Learning Student Peer Mentor, Office of Online Education

Ediltrudys Ruiz, Interim Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Division of Information Technology

Migdio Dominguez, Manager, Media Technology

All of Lehman College

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Human Error – How Integrating Common Errors into Interface Design Can Change Design Thinking

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: process improvement, streamlining

Today, we are often confronted with computer interfaces that are built to be “easy to use,” but are more confusing than ever. This presentation details a series of projects that fall under the theme of “human error” and consist of software and hardware devices that integrate elements of human error into their design to provoke and materialize human incapacities when it comes to operating digital devices and interfaces.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Lehman College

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Using Python and Open Source Technologies to Streamline Exam Generation and Faculty Collaboration

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: assessment, process improvement, educational resource, scripting on the back end for teaching

Multiple choice question testing is an important aspect of assessment and allows instructors to efficiently and effectively test for content knowledge, allowing more time to focus on other aspects of assessment. However, the process of storing these types of questions and generating exams is often cumbersome, requiring faculty to keep questions in text files and manually create exams using word processing software. This presentation will introduce an open source program the speaker created that allows instructors to store both text and math questions (using LaTeX markup language) in a local database and generate exams from this database in .docx format. This program also allows instructors to embed images in generated exams and produces a text file that allows instructors to upload questions to the Blackboard online learning management system.

Marco Castillo, Associate Professor, Social Science, New York City College of Technology

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Inter-Professional Simulation Education: A Depression/Suicide Case

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: nursing, simulation, interdisciplinary

Nursing education has undergone endless challenges in the recent past. Having a shortage of nursing professors, lack of clinical opportunities for students and, of course, COVID restrictions have all impacted the way current nursing is taught. Fortunately, the nature of the nursing profession is one of flexibility and using creativity to meet goals. One way to address providing clinical experiences for nursing students has been to use virtual or in-person simulation. This has been a valuable form of pedagogy for many nursing programs as an alternate way to safely learn their role. Taking that concept to another level, the use of inter-professional disciplines during a simulation has been successfully used. By having a multitude of healthcare providers script and participate in a simulation for not only nursing students, but medical, respiratory, social work, dental, occupational therapy, physician assistant and more, the students can participate in their own discipline’s role while interacting with other students in a mock realistic simulation. A depression/suicide interdisciplinary educational simulation was written and successfully piloted and ran by this author for an entire city university system. A depression/suicide interdisciplinary educational simulation was written and implemented as an educational experience for healthcare students. CUNY Interprofessional Education (IPE) is a university-wide initiative sponsored by the Central Office of CUNY to support collaboration in the interdisciplinary partnership among faculty. This initiative is designed and led by varied faculty members across campuses. This CUNY-wide initiative serves to model the interdisciplinary process for the students.

Valerie Esposito Kubanick, Assistant Professor, Nursing, York College

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Developing Open Educational Resources to Support Student Learning in Math Courses

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: open education resource, helpyourmath, teaching

The HelpyourMath is free educational material. Community college faculty members gathered and cooperated in building free educational resources. The Helpyourmath website includes mini-lecture videos and free homework platforms for the courses: Introduction to Statistics, Statistics with Algebra, College Algebra and Precalculus, Calculus, and Mathematics for Health Sciences and we are continually expanding these and adding more courses. The Helpyourmath website is an OER so that any teachers or professors can adopt and use a built-in component in their classes. This presentation demonstrates how the Helpyourmath resources were built and let audiences know how to import and use them in their classes.

Lina Wu, Professor

Johannes Familton, Assistant Professor

Jae Ki Lee, Professor

Yazhu Liu, Lecturer

Babul Saha, Lecturer

Susan Licwinko, Associate Professor

All of Mathematics Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College

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A Student Guide to Learning: A New Script for Students Today

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: student support, open educational resource

Prior to the pandemic, the Baruch Center for Teaching and Learning had a guide for students that focused on administrative topics and assumed a physical campus where students could access resources and community. By Spring 2021, it was clear that a new script was needed.

This presentation shares the revised resource, which infuses a “whole self” approach to thinking about educational life. Informed by the experiences of pandemic teaching and learning and our COVID-19 Student Experience Survey, this guide includes strategies for students to chart their educational paths, plan out their study and maximize their time in college (whether on or off campus). It’s grounded in successful methods its authors (CTL staff and instructors at CUNY) witnessed students use to stay on top of their classes, and fosters habits of mind and body that make the learning process more fulfilling. The guide is structured to address key moments across a semester and best practices to foster a rewarding learning experience and healthy work/life balance. An evolving document, it is offered as an OER, reuse-able or remix-able to a range of schools’ teaching and institutional contexts.

Seth Graves, Digital Pedagogy Manager

Tamara Gubernat, Associate Director

Allison Lehr-Samuels, Director

Hamad Sindhi, Digital Pedagogy Manager

Katherine Tsan, Digital Pedagogy Specialist

All of Center for Teaching & Learning, Baruch College

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AI for Good: Leveraging AI for Equity, Engagement and Agency

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, digital access

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools may be viewed negatively, as impersonal push notifications and chat bots. Yet, we are seeing emerging practices that leverage ethical AI models for enhanced student engagement, retention and more. AI solutions are, in fact, removing affective filters for accessing support services, providing curated information about Just-in-Time grants, internship opportunities and course recommendations to ensure students stay on track to graduate. Learn how higher education institutions are creating more equitable AI models that build on the modern student experience and promote access and greater student agency.

Mary Strain, Business Development Lead, AI/ML, Amazon Web Services

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All Along the Watchtower: What’s Your Best Security Operations Model?

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: cyber-attacks, security operations

Cyber-attacks continue to increase in volume, frequency and sophistication. Critical infrastructure, government agencies and higher education institutions are high-value targets for our adversaries. All the while, public sector organizations fight for resources, including technology and talent. How can we stop breaches?

Cybersecurity programs must align with the specific needs of each organization. Join Matt Singleton, former state CISO and state CIO for Education, in a collaborative exploration of solutions, options and lessons learned in this critical area. We’ll cover security operations goals, performance metrics and sourcing models for security operations centers, including student-run, professional staffing and large-scale managed services.

Matt Singleton, Executive Strategist, CrowdStrike

Danny Connelly, Chief Information Security Officer, The Americas and Public Sector, Zscaler

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Topics and Trends Facing Higher Education: A Conversation with Arne Duncan

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: higher education trends, CIOs

Join American educator Arne Duncan, former United States Secretary of Education and chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools, IL and former CIOs for an honest conversation on the topics and trends facing higher education today.

Arne Duncan, Former Secretary of Education, United States and Former Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Public Schools, IL

Joe Spadaro, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Naveed Husain, Former Chief Information Officer, Queens College and Teachers College, Columbia University

Brian Baute, Former Chief Information Officer, Queen University of Charlotte and Education Principal, RingCentral

Break

Concurrent Sessions II

Scripting is a Cornerstone for Achieving IT Resilience

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: process improvement, streamlining, cybersecurity, business continuity, disaster recovery

This year's “Power and Perils of Scripting” theme fits IT Resiliency, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery’s mission, as the need for scripting is one of its cornerstones. For example, scripting the order of iterative plans and instructions; narrative scripts for effective exercises and drills; and software scripts that streamline and automate operations for business continuity management, training and testing are all key components for our mission and its success. Introducing new tools, updating best practices and adjusting our scope is also necessary. These steps will ensure the ability to quickly pivot as needed to sustain CUNY’s business, academic and IT operations, withstand the increasing perils from All-Hazards and attacks on both the college and University’s cyber-resiliency.

