Instructional Media Design Commons^™

Structural Silence: When Ai Infrastructure Fails Speakers Of Underrepresented Languages, Avijit Roy, Proma Roy

Publications and Research

Artificial intelligence tools for education and language support are increasingly framed as scalable responses to access gaps in under-resourced communities. Yet the infrastructure underlying these tools—training corpora, tokenization schemes, evaluation benchmarks, and deployment architectures—encodes a set of assumptions that systematically disadvantages speakers of underrepresented languages before a single model is trained. This paper examines those assumptions through the lens of Bengali, one of the world’s most widely spoken languages with roughly 285 million speakers (Ethnologue, 2025; International Communication and Leadership School, 2026), and the structural barriers that emerge when attempting to build AI-assisted educational tools for Bengali-speaking learners in low-connectivity …

Reputation Management: Branding A Higher Education Graduate Program To Increase Visibility, Vanderbilt Artaxerxes Brabson Iv

Student Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project offers a comprehensive training tool for non-communication professionals working in higher education programs. Its main goals are to give users (1) a summary of valuable research on higher education reputation management, branding, and strategic communication, and (2) an online toolkit for non-communication professionals to boost the visibility and impact of their educational initiatives. By providing practical, actionable resources, these tools help higher education professionals effectively handle the challenges of strategic communication management. The toolkit is especially useful because it delivers evidence-based strategies and methods that can be directly applied to improve communication efforts in higher education. It …

Reputation Management: Branding A Higher Education Graduate Program To Increase Visibility, Vanderbilt Artaxerxes Brabson Iv

Student Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project provides a comprehensive training tool for non-communication professionals working within higher education programs. Its primary objectives are to provide users (1) a summary of valuable research on higher education reputation management, branding, and strategic communication, as well as (2) an online toolkit for non-communication professionals to enhance the visibility and impact of their educational initiatives. By providing practical, actionable deliverables, these resources can enable higher education professionals to effectively navigate the complexities of strategic communication management. The toolkit is particularly valuable as it offers evidence-based strategies and methodologies that can be directly applied to improve the communication …

Using Poetics And Technology To Inform Pre-Service Educators’ Transformative Pedagogy Via Innovative Sociocultural Interactivities, Lindamichelle Baron, Xin Bai

Publications and Research

Using Poetics and Technology to Inform Pre-Service Educators’ Transformative Pedagogy via Innovative Sociocultural Interactivities

During the HICE workshop my colleague and I will demonstrate and engage HICE participants through learner centered practices we developed and studied during the Covid pandemic. We embedded oral and written poetic expression with a variety of technological practices to offer pre-service educators creative opportunities to learn and participate in the course through unique expressive movements, music, and media during on-line instruction. These approaches will show how to create a culture of care and Social Justice in a synchronous online classroom.

Baron, Lindamichelle –— York College, …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 9.0, Robert O. Duncan, Grace L. Axler-Diperte, Joseph Bisz, Christina Boyle, Devorah Kletenik, Carolyn Stallard

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging research, scholarship and teaching in the developing field of games-based learning. We connect educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY and beyond who are interested in digital and non-digital games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching and inquiry-based learning.

The Effects Of Isolated Affordances On Preschool Counting Improvement When Using A Digital Coloring App, Katherine Papazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Counting is an important preschool math skill that is necessary for building a strong foundation in mathematics. Previous research has demonstrated that guided counting activities can improve counting ability in preschoolers and that drawing on paper while learning can deepen processing, but research has not included digital drawing as a potential means of deepening processing while children count. This study developed a novel touch-screen app, which used a guided coloring activity to encourage effective counting skills and serve as a home numeracy tool that could be employed by all parents, including those with math anxiety. To evaluate the benefits of …

English Learners In Nyc, Raquel Neris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

English Learners in NYC is a Digital Humanities project that intersects Migration Studies and Foreign Language Learning Studies by presenting a podcast series about the learning experience of international students in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at English schools in New York City. The project aims to provide visibility to the educational migration in this specific context and to promote a discussion on how international students and educators can reimagine their teaching and learning experience. It also aims to reveal ESL schools' challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they incorporated digital technologies during and after this event. …

