Commons In A Box OpenLab

Commons In A Box OpenLab (https://cboxopenlab.org/) is free and open source software that enables anyone to create a community space for open learning, where students, faculty, and staff can collaborate across institutional and disciplinary boundaries, and share their work openly with one another and the world. The project's goal is to offer a powerful and flexible alternative to traditional closed teaching systems. It is built using the popular open source publishing platform WordPress, with BuddyPress for social networking. Members can create and join courses, interest groups, and projects, build open educational resources, and set up profiles and portfolios to showcase their work. An attractive and accessible interface enables them to share multimedia content and files, participate in discussion forums, send messages, and make friendship connections. A user-friendly dashboard allows admins to configure the site to meet the needs of their community. Commons In A Box OpenLab was created through a partnership between The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)’s Commons In A Box project (https://commonsinabox.org/) and the OpenLab at City Tech (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/), an open platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration built by a team at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. The software is being further developed and maintained in collaboration with the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, which was an early adopter (https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/), and a growing community of educators, technologists, and students from institutions locally and internationally. The project has been enabled by funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities and the CUNY OER Initiative.