In this interactive panel discussion, participants will receive a refresh on the message and a look forward on the importance of the mission to build IT resiliency university-wide. Achieving resiliency cannot be done effectively without first: building on a Framework for BC Management; conducting Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessments; and identifying University and College Essential Functions. Once done, you will be ready to develop, document and exercise BC Component Plans (i.e., Incident Management and Communications for Senior Leadership; IT Contingency; Disaster Recovery; and Incident Response) that strengthen the extended detection and response capabilities needed to protect against cybersecurity incidents and all hazards with the potential to impact the university or college’s core mission.

Diana Tucker, Director, IT Resiliency, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, Central Office for Computing & Information Services, CUNY Central Office

Madhu Mammen, Disaster Recovery Manager, Computing & Information Services, CUNY Central Office

Patricia Kahn, Chief Information Officer and Assistant Vice President, Information Technology Services, College of Staten Island

Troy Hahn, Chief Information Officer, Information Technology Services, Queens College

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Scripting in Nursing Simulation

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: simulation, nursing & healthcare, innovative pedagogy, streamlining

The recent 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all aspects of life, including the educational experience of individuals across the educational continuum. Nursing students have specific requirements in both didactic and practicum setting environments. Although most schools were able to adapt to this great disruption, grades only give us a very narrow view of the full educational spectrum. By examining the nursing student’s perception and experience during these challenging times, we can gain insight in learning adaptations, personal experiences, barriers and perceptions of the nursing student’s clinical experience. Recognizing virtual simulation is an excellent teaching pedagogy strategy. It also has limitations due to the unilateral script and limited interactive nature.

Nefertiti Cano, Assistant Professor, Nursing and Allied Health Science, Bronx Community College

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Scripting Audio-Visual Processing Workflows

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: data, workflows, digitization

This panel will showcase the development and refinement of scripts to support audio-visual preservation and access workflows at CUNY Television. We’ll discuss and highlight aspects of this work, including ffmpeg, quality control, audio-visual digitization, generating conditional derivatives and managing archival data.

Dave Rice, Director of Media Library and Archives

Catriona Schlosser, Archivist

Both of CUNY Television, CUNY Central Office

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CUNYBuy: Transformation Journey to World Class Operational Performance

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: streamlining, automation, process improvement

CUNYBuy is a Digital Transformation project that will deeply impact the way CUNY does business, through process streamlining, automation, transparency and self-sufficiency.

Martin Sturla, Chief Procurement & Supplier Diversity Officer

Michelle Cooper, Director of Transformation

Both of Central Purchasing Office, CUNY Central Office

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Contexts and Learners: A Cross-Discipline Dialogue about the Scripts of Computational Thinking in Different Disciplines

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: interdisciplinary, scripting in many senses, computational thinking

The panel will share how teacher educators adapt computational thinking (CT) in three disciplines: arts, math and literacy. At the center of CT is the use of “scripts.” Whether programming in conventional or visual coding, providing operational instructions, or even using CT beyond computers, the language of scripts is indispensable. This is no exception for scripts uses in different disciplines. Yet, how scripts are used tends to be characterized by disciplinary foci. For example, math education faculty find relevance in the programming language for math concept simulation, but also notice a close affinity between CT with math thinking. The literacy and arts faculty, on the other hand, have found uses of scripts as another toolkit of meaning-making to bring life to story-telling, artistic expressions and language translations.

While these uses of scripts may indicate a possible disciplinary pull, the commonality in scripts uses is also clear: with careful scaffolding, it generates excitement, engagement and persistence in learners across disciplines. As a practical, functional and logical form, the language of scripts thus resembles literacy. In that sense, its benefits come from its uses in appropriate contexts and its perils also lie in its uses out of contexts.

Ting Yuan, Assistant Professor

Liqing Tao, Professor

Marta Cabral, Assistant Professor

Alanna Gibbons, Lecturer

Steven Azeka, Adjunct Assistant Professor

All of Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Staten Island

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Flipping the Script: Managing HyFlex Instruction Methodically

(Scripts for Developing Curriculum and Courses)

Keywords: hyflex, choreographed teaching, digital workflows

HyFlex instruction is a pedagogical method that provides a student-centered experience, offering learners the choice of three different modalities of instruction: face-to-face, synchronous online and asynchronous online. There are a great number of advantages to this approach, but it does not come without its challenges. Instructors may find the undertaking daunting – as there are many moving parts – but these difficulties can be overcome with a methodical process. A well-planned, thoughtful HyFlex course may be thought of as a scripted experience, one in which students are ushered through the three modalities seamlessly, regardless of which one they may choose in any given week. From comprehensive fully online modules to a well-choreographed in-person or synchronous session, scripts can help the HyFlex instructor manage all of the moving parts without even breaking a sweat.

Kenny Hirschmann, Manager, Frankfort Center for Learning & Scholarly Technologies, School of Education, Hunter College

Gina Riley, Clinical Professor, Special Education, Hunter College

Shiao-Chuan Kung, Director, Center for Online Learning, Instructional Computing and Information Technology, Hunter College

Shiraz Biggie, Educational Technologist, Center for Teaching and Learning, Baruch College

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Streamlining and Automation of Campus Entry for Faculty, Staff and Students

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: process improvement, streamlining

As Lehman College began to prepare for returning to campus, it was important to ensure meeting CUNY’s vaccination requirements and the college’s entry requirements while quickly facilitating campus entry so faculty and students can get to their classes and staff get to their offices in a timely manner. The Division of Information Technology, in collaboration with Public Safety, created an application in our Lehman 360 – leveraging the CUNY Hub data and our current systems and technologies to feed into the public safety system the eligibility status of each faculty, staff and student to enter campus. Using either a physical or digital ID to swipe in/scan, a green or red flag is displayed to the Public Safety Officer. In addition, an enhanced About Me module in Lehman 360 educates users on their campus entry status with information on how to address issues.

Susan Lai, Director of IT Support Services

David Ling, Senior Application Architect & Database Administrator

Deira Pereyra, Director of IT Enterprise Application Services

Fausto Ramirez, Director, Public Safety

Ediltrudys Ruiz, Interim Vice President & Chief Information Officer

All of Division of Information Technology, Lehman College

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Removing Systemic Barriers to Tech Education

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: DEI, industry skills demand, gamification, innovative pedagogy

Tech careers are among the greatest drivers of economic and social mobility today. They are consistently among the most in-demand and highest-paying jobs, yet the lack of diversity within the tech industry’s workforce is well-documented. Additionally, tech skills for non-tech jobs – and even basic knowledge of coding and scripting – has become a prerequisite for many industry roles. Indeed, nearly all jobs are now tech jobs to some degree.