Children And Technology: Why Technology Is Important For Our Children, Jill Mactiernan

Student Theses

Many people get scared when they hear about how much technology runs the world today. They tend to get frightened when they go to a store and have to use a selfcheckout instead of a cashier. Parents are scared of the dangers of the internet and how it will affect their children, so they tend to try to prevent/limit their children’s usage of the internet and other technologies. However, that may not always be the right move. Technology can not be avoided; it is a part of our everyday lives. With proper guidance and teachings, children can learn how to …

Implementing Digital Portfolios To Document The Writing Process, Patricia George

Open Educational Resources

Implementing digital portfolios to document the writing process offers students a way to curate an exhibit of their work. The Google Sites application provides online spaces for students to upload permanent artifacts. It is user friendly and provides a visual document of student growth over the course of a semester. By publishing drafts and revisions, students are reminded of the progress they have made as writers. In addition, using visual approaches to organizing work also assists students with time management.

Journalism Through Learning Design, Geoff Decker

Capstones

Abstract

At its core, journalism is a civic enterprise with a mission to help citizens better understand their world and communities. Fulfilling this lofty mission in today’s digital media landscape poses new and evolving challenges, but it also presents a unique opportunity to reexamine the relationship between storytellers and their audiences. Advancements in the learning sciences in recent decades offer important insights into how the mind works. In teaching and learning, pedagogical experts and practitioners increasingly utilize these insights to refine and implement instructional strategies that increase student engagement, motivation, and learning. This capstone project aims to establish a framework …

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies For Civic Engagement, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi-Hall

Publications and Research

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15–16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used photography, collage, and videography to transform their school hallways into a space for critical conversations about race and gender. The authors examined how the hallways became a civic space shaped by collective youth resistance, multimodal counterstories, and negotiated civic engagement.

"Our Stories" Developing A Virtual Community Of First-Year Voices, Sandra Cheng, Jennifer Sears, Karen Goodlad, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Mery Diaz, Philip Kreniske

Publications and Research

First Year Learning Communities (FYLC) at City Tech is structured to provide first-year students in linked courses an interdisciplinary learning experience. This approach creates opportunities for students to form bonds within the college community. A shared belief among faculty leaders in the potential for writing to transform the student experience led to the development of the “Our Stories” digital writing project. “Our Stories” offers FYLC students the opportunity to express their experiences in classes, seminars, lectures, study groups, and labs on the OpenLab, a digital platform for teaching, learning, and sharing. Through this project, students shared their stories and revealed …

Finding Connections: Making An Existing Biology Course Interdisciplinary And Using The Experience For The Traditional Course And Oers, Tatiana Voza

Publications and Research

Adapting an existing introductory biology course to make it interdisciplinary and successful is an interesting experience and process. With imperatives such as lecture and lab components, a dense curriculum, preexisting learning outcomes and students with different levels of interest, adding material to provide relevant context show how both scientific and social knowledge relate to broader aspects of the human experience, can be challenging. However, once achieved such a course provides epistemological value, real-world context and a rewarding and enriching experience for both students and faculty. In this presentation, the steps involved in designing and implementing an interdisciplinary biology course (Biology …

Web Accessibility 101 Cuny Cs, Amy Wolfe

Open Educational Resources

Web Accessibility 101 CUNY CS

Direct URL: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1570928

This course covers digital web accessibility. The goal of web accessibility is to ensure that all people, including those with disabilities, have equal use and enjoyment of websites and web content.

Creating an accessible internet, so everyone is able to participate in the new public square is the responsibility of all who create digital content. Being able to access the web and participate in information sharing is truly a human right and must be taken into account when creating digital content and websites.

