Digital Toolkit

The CUNY Academic Commons is an open source platform designed to support academic community-building, project development and publishing, teaching and learning, and social networking across CUNY.

Anyone with a CUNY email address can register for a free account. The platform is based on WordPress with Multisite, BuddyPress, and MediaWiki. If you are already familiar with using WordPress-based platforms (for example, on QWriting, Blogs@Baruch, or the City Tech OpenLab), the general interface of the Commons should be relatively familiar.

On the CUNY Academic Commons, users beginning by choosing one of the following three options:

• Create a Group:
  Groups are public or private community spaces featuring a discussion forum, shared files, and an email listserv. They’re ideal for class or other collaborations.

• Create a Site:
  Sites are flexible websites with several privacy options. Collect student writing, build a portfolio, showcase an event—give any project an online home. Users can create personal sites or group sites.

• Create a Connected Group + Site:
  Connecting a Group and a Site creates a public presence for your initiative or class alongside a private collaborative space and discussion.

• Commons Support
  The main help page for the Commons includes help documentation by category, searchable help topics, FAQs, and a starter guide
• Getting Started with the Commons
  A step-by-step guide to setting up your Commons account and modifying your preferences
• Overview of Sites
  A step-by-step guide to creating, managing, and configuring a site on the Commons
• Overview of Groups
  A step-by-step guide to creating, joining, and managing groups on the Commons
• Teaching and Learning
  Guides to creating, joining, and using course sites on the Commons, with dedicated material for students and teachers
• CUNY Academic Commons Wikipedia Page
  A community-maintained overview of the Commons on Wikipedia

Featured Groups:

• New Media Lab
  The New Media Lab (NML) assists City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center faculty and doctoral students from a variety of academic disciplines to create multimedia projects based on their own scholarly research. Our goal is to integrate new media into traditional academic practice, challenging scholars to develop fresh questions in their respective fields using the tools of new technology.
• Anti-racism at CUNY
  A group for sharing anti-racist projects, events, and community across the 25-campus City University system.
• Applied Digital Sociology
  This is a place for current students in the master’s degree program in Applied Digital Sociology at Hunter College to receive important updates and to learn about internships, conferences and about exciting new job opportunities.

Featured Sites:

• Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center
  Hosted at CityTech, the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center is an institutionally affiliated research and education center that advances interdisciplinary inquiry about one of Brooklyn’s most valuable but least understood assets: its waterfront.
• CUNY Peer Leaders
  CUNY Peer Leaders is a community-based program that supports CUNY undergraduate students’ scholarship and creative work in the Humanities and supports them in developing leadership skills to implement within their communities and colleges. The CUNY Peer Leaders is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and combines elements of the CUNY Humanities Alliance LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program and the Futures Initiative Undergraduate Leadership and Democracy Fellows Program. 
• Introduction to Digital Humanities
  Public class blog for DHUM 7000 in the MA Program in Digital Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, Fall 2022