Because tech jobs are, in theory, primarily skill-based and meritocratic, ideally numerous on-ramps to tech careers ought to exist and be accessible to all citizens – high-school graduates, college graduates regardless of degree level, college graduates coming from non-tech disciplines, persons with disabilities, adult learners, single parents, career-switchers, etc. However, while many pathways to tech careers do exist, they are often not accessible to all people on an equitable basis.

This presentation will support faculty and administrators in better understanding systemic barriers to employment-aligned tech education and seek to identify means of mitigating them in the context of higher education. We will address practical strategies and methodologies that can be implemented both at the college and departmental levels, as well as at the individual faculty level in the classroom.

Robert Domanski, Director of Higher Education, Tech Talent Pipeline, NYC Government

Alexandra Feldhausen, Program Manager for Insights and Innovation, NYC Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development

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Necessity: Scripting + Simulation = Alternative Method of Delivery

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: nursing, simulation, interdisciplinary

Everything can change without a moment’s notice – and it did in March 2020. York College’s clinical affiliates in the NYC area requested that our health professions students not report to their facilities for an indefinite period. However, New York State Education Department and the discipline-specific accreditation bodies approved “alternative delivery methods” for students to meet the clinical course objectives.

The objective was for learning and academic progression to continue to move forward so time graduation could occur. Scripting of real-life scenarios were created and manipulated to reflect dynamic work environments, wherein students of varied majors were afforded the opportunity to achieve clinical course completion. Post scenario/script debriefing occurred, highlighting performance and promoting reflection on what they could have done better.

Students were able to achieve clinical course completion. For some, this meant academic progression and, for others, timely graduation. Faculty chose to embed use of mixed-reality virtual simulation in their curriculum – and it continues today. The use of technology, specifically mixed-reality virtual simulation, supports our efforts to simulate real-life clinical experiences. It is through alternative delivery methods like this that students get to practice career ready scenarios/scripts.

Maureen Becker, Dean, Office of Academic Affairs

Renee Wright, Department Chair, Nursing

Jasmine Bratton-Robinson, Professor, Nursing

Azzie Forbes, Director, BSSW Social Work Practicum Education, Social Work

David Hornung, Professor, Social Work

Eva Rodriguez, Professor, Occupational Therapy

Zena Cooper, Clinical Professor, Teacher Education Department

All of York College

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Teaching through Digital Narratives with the CUNY 1969 Project

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: surfacing history, gamification, open educational resource

From the student movements of the 1960s to the recent demands for anti-racist pedagogies, CUNY’s activist history is often invisible to students. Seeking to address this issue for the undergraduate classroom, the Baruch Center for Teaching and Learning combined game-based, digital and primary source pedagogies to create an open educational resource (OER) called The CUNY 1969 Project. This interactive digital platform explores the history of the Five Demands protest movement and invites students into a scripted narrative that incorporates a curated selection of text, recordings, interviews, newspaper articles and flyers from archival collections across CUNY.

By providing a storyline and a simple digital interface for historical documents, we hope to reanimate the history of student activism at CUNY, re-engage with the archives that store it and pass it down to undergraduates one classroom at a time. In addition to our in-house pedagogical and technical knowledge, we’ve drawn on CUNY faculty, staff and alumni to develop an approach that balances a scripted gaming experience with student agency. This presentation explores our development process and the ongoing work of creating a free, narrative-based, online educational resource for CUNY students.

Hamad Sindhi, Digital Pedagogy Manager

Seth Graves, Interim Digital Pedagogy Manager

Pamela Thielman, Digital Pedagogy Specialist

Christopher Campbell, Digital Pedadogy Specialist

Allison Lehr-Samuels, Director

All of Center for Teaching and Learning, Baruch College

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Emerging Analytics to Enable Student Success Across Higher Education Systems

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: student success/outcomes, collaboration, innovative tools and practices

As campus resources are increasingly stressed, students’ needs continue to grow and student academic and post-graduation success receive increasing scrutiny (rightly so), public institutions and the systems and/or state departments which support them are seeking new ways to collaborate and cooperate to best serve their students and communities. Deloitte will present several capabilities and case studies of its recent partnerships with public systems of higher education and state education departments which highlight the latest innovations, technology and trends in coordinated efforts to improve student outcomes through collaborative resourcing, innovative funding and shared analytics.

Brian Haugabrook, Specialist Leader, Deloitte

Bob Caron, Higher Education Specialist, Strategy & Analytics, Deloitte Consulting

Peter Fritz, Principal, Deloitte Consulting

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The Transformation Imperative: Leveraging Modern Technologies to Address the Future

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: infrastructure, digital transformation, scaling

This talk will address what benefits modern technology service infrastructure can provide to improve outcomes in today’s academic environments and prepare for the future. Modern information technology platforms provide tremendous improvement in performance, scale, energy efficiency and simplicity, with concomitant benefits for data security and protection. In order to stage infrastructure for tomorrow, we have to embrace the technologies of today. What we have built in the past to get to today will not support the workloads of tomorrow.

Nick Psaki, Principal Technologist, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Pure Storage, Inc.

Break

Opening Remarks and Keynote Presentation

Opening Remarks

Bronwen Stine, Assistant Dean of Information Technology, School of Professional Studies, The City University of New York and CUNY IT Conference Co-Chair

Greet Van Belle, Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies, York College, The City University of New York and CUNY IT Conference Co-Chair

Keynote Presentation: Flipping the Script Between Academia and Industry to Meet the Future of Work

Over the past five years alone, 37 percent of the top skills of the average U.S. job have been replaced – and the pace of change is double that in many tech jobs. Meanwhile, tech skills are increasingly foundational to the gamut of careers. Flipping the script in workforce innovation will require re-envisioning the relationship between academia and industry in talent development. Technology is rewriting what’s happening in the job market and in the classroom, and talent strategies must adapt in order to achieve greater success in bridging the gaps between CUNY programs and workforce needs. We’ll discuss three key questions:

Matt Sigelman, President, Burning Glass Institute / Chairman, Emsi Burning Glass / Visiting Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

View Sigelman Keynote Presentation Here

Closing Remarks

Adjourn Day 1

Registration / Continental Breakfast / Exhibits Open

4th Floor Gym

Note: Room assignments for all sessions will be available on site at the conference.

Concurrent Sessions I

A Crowd-Sourcing Approach to Developing a Data Governance Framework for CUNY

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: data governance, data security, data privacy, ethical use

This audience participation discussion session aims to get input from the CUNY community to help develop a framework for data governance at CUNY. Data governance encompasses a broad range of data-related topics, policies and issues, including data access, security, privacy, data quality, the ethical use of data, reporting, data structures, definitions and more – all intended to help faculty, staff and administrators use data effectively to serve students, advance strategic goals, develop and assess program effectiveness and inform our daily work. In this session, we intend to address questions such as: How is data governance currently structured at CUNY? How should it be structured? Who should have a seat at the table to establish access and security policies and business rules for reporting? Who is responsible for setting data standards, documenting data-related information, and maintaining the quality of data in our technology platforms such as CUNYfirst, Degree Works and other systems? The session will help participants understand the connection between technology platforms used at CUNY and data resources for reporting and analytics, as well as identify what role different members of the CUNY community can and should play in data governance at the University and CUNY colleges.