Learn web accessibility basics, WCAG (Web Content Accessibility …

Using Libguides Or Eportfolio As Hosting Platforms For Ztc Courses., Ellen Sexton, Vee Herrington

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Software Of The Oppressed: Reprogramming The Invisible Discipline, Erin R. Glass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a critical analysis of software practices within the university and the ways they contribute to a broader status quo of software use, development, and imagination. Through analyzing the history of software practices used in the production and circulation of student and scholarly writing, I argue that this overarching software status quo has oppressive qualities in that it supports the production of passive users, or users who are unable to collectively understand and transform software code for their own interests. I also argue that the university inadvertently normalizes and strengthens the software status quo through what I call …

Online Learning With In-Person Technology: Student & Faculty Experiences In Hybrid/Online Courses At Cuny, Maura A. Smale, Mariana Regalado, Jean Amaral

Publications and Research

Online learning continues to grow throughout higher education, including expansion at urban commuter institutions like the City University of New York (CUNY) that have traditionally focused primarily on in-person courses. Building on research into the scholarly habits of CUNY students, we undertook a qualitative study to explore the lived experiences of CUNY students and faculty using technology in online and hybrid courses. Our research revealed how students and faculty use online tools in support of learning and illuminated a range of experiences determined by differing access to and skills with technology, the usability of required technology platforms, availability of support, …

We Got This: Toward A Facilitator-Youth Apprenticeship Approach Supporting Collaboration And Design Challenges In Youth-Designed Mobile Location-Based Games, Sara Vogel, Judy Perry

Publications and Research

It's May at a New York City high school’s after-school program. We—the adult facilitators—have been guiding a group of youth to produce a location-based mobile game. The teens have worked dozens of hours and want to see a finished product. But with the final playtest coming soon, we are stuck. Reflecting on the most recent session with the participants, we realize that the game is far behind where it should be. Despite having already begun to code the game and write its interactive text, the game’s core mechanics are still only half-baked, and adjusting problematic real-world locations in the digital …

Librarians Building Digital Learning Objects Supporting Cultural Understanding: Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad In Morocco And Tunisia, Michael J. Miller

Publications and Research

Chapter explores a 2011 Fulbright- Hays Seminar experience in Morocco/Tunisia related to comparative religion. The grant process is explained, Seminar is detailed, and the curriculum project is detailed.

The Effects Of Descriptions And Images Of Antecedent Stimuli And Outcomes To Correct Responses In Task Analysis Instruction, Bryan C. Tyner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Task analysis (TA) instruction is commonly used for teaching behavior chains; however, little research informs best practices for TA instruction. Data regarding the effects of instructional variables on responding may enhance TA efficacy and learner performance. Linking TA instruction to the three-term contingency may facilitate the development of control by stimuli that are naturally present while completing complex tasks; therefore, this study employed a two-by-two factorial design to analyze the relative effects of supplementing TA instruction with descriptions and images of: (factor A) antecedent stimuli relevant to each instructed discrete response and (factor B) the outcomes of accurately completing instructed …

Thiscollegestory.Com: How Interactive Writing Media Influenced The Way First-Year Students Made Sense Of Their College Transition, Philip Kreniske

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on insights from Bakhtin (1986) that demonstrated the significance of writing as an interaction, and building on recent developments in narrative analysis that offer insights into narrator’s sense making processes (Daiute, 2014; Lucic, 2013); this research explores how freshmen in an educational opportunity program used interactive writing media to make sense of their transition to college. The exploration involved three main questions and each question concerns students’ development over time:

• First, did college students’ writing in two different media (blogs and word-processed text) differ and did these differences change over time?
• Second, how did the narrators and audience interact …

Adopting Universal Design In Libraries: Collaborating For Student Success, Stefanie Havelka, Rebecca Arzola

Publications and Research

Faculty grapple with resources such as skill (experience with accessible features and devices), time (teaching students how to navigate software and devices in the library), and expense (software, hardware, eBooks, databases). This presentation will provide an overview of accessible features in library research databases, computer technology, mobile devices, and apps. The presenters will report on their collaboration with Lehman College’s Access and Technology Center (ATC) and Student Disability Services to share how to better approach issues and challenges in order to more successfully support students’ access needs. We will also consider the following questions:

• As librarians and faculty, how can …

Transformation From Text To Voicethreads And Not Looking Back, Curtis Izen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Improving Motivation, Engagement And Differentiation In Lesson Development Using An Interactive White Board: 10-Hour Workshop Cycle Toward Professional Development Certificate, Leslie Lieman, Jenelle Fiori, Naliza Sadik

Publications and Research

The School of Education prepares aspiring teachers for teaching in 21st century classrooms by offering intensive interactive white board training cycles. In designing interactive lessons, the workshop cycle focuses on the pedagogical decision making that can improve classroom teaching and student engagement and understanding.

