CUNY Master Plan 2012-2016

MISSION PART ONE
institutions prior to the start of the summer 2012 term. Colleges are developing training and communications
plans to prepare their user communities for the transition.
• E-portfolio: Sparked by the success of LaGuardia’s efforts, many campuses are in the process of
implementing, piloting, or reviewing the use of e-portfolios and evaluating their impact on learning.
The e-portfolio is a new way of capturing student (and faculty) work in a Web-based interactive format.
E-portfolios allow the user to preserve work done throughout their educational careers, reflect
on that work, and share it with others, including potential employers and admissions officers. A CUNY
e-portfolio conference is planned for spring 2013.
• CUNY Academic Commons: Formally launched in December 2009, the CUNY Academic Commons
now has nearly 3,000 members—faculty, staff, and graduate students—and more than 350 working
groups. The Commons is a cross-campus resource site that provides links to model projects and programs
and also fosters community and faculty dialogue. Built by and for faculty, the Commons combines
blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and social networking software that allow members to connect
to one another across campuses and disciplines. By 2016, a total of more than 5,000 people, most of
them faculty, will be Academic Commons members.
A generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will enable the establishment of The Commons
In A Box, a new open-source project that will help other organizations easily install and customize their
own Commons platforms. The first such partnership is with the prestigious Modern Language
Association, which will use the new platform to create a Commons for its 30,000-plus members.
The development of The Commons In A Box broadens the mission of the original project as it begins to
serve the needs of the wider academic community. In extending its suite of tools and functions to other
constituencies, The Commons In A Box software will provide a framework for networks that are controlled
by institutions and their members, and it will foreground the principles of open access, user privacy,
and non-commercial sharing of intellectual work. By 2016, CUNY will be widely recognized as
having provided the foundation for other universities and academic organizations to establish their own
versions of CUNY’s Academic Commons.
Toward 2016
Thoughtful investment in academic technology will play an important role in CUNY’s ongoing commitment
to its historic mission. The developments of the last few years, assessed and evaluated, have
given the University a better sense of what works and what justifies greater investment.
Two points seem to be of critical importance. First, the work of the CUNY Committee on Academic
Technology (CAT) and the growth of the Academic Commons in particular point to a compelling change
in strategy: instead of literally buying into the innovations of others by purchasing commercial software,
and letting that drive uses of academic technology, CUNY faculty and staff have learned to be innovative
themselves, and to be mutually supportive of their innovations. Given all that has been done to resource
the use of academic technology centrally through enterprise licensing and the use of student technology
fee monies at the campuses, the most important investments in the coming years will be in support of the
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