Cheryl Littman, Chief Data Strategist, Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics, CUNY Central Office

Melissa Uber, Director, Testing, Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics, CUNY Central Office

Youngren Ponnuraj, Associate Director, Development and CUNYfirst Production Support, Computer and Information Systems (CIS), CUNY Central Office

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Gaming and Re-Gaming: Strategies for Automated Tests across LMS Landscapes

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: assessment, gamification, process improvement; educational resources

As a language teacher and instructional designer, Emily Fairey has had plenty of occasion to create online tests for students of her own, as well as those of other faculty. Such tests can provide valuable practice and assessment when they are well designed. Those less well made and presented, however, can frustrate teacher and students, and prohibit some from using these educational tools to the fullest – or at all. Additionally, different Learning Management Systems do not all handle automated tests in the same way, so to make the move from one platform to another can sometimes require the re-creation of all the materials. The speaker will discuss approaches to “smart” test-making strategies that can smooth the transition from one environment to another – and inspire thought and engagement in students.

Emily Fairey, Adjunct OER Librarian, Library, Brooklyn College

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Scripting to Support Change, Innovation and Extend Participant Success

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: DEI, student support, Salesforce, process improvement, streamlining, change management, organizational change

CUNY’s Citizenship Now! has experienced many changes over its 25-year history of helping immigrants on their paths to citizenship. Offering free legal assistance is highly personalized and required different software tools to support. To enable CN! to help even more residents of NYC with their immigration needs, technology was engaged. Scripting was required to create automation and standardization of workflow into a new tool – Salesforce.

Staff identified the need for one tool to help them manage their core business – assisting people, capturing their information, scheduling sessions with legal staff, managing public events to support the mission and, internally, providing a one-stop location for communication and tools staff need every day. Until now, most of that has required extensive staff time.

Leadership empowered team members who have extensive knowledge of CN!’s business processes to recommend the purchase of a software solution. After much review, they recommended the Salesforce platform and related integrated applications to support scheduling and contact (telephone, text) with participants and colleagues, along with customized processes to support the legal requirements that applicants must meet. Training was also created by the team and delivered to all staff, based on the work they do.

The system launched in July and Citizenship Now! has efficiently captured much necessary information while supporting over 2,000 new participants.

At the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, there were similar challenges:

This presentation will highlight how key aspects of organizational change management – awareness of the need for change, the desire to change, how to communicate change and, most importantly, how to involve everyone in the change. Our goal is to show how, using the right scripts, written internally with deep knowledge of each organization, will ensure program integrity while automating repetitive tasks. Each organization is also prepared to write programs to allow for more innovation in the future.

Monique Francis, Deputy Director, CUNY Citizenship Now!, CUNY Central Office

Josett Rawle, Director, Information Technology, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism

Jennifer Fernandez, Project Manager, CUNY Citizenship Now!, CUNY Central Office

Alexander Lapegna, Salesforce Developer, CUNY Citizenship Now!, CUNY Central Office

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Scripting with Vue.js to Make Our Library’s Website Better

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: coding best practices, process improvement, streamlining, library

A common goal among programmers is to write code that is DRY, in other words, code where you Don’t Repeat Yourself. This is usually motivated by the insight that computers can often effectively automate repetitive tasks, making it unnecessary to repeat yourself in code. However, HTML, when written by hand, is unfortunately not terribly suited to DRY practices. Even pages of relatively modest complexity can quickly grow into very long, repetitive HTML documents.

This problem was familiar to us at the Kingsborough Community College Library. Our homepage, built on LibGuides CMS, ran to over 500 lines. The length of the page was largely owing to repetitive dropdown menus which provided access to many of our services. Abstracting away this repetition through scripting was, in some important ways, an obvious win for the maintainers of the library webpage. The tool we chose to DRY our code was Vue.js. In this presentation, we will describe how we learned and applied some features of the Vue.js framework to make our site better and,in the process, make life easier for the site’s maintainers.

Mark Eaton, Associate Professor/Reader Services Librarian, Library, Kingsborough Community College

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Scripting the Digital Divide: An Exploration in Modern Digital Design, Applications and Integration for the 21st Century Learner

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: dynamic content, gamification, multimedia, educational resource

Multi-media plays an essential role in the dissemination of information for today’s student learners. This presentation will demonstrate scripting techniques for augmented and immersive technology, video content, 3d design and gaming applications as they relate to academic design, student engagement and inclusion. Upon conclusion of this presentation, faculty will be able to create dynamic user experiences in digital educational content.

Roman Mitchell, Lecturer

Jade Charon Robertson, Assistant Professor of Dance & Media Technology

Both of Mass Communication, Creative & Performing Arts & Speech Department, Medgar Evers College

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Transforming Higher Education Outcomes with Ubiquitous Collaboration Technologies

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: change management, automation, process improvement, cybersecurity

Learn how efforts to address Queens College’s on-premise problematic phone system, occurring alongside University-wide adoption of the Microsoft 365 A5 licensing offering, created a defining moment of digital transformation at the college. With numerous technology systems throughout CUNY now leveraging the CUNYfirst identity platform, the addition of Queens College’s integrated voice over IP telephony (VOIP) platform dramatically changed the collaboration landscape at the college.

Over the past year, pandemic infection numbers significantly decreased in magnitude from previous levels. Despite the shift in pandemic velocity, there has been significant increase in end user onsite and hybrid digital participation, generating complex staffing, performance, fiscal and infotech security challenges. Methodologies investigated not only sought to meet these challenges, but also aimed to address scalability, reliability, quality of interaction and ease of use concerns.

Although this transformation at surface may seem predominantly technical in nature, success was realized by concerted focus being placed on project lifecycle initiation, planning, execution and closure sequences. Project and change management, reporting, training, documentation, fiscal analysis and diverse demographic feedback loops provided format and inputs to the success script. This script can, thankfully, be replicated and consumed both within the college and beyond.

James Hartley, Deputy Chief Information Officer of Strategic Operations

Hector Jacome, Director of Infrastructure Operations

Wayguard Wong, Manager

Artur Kulczynski, Server Operations Engineer

Noel Pena, Telecommunications Engineer

Nikki Siapno, Special Projects Liaison

All of Information Technology Services, Queens College

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Generating Interactive and Individualized Course Content on Time Using Markdown, Python and JavaScript

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: dynamic content, process improvement, innovative pedagogy, educational resources

Providing proper instructional materials is very crucial for academic success of our students. But building such educational resources requires a lot of time and effort. For example, adding interactive content is a big challenge even though it improves student engagement. In presentation, demonstrate how to build interactive and individualized course contents with multiple scripting technologies effectively. As a main tool, we introduce Quarto system (https://quarto.org/) which allows us to create dynamic content in HTML and PDF with Markdown, Python and (observable) JavaScript. As an example, we build a short interactive trigonometry lecture slide using GeoGebra with Python and JavaScript and show how to publish it to a GitHub page. We also explain how to make and reuse randomized math exams with auto-generated solutions with Python. After demonstration, we address current technical limitations and share some useful tips.