Collecting & Infusing Locally Relevant Video To Support Teacher Learning, Aliex Ross, Jeanne Peloso, Nancy Dubetz, Laura H. Baecher, Leslie Lieman, Naliza Sadik

Publications and Research

Context: Although online teaching videos are easy to find, few demonstrate locally relevant models for our aspiring teachers. Lehman College School of Education began a project in Fall 2014 to collect locally relevant video of teaching and student learning to demonstrate key practices in the field. We identified classrooms of highly competent program graduates as well as Professional Development Network Schools (PDS) teachers working in classrooms with co-teaching models and/or work with English Language Learners. 6 teachers and 2 literacy coaches from our Bronx public school PDS classrooms welcomed us to videotape teaching and student learning. Teachers and Lehman College …

Designing Instruction For Recovering Alcoholics: The Role Of Executive Function And Levels Of Guidance In Learning From Visually Complex Simulations, Jeffrey Gutkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examines the design of visually complex science simulations. Building upon an earlier study by Homer and Plass (2014), the current research determines under which circumstances adult learners, and alcoholics in recovery, would perform better from while learning with different levels of guidance. It was predicted that alcoholic adults in recovery would have impaired Executive Function (EF) as compared to controls selected from the general population and that EF would affect learning. An experiment investigated whether levels of EF predict learning from simulations that offered higher or lower levels of instructional guidance. Participants were 76 adults, half of …

Creating An Effective Model For Digital Storytelling In The Esl Writing Class, Mary Sepp, Shoba Bandi-Rao

Publications and Research

Using technology in the classroom is no longer the exception but the rule in most college classrooms. Now the question is not whether to use technology, but which technology to use. Among recent innovations is digital storytelling, a multimodal tool that can be used across disciplines. This paper reports on a pilot study designed to determine the feasibility and pedagogical value of using digital storytelling in an ESL writing course at an urban community college. The report documents a detailed plan for implementation and some of the challenges this process presents.

Creating An Effective Model For Digital Storytelling In The Esl Writing Class, Mary Sepp, Shoba Bandi-Rao

Publications and Research

Using technology in the classroom is no longer the exception but the rule in most college classrooms. Now the question is not whether to use technology, but which technology to use. Among recent innovations is digital storytelling, a multimodal tool that can be used across disciplines. This paper reports on a pilot study designed to determine the feasibility and pedagogical value of using digital storytelling in an ESL writing course at an urban community college. The report documents a detailed plan for implementation and some of the challenges this process presents.

Gentle Introduction Resource, James Anderson Laird Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Gentle Introduciton Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application that offers digital humanities researchers a malleable platform with which they can crowdsource technical material. Such material often poses challenges to the traditional humanities researcher when trying to implement digital layers to his or her research. The Gentle Introduction Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application designed to allow a single classroom or single institution to crowdsource technical information/instruction filtering out the influence of rhetorical analysis. It is written in the Ruby language on the Rails web framework. Though a GIR instance can be invoked to crowdsource primarily web-based information …

Automated Learner Classification Through Interface Event Stream And Summary Statistics Analysis, Edgar E. Troudt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reading comprehension is predominately measured through multiple choice examinations. Yet, as we will discuss in this thesis, such exams are often criticized for their inaccuracies. With the advent of "big data" and the rise of ITS (Intelligent Tutoring Systems), increasing focus will be placed on finding dynamic, automated ways of measuring students' aptitude and progress.

This work takes the first step towards automated learner classification based on the application of graphic organizers. We address the following specific problem experimentally: How effectively can we measure task comprehension via human translation of written text into a visual representation on a computer? Can …