Kwang Hyun Kim, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Queensborough Community College

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Building Essential Collaborative Relationships and Efficient Processes through Interdepartmental Collaboration

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: hyflex training, collaboration

The Center for Excellence, Teaching, Learning and Leadership (CETLL) and the Information Technology Services (ITS) department of Queens College must coordinate much of their work to ensure successful campus projects and initiatives. Both departments noticed the degree of runaround that was involved whenever there was a “handoff” between departments, (i.e., Blackboard isn’t working).

To solve this problem, ITS and CETLL launched several processes that led to more efficient resolution of errors and recognizing and solving problems ahead of time. Some examples of successful projects that came out of these collaborations are:

The drop-in hours were particularly effective at reducing runaround and supporting faculty. When faculty had an issue, they were immediately directed to the correct resource. When solving the issue required information from both offices, the staff was able to collaborate and fix the issue in real time. To guide drop-in-hours staff in answering the vast array of questions that might come up, ITS and CETLL developed and shared knowledge bases on how to resolve issues, as well as potential replies that they might use in their responses.

Rachel Stern Lockerman, Instructional Technologist, Center for Teaching, Learning and Leadership

Kathleen Mangiapanello, Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Leadership

Joshua Barnes, Administrative Coordinator, Center for Teaching, Learning and Leadership

Markus Erndl, Director, ITS Office of Instructional Technology Services, ITS

Divya Samaroo, Client Services Manager, ServiceDesk, ITS

Theodossios Nicolaou, ServiceDesk, ITS

All of Queens College

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AI Technology at Scale: An Examination of the Impact on Service Standards

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: artificial intelligence, e-learning, process augmentation

Join us for this panel-style session, which will lead the discussion on the broader impacts of AI technology in higher education. Together, we will discuss what information end users are seeking, their expectations on finding that information and the problems they encounter along the way. We will dive deep into common misconceptions of AI technology and will reveal simple proactive measures institutions can take to enhance service standards for end users. Additional topics will include the future of e-learning, the augmentation of staff and processes at institutions, various tools available to combat common problems and the broader changes in the higher education landscape. This session will be interactive in nature and audience participation will be highly encouraged.

Greg Matwijiszyn, Helpdesk Director, Berkeley College

Bryan Hoppe, Director of Business Success, Berkeley College

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Designing AV Infrastructure for HyFlex Instructional Spaces

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: infrastructure, hyflex learning

Educational institutions are discovering ways to advance student instruction through engaging online content delivery to yield positive outcomes for both faculty and students. HyFlex learning is at the forefront of this shift – melding in-person instruction with synchronous live streaming for remote participants, while simultaneously recording lectures for on-demand learning. Explore methods to incorporate remote instruction through robust voice amplification, USB bridging for AV integration with software conferencing codecs, recording, streaming and more. Learn how to leverage various AV tools to construct HyFlex-enabled spaces by adding capabilities over time. Dive into infrastructure requirements and future-ready techniques to accommodate all learning styles.

Roy A. Hermanson, Jr., Regional Applications Specialist, Extron

Ediltrudys Ruiz, Interim Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Division of Information Technology, Lehman College

Migdio Dominguez, Director, Classroom Technology Support Services, Lehman College

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Zero Trust Requires 100 Percent Device Visibility – Does Your Toolset Provide It?

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: zero trust security, cyber-attacks, risk management

Asset visibility is foundational to effective attack surface management. Organizational assets are everywhere, across any network and with diversified asset types like IT, IoT, OT and IoMT. Today’s organizations struggle to manage this extended attack surface, leaving unseen gaps in risk posture. Join us to learn how BMCC was able to extend visibility into unmanaged and IoT to identify their extended attack surface and mitigate risk.

Kieran Burke, Account Executive, SLED NY, Armis

Robert Morehead, Senior Solutions Engineer, Armis

Amish Batra, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Christopher Pena, Manager, Network Engineer and Operations, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Break

Welcome Remarks and Keynote Presentation

Welcome Remarks

Eusebio (Seb) Formoso, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and University Chief Information Officer, The City University of New York

Keynote Presentation: Perils and Pitfalls of Programming AI

Higher education has a moral and ethical imperative to attempt to resolve the biases unintentionally programmed into AI. And so, we must tap into our own expertise and incorporate a variety of diverse perspectives on the front end of AI programming — while not shying away from difficult conversations. Wendy will offer an interdisciplinary approach to resolving the matter of bias in AI programming

Wendy Hensel, Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost, The City University of New York

Lunch (until 2:00 p.m.)

4th Floor Gym

Concurrent Sessions II

Flipping the Script: Open Digital Projects to Foster Student Agency and Knowledge Production

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: value in “going off script,” student led learning, innovative pedagogy, educational resources

Learning is rarely a scripted process and is more likely to be a messy and meandering journey of inquiry, insight and discovery. Instructors engage in intentional and mindful scaffolding to support students through the trajectory of the course. But students can also benefit from the freedom to explore “off script,” drawing connections between the course material and their own experiences. Digital tools and public-facing projects can play an important role in how students demonstrate their learning and make this creative work visible.

In this session, staff and fellows from the Graduate Center’s Teaching and Learning Center will share examples of how CUNY instructors are embracing teaching strategies that promote student agency and creative engagement with course content. These instructors are “flipping the script” using pedagogical methods and digital practices that empower students to move through the content at their own pace, engage in self-assessment and produce projects and portfolios that showcase how they have applied knowledge gained in the course. These approaches require reflective, iterative teaching that challenges ideas about classroom management, authority and surveillance.

Laurie Hurson, Assistant Director of Open Education

Luis Henao Uribe, Humanities Director

Sule Aksoy, STEM Research Associate & Post-Doctoral Fellow

Luke Waltzer, Director

All of Teaching and Learning Center, CUNY Graduate Center

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Catch our DHRIFT: Digital Humanities Research Infrastructure for Teaching Technology

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: DEI, interdisciplinary, innovative online course content, learning to script

Access to technical training in the digital humanities is inequitably distributed, especially among historically underserved institutions. Since 2018, and with funding provided by two NEH-funded Institutes for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities grants, the CUNY Graduate Center has supported development of over 30 DH institutes across the U.S. and trained 48 DH practitioners nationally as part of the Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI). Building on the demonstrated success of these approaches, GC Digital Initiatives (GCDI) has developed a social and infrastructural intervention, Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology (DHRIFT), to provide pedagogical support and infrastructure for teaching foundational coding skills to humanities undergraduate and graduate students. DHRIFT is conceived around flexible infrastructure for deployable sites – DHRIFT Core – that can be readily set up at local institutions and which provide ready-to-teach OER and additional functionality to support DH pedagogy. By building community, curriculum and infrastructure, DHRIFT aims to facilitate the more equitable development of DH expertise.

Lisa Rhody, Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives, Digital Initiatives

Leanne Fan, Project Manager, Sociology

Zach Llyod, Developer, Comparative Literature

Stephen Zweibel, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Mina Rees Library

All of CUNY Graduate Center

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Workflow Digitization Using SharePoint and PowerShell – Processes, Outcomes and Lessons Learned

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: process improvement, DAMs, streamlining, digital workflows

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy has invested significant resources to digitize administrative process over the last few years. The workflows that we have brought online have fostered collaboration, encouraged information sharing, facilitated communication and, most importantly, improved process outcomes for the entire school. So far, we have digitized processes spanning Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, Public Safety, Information Technology, Student Services and Facilities offices. Workflows have been created to enable quick onboarding of new employees, track time and leave online track IT assets for faculty, staff and students and facilitate a Student Emergency Fund application and review process. These workflows were developed using an on-premise deployment of Microsoft SharePoint, leveraging the robust and comprehensive team management and document sharing capabilities of the system. We used scripting on the back-end to further extend the functionality of the platform and customize it based on the needs of the business process owners. This presentation covers our overarching approach to process digitization and automation, direct and indirect impacts and an overview of the challenges and lessons learned through these efforts.

Mohit Arora, Chief Information Officer

William Ebertz, Applications Developer

Both of Information Technology, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy

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The Value of Pre-Production Scripts in Online Course Videos

(Scripts for Developing Curriculum and Courses)

Keywords: online instructional design, faculty training

John Jay College’s Department of Online Education and Support (DOES) is working on the Online Excellence Project, an initiative to offer academic departments throughout the college the opportunity for their faculty to work closely with the instructional design and videography teams. The collaboration of academic departments with DOES creates model course templates for academic departments to use for either fully online courses or hybrid courses. The goal is to ensure all students who choose to access online education have a quality online learning experience that mirrors the quality and academic rigor of an on-campus experience.

To help create more dynamic and engaging courses, the DOES instructional design and videography teams introduce faculty to the power of purposeful and compelling media/video. Faculty are guided through a planning and scripting process and given the opportunity to start the semester off with a bang by making a lasting first impression.

This session will present the process, sample scripting and examples of the videos incorporated in the online courses developed for the Online Excellence Project.

Judith Cahn, Director

Michael Nusbaum, Senior Multimedia Specialist

Holly Davenport, Director of Instructional Design

Brian Tomlinson, Senior Instructional Designer

Patrizia Magni, Senior Instructional Designer

All of Department of Online Education and Support, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

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Scaffolding the Script: Online Student Peer Mentoring Program

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: student support, mentorship, virtual community

Student peer mentoring has long been established as an effective strategy to support student success. At Lehman College, the Office of Online Education has piloted and then scaled up a student peer mentoring program that focuses specifically on student success in the online learning space. The program enables leveraging of existing resources and connecting students to a collegial peer mentor who provides guidance to online students (mentees); distributing timely resources, such as the Online Student Handbook; offering support for institutionally supported instructional technologies; offering students online learning study strategies; and suggesting strategies for overcoming any obstacles students may encounter in an online setting. During the session, the presenters will share lessons learned from their experiences and offer recommendations for establishing an online student mentoring program.

Olena Zhadko, Director

Anthony Wheeler, Learning Experience Designer & Online Learning Student Peer Mentoring Program Lead

Asma Neblett, Online Learning Student Peer Mentor & Educational Technologist

All of Office of Online Education, Lehman College

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Back Office Processes Matter! Automating and Digitizing Paper Transcripts

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: process improvement, DAMs, student support, streamlining, registrar

Consistent with Lehman’s efforts to reduce friction in our business processes, the Office of the Registrar and the Division of Information Technology teamed up to provide a cost-effective solution for digitizing old student records. During the pandemic, all transcript request services were transitioned to CUNY’s online vendor, Parchment. Students with paper student record can request transcripts online, but these requests take longer to turn around. IT implemented an application leveraging an existing “microfilm” database which contains basic student information and location of the paper transcripts to automate the various steps involved in the digitization of transcripts from (1) scanning the transcript, (2) saving it into an Oracle database, (3) reading through the scanned file to identify the social security number and mapping it to the “microfilm” record, (4) assigning a file name format to meet the Parchment system naming convention, (5) zipping it to (6) ultimately uploading it to Tumbleweed via secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) to be picked up and made available in the Parchment system. Using Java and Windows services, these steps are seamlessly structured and executed to increase productivity and reduce the turnaround time of these old transcript requests as more and more of them get scanned and uploaded to Parchment.

David Ling, Senior Application Architect & Database Administrator, Division of Information Technology

Deira Pereyra, Director of IT Enterprise Application Services

Yvette Rosario, Senior Registrar, Office of the Registrar

Ediltrudys Ruiz, Interim Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Division of Information Technology

All of Lehman College

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CTRL SHIFT Textbooks: Flipping the Script on Authorship and Publication with Rebus at CCNY

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: open education resources, instructional design, accessibility, please clarify solution

OER materials and courses have changed the game when it comes to forcing students to buy outdated and oversized textbooks they may never use, but anyone who’s attempted to develop or teach a fully OER course knows there are numerous challenges when it comes to locating and collating quality, aesthetically and inclusively designed materials. Through the CUNY OER grant from New York State, CCNY has successfully converted hundreds of courses to ZTC/OER designation since 2017, yet an extremely high number of professors continue to express frustration and concerns regarding textbooks they can actually use. This is even more common among faculty who teach specialized classes beyond general, introductory courses. After working with the Rebus Textbook Success Program, we’d like to highlight some of the opportunities and texts developed as we collaborate with instructors across numerous disciplines to author their own open textbooks using Pressbooks, Manifold and CUNY Academic Commons. Open textbooks flip the script on accessibility, authorship and publication for students and faculty. And they increase the ways librarians and technologists can be involved, shifting the control away from market-driven politics to the hands of the educational community.

Julia Brown, OER Fellow, Digital Scholarship, Cohen Library/Office of the Provost, The City College of New York

Janelle Poe, OER Fellow, Digital Scholarship, Cohen Library/Office of the Provost, CUNY Graduate Center

Ching-Jung Chen, Associate Professor, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Cohen Library, The City College of New York

Scott Koski, Digital Scholarship Manager, Cohen Library, The City College of New York

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Scripting Critical Culturally Relevant Computing-Integrated Teacher Ed

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: value in “going off script,” DEI, teacher training, digital course content, equity, learning to script

K-12 teachers script procedures for learning activities, but the best teachers also challenge dominant societal scripts that box learners in and perpetuate injustice. The Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE) initiative supports CUNY education faculty across 15 colleges to prepare teacher candidates to integrate computing and digital literacies to advance equity. Given this mission, CITE developed a framework – explicitly positioned not as a recipe-style script, but as a contingent set of guiding values and goals. This panel will share this framework and illustrate how they prepare teacher candidates to develop scripts like lesson plans that also act as counter-scripts to myths about racialized and multilingual students, and narrow narratives about who “does tech” and for what. Faculty will showcase teaching artifacts ranging from assignments that guide predominantly Black CUNY teacher candidates to use digital storytelling to fill in the historical record, projects that prompt explicit reflection on the harmful language ideologies of ed tech and activities that use computational thinking to explore alternatives in lesson plan designs and to analyze bilingual literary texts. Taken together, these efforts create new scripts for computing integration that elevate teacher candidates’ and their learners’ rich cultural and linguistic repertoires.

Sara Vogel, Associate Director, Computing Integrated Teacher Education, Office of Academic Affairs, CUNY Central Office

Cecilia Espinosa, Associate Professor, Early Childhood Department, Lehman College

Linda Green, Adjunct Professor, Developmental and Special Education, Medgar Evers College

Monika Ekiert, Professor, Education and Language Acquisition Department, LaGuardia Community College

Tabora Johnson, Associate Professor, Multicultural Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Medgar Evers College

Bede McCormack, Professor, Education and Language Acquisition, LaGuardia Community College

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Best Practices from Institutions Around the World – Re-Imagining Keep the Lights On

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: improving processes, transformation

Keeping the lights on (KTLO) is a core part of technology infrastructure, applications and administrative processes. Imagine instead of managing stagnate workloads and putting out fires to working on initiatives that include transformation and building new. This session will provide an overview of best practices with institutions who are re-imagining their KTLO – to funnel bandwidth from KTLO into their value-creating initiatives while strengthening student, faculty, research and administrative staff experiences at the same time.

Sanjeev Khati, Vice President and Market Unit Head, Tata Consultancy Services Americas

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Using Convergence to Secure Your Digital Transformation

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: digital transformation, cybersecurity, modernization

The digital transformation in education continues to expose technical and procedural challenges to ensuring consistent security through modernization of infrastructure and the transition to cloud technologies and services. Enter the concept of convergence; from security and networking to IT and IoT, colleges and universities are modernizing their technology and data infrastructures and continue seeking to adopt multi-cloud strategies to gain economic and operational advantages. At the same time, higher education continues to be a target for identity theft, loss of intellectual capital and ransomware that enters through operations technology that is part of the Internet of Things (IoT). Education cybersecurity architectures are not keeping pace with cloud-based networking innovations and increases the attack surface. This presentation will focus on converged pathways to engage security at the service edge, allowing organizations to shift away from purchasing numerous point-products to secure different parts of their networks and adopt a more cost-effective operational service model.

Bob Turner, Field Chief Information Security Officer for Education, Fortinet

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Oracle Student Retention Solution and Oracle Academy – Advancing Technology Education

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: data analytics, student success

Database and cloud technology course curriculum offer CUNY and your faculty the computing and technology teaching resources they need to engage, inspire and prepare students with industry relevant skills to become technology innovators and leaders of the future. Best in class student retention solutions provide insight on who your CUNY students are and knowledge of their needs allow you to improve their experience and ensure they are equipped with tools for success. They provide CUNY course instructors and advisors with risk indicators and probabilities of student success and integrate predictive models into reports, applications and student information system. As an example, analytical models provide a unique score on the appropriate entry level math course needed by each student. Models should be integrated with the student information system to prevent students from registering for a course they are likely to fail. Finally, creation of a comprehensive reporting solution that delivers reports, analytics and dashboards for administrators, faculty and advisors insure you can improve CUNY’s student retention.

Ken Caplin, Group Vice President, Oracle Higher Education and Research

Denise Hobbs, Senior Regional Director, Oracle Academy, North America

Andy Clark, Executive Industry Consultant, Oracle Higher Education and Research

Break

Concurrent Sessions III

Going Off Script with Manifold: Digital Approaches to the Student-Led/Centered Classroom

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: open education resource, DEI, interdisciplinary, student-led education

OER provides the opportunity to not only let the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion drive our course design, but to also go off script by opening up our classrooms to bring student voices into the materials we teach.

This session will explore projects on Manifold, an open publishing platform co-created by the CUNY Graduate Center, the University of Minnesota Press and Cast Iron Coding, authored by students and faculty at CUNY and published on Manifold. We will present “Connected Pedagogy,” a collaborative assignment that brings Masters in the Digital Humanities students from the Graduate Center together with first semester freshman at Hostos Community College; The Amount of Labor We Do for Free and Other Contradictions, a survey-based study of how CUNY adjunct and graduate student faculty taught with free of charge materials in 2020; and Let My People Know: The Story of Wilfred Mendelson, a student project digital edition that celebrates the activism of the generation of students growing up in the Great Depression. These projects illustrate the power of student-led OER to create meaningful classroom experiences at the same time as they diversify the materials available to the community of learners at CUNY.

Robin Miller, Open Educational Technology Specialist, Graduate Center Digital Initiatives, CUNY Graduate Center

Matthew Gold, Associate Professor of English & Digital Humanities/Director, MA in Digital Humanities & MS in Data Analysis and Visualization Programs, Graduate Center Digital Initiatives/English, CUNY Graduate Center

Krystyna Michael, Associate Professor, English, Hostos Community College

Isabel Estrada, Associate Professor of Spanish Languages and Literatures, Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures, The City College of New York

Stefano Morello, Doctoral Candidate, English, CUNY Graduate Center & Digital Fellow, The City College of New York

Conor Tomás Reed, Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Justice in Higher Education, PublicsLab, CUNY Graduate Center

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Paving the Path: Online Course Frameworks for Consistent, Frictionless Curriculum Delivery

(Scripts for Developing Curriculum and Courses)

Keywords: online instructional design, design framework, streamlining, faculty training, program framework

Inconsistent course delivery and ineffective course design can pose obstacles in a student’s educational path. This presentation documents how the CUNY SPS Online Business Program and its Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology (OFDIT) transformed an outdated curriculum delivery system and scripted a new model to build high-quality, friction-free teaching and learning experiences.

Since it began offering the University’s first online degree in 2006, CUNY SPS has used a parent course site model for consistent content and design. Over time, however, course and program learning outcomes, rubrics, assignments and other content can drift as they are delivered in multiple sections of the same course, leading to uneven student learning experiences. To steer the curriculum delivery system back on its intended course, the Online Business Program partnered with OFDIT to rewrite scripts in a new framework that allows for clearer outcomes alignment and assessment, a coherent and friction-free student experience and a path cleared of technological and other impediments for faculty to focus on teaching. The collaborative project to design, create and implement a newly scripted program framework is a promising model that influenced the planning of the CUNYOnline initiative and may be of value to other online program developers.

Joseph Foy, Assistant Professor/Associate Director, Online Business Programs

Tara Barca, Doctoral Lecturer/Academic Director, Online Business Programs

Edwin Knox, Associate Professor/Formerly Academic Director, Online Business Programs

Ruru Rusmin, Assistant Dean of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology

All of CUNY School of Professional Studies

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Change Management and Why It Matters

(Cybersecurity and Institutional Resilience)

Keywords: change management, repeatable methodologies, automation, organization, reflective, meta

As we implement technology solutions, their impact on people is often the overlooked, but most critical, factor in ensuring success and adoption of the solutions. The days of implementing one large change every five to seven years are long gone. The changes caused by technology today are much faster, more complex and more inter-related than ever before. Industry research data shows that by applying a consistent and proven change management process, organizations can deliver results on each change more effectively and achieve user buy-in.

This presentation will focus on the need for change management, and it will discuss proven and repeatable processes and methodology to facilitate successful transformation, working with and for people to accept and assimilate change.

Suman Taneja, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Instructional Computing & Information Technology, Hunter College

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Scripting for Truth and Justice: The Northeast Slavery Records Index

(Data for All and All for Data)

Keywords: scripting for data management and dynamic access, library, CUNY Commons, DAMs

Faculty and students at John Jay College are uncovering and digitizing thousands of records about slavery in states from New Jersey to Maine, providing free and public access to dynamically generated online reports for towns and cities. The scripting challenge is to provide instant reports to any town or city at a CUNY Commons website (https://nesri.commons.gc.cuny.edu/) based on almost 70,000 records. CUNY Commons, a Wordpress platform with more than 37,000 members, is a remarkable information technology achievement. But a Wordpress site cannot support dynamic analysis and scripted reporting where any one instant report contains dozens of pivot tables each generated by scripts filtering 70,000 records.

How can the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) provide these reports, instantly online to any town or city from New Jersey to Maine on a CUNY Commons website? By connecting the CUNY Commons NESRI website to a back-end cloud-based data management service called Caspio that processes scripts embedded in Wordpress pages. Professors Ned Benton and Judy-Lynne Peters will show how this is done, and the opportunities for CUNY instructional and administrative applications.

Ned Benton, Professor, Public Management, John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center

Judy-Lynne Peters, Professor, Public Management, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

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Using Scripted Surveys to Enhance the Entering Freshman Advising Experience

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: student support, survey branching, scripted learner journeys, digital workflows, advisement

During the summer of 2021, the John Jay College Entering Freshman Advising team created and developed a customized digital pre-advisement survey with video resources for new students to complete prior to their first meeting with the Academic Advisement Center (AAC), resulting in several benefits for both students and staff. All students receive the same survey link; the dynamic scripting of the survey provides each student with the most relevant information based on their unique responses, alleviating confusion and information fatigue in transition to college. Additionally, meaningful engagement with the AAC prior to the first advisement session provides familiarity and fosters a sense of belonging in the college environment. For staff, this provides a space for us to receive updates regarding important pre-advisement information such as intent to change major or expected incoming credits. Automated collection of student responses provides AAC staff with a roadmap for a robust outreach plan. The focus of this presentation will be the scripting and logic used to create the survey, along with an overview of the survey development process, demonstration of the pre-advisement survey, collection of responses, lessons learned, 2022 updates and plans for future semesters.

Georgia Grammas, Associate Director

Joanna Madon, Senior Academic Advisor

William (BJ) White, Data Systems Specialist

All of Academic Advisement Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

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Computational Thinking for Elementary Teacher Candidates

(Teaching Computational Thinking Skills for DEI)

Keywords: teacher training, learning to script

Concepts of “script” or “scripting” may often be considered to be restrictive, standardized, uncreative and generally undesirable in the field of education, especially by individuals that are not very tech savvy – such as most elementary teachers. In this session, we will present fresh ideas and innovative projects, designed to integrate computational thinking (CT) into training elementary teacher candidates, so that a) they can gain fluency as computational thinkers who understand the enormous potential CT offers as a problem-solving tool that can optimize, rather than limit, creativity; (b) their teaching of elementary children can be informed by their expertise in and appreciation for CT; and, ultimately, (c) the children they teach will be exposed to CT earlier on in their academic careers – with the ultimate goal of giving children from all walks of life a wider range of academic and professional choices, including enhancing the STEM pathway. In short, the emphasis of these presentations will be on “scripting as a community of educators,” so as to facilitate children’s learning.

Daisuke Akiba, Department Chairperson/Associate Professor, Elementary & Early Childhood Education, Queens College

Line Saint-Hilaire, Doctoral Lecturer, Elementary & Early Childhood Education, Queens College

Caterina Aalmendral, Associate Professor, Education and Language Acquisition, LaGuardia Community College

Michele de Goeas-Malone, Lecturer/Program Coordinator, Education and Language Acquisition, LaGuardia Community College

Michelle Fraboni, Assistant Professor, Elementary & Early Childhood Education, Queens College

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Telesimulation: A Feasible and Adaptable Script for All Disciplines

(Tech for Creating Engaging Teaching and Learning Resources)

Keywords: simulation, nursing & healthcare, innovative pedagogy, streamlining

Telesimulation is a teaching and learning strategy that uses distance technology to link learners to their instructors with a simulated event providing an efficient immersive experience to a wider audience while eliminating distance barriers, reducing time constraints, transportation issues and cost and space constraints (McCoy et al., 2017). Telesimulation is slowly gaining the attention of healthcare professional education as higher education institutions look for innovative experiential learning applications (Kolb & Kolb, 2017). It not only delivers immersive educational experiences for students at off-site locations, it also procures reflective observation during virtual debriefing sessions (McCoy et al., 2017; Manhas & Anderson, 2014).

By integrating the script of telesimulation into the first semester nursing students’ course and curriculum design as part of her doctoral research, the presenter found it to be an effective teaching and learning strategy that improved students’ knowledge, confidence and application skills. Moreover, the script of telesimulation is not only practical to implement and integrate into any program’s curriculum, it is a feasible solution for training students and promoting the transition of skills into practice. By collaborating with fellow CUNY faculty colleagues, the presenter will demonstrate how easily the telesimulation script can be streamlined into their courses.

Susan Riekert, Assistant Professor, Nursing, Queensborough Community College

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AI "In", AI "On", AI "For": a Higher Ed Framework

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: artificial intelligence, automation

AI algorithms are being asked to do everything today, but not all AI/ML is created equal. Using an AI “in”/“on”/“for” framework, explore how students, faculty and staff can responsibly leverage AI and automation to improve efficiency, embed security and build the tools of the future while mitigating inherent biases. We’ll share some frameworks for assessing degrees of automation – how to have humans do what humans do well while letting machines do what machines do well – and provide an update on our collaboration with Intel to help students develop their own AI capabilities for being digital citizens in an automated future.

Jeffrey Lancaster, Senior Higher Education Strategist, Dell Technologies

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The College Jigsaw Puzzle: How CRM Helps Connect a Disconnected Student Experience

(Process Improvement and Streamlining)

Keywords: digital experience, student support

Students expect more from their college digital experience than ever before. After all, students compare their campus digital experiences to their interactions with companies like Amazon and Netflix. Those expectations for an easy and seamless experience on their phones meet the reality of a bewildering array of services and support options that often overwhelm and confuse students, breeding dissatisfaction that can often lead to disconnection. This session will unpack how future-ready institutions increase student success by leveraging enterprise CRM technology to provide proactive holistic support and service across the full student lifecycle, while improving university decision-making, collaboration and productivity.

Dale Vander Wall, Higher Education Industry Advisor, Salesforce.org

Stephanie Brewster, Lead Solution Engineer, Salesforce.org

Break

End-of-Day Drawing

4th Floor Gym