CUNY Academic Commons
Part 1 of the ReclaimEDU Multi-Region Hosting Case Study
In Part 1 we look at the mighty CUNY Academic Commons, a community-driven platform that supports faculty, staff and students across CUNY. In this case study we explore:
- what makes this open source platform so successful;
- how the team has continued to adapt to the changing needs of students and faculty;
- the impact of this project within the institution and beyond it.
In Part 2, we zoom in on one particular CUNY institution, Baruch College, where seeds of open source innovation have taken on a life of their own and grown into a unique digital ecosystem: Blogs@Baruch.
“We believe that knowledge is a public good.”
Introduction
When we first discovered the opportunities of the world wide web, we immediately moved from passively using the technology provided to becoming active builders. We set out to explore new technologies in order to open up possibilities within the curriculum. Inspired by the work of Jim Groom and others, WordPress became the vehicle for our ideological commitment to building an open community space, a shared space on the web, a commons.
That’s how Luke Waltzer, Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center describes the origins of the CUNY Academic Commons, an open platform which has grown to almost 60,000 Members from all across the large and multi-campus City University of New York.
Since its launch in 2009, the Commons has served faculty, staff, and students who have collectively created 42,116 sites, 2,259 groups and 3,464 courses. In the past year alone over 5,000 new members have joined, and the Commons continues to thrive and empowers its community to connect, create and build things together.
Early Development
In 2008/9 the project initially started small: the CUNY Academic Commons was initially conceived of as a way to share best practices and facilitate knowledge exchange–a mostly static repository for best practices. Tapped by CUNY Director of Academic Technology George Otte to lead committee work on the site, Commons Director Matthew K. Gold pushed the committee to consider a more generative, DIY space loosely modeled on the work that Jim Groom and others had been doing at the University of Mary Washington. The CUNY Academic Commons developed in an iterative way into a space for faculty who wanted to build something for themselves while gaining the digital skills along the way. In contrast to the highly structured and restrictive institutional digital spaces run by the university, the new platform offered more scope for experimentation and innovation.
As the platform grew, it quickly became apparent that more dedicated expertise would be needed to realise its potential and thus Lead Developer, Boone Gorges, joined the team. He reflects on how the CUNY Academic Commons continued to develop:
I came to the project with a background in Philosophy. At the time, WordPress offered a simpler way for people who were keen to build things on the open web, encouraging modification and experimentation. As open source projects gained momentum in education, the work stimulated conversations across communities, helping to grow the software and grow the movement. Fundamental to our approach was and is our commitment to public scholarship and public accountability.
The Commons not only uses open source software, including WordPress Multi-Site and BuddyPress, but the team also shares its developments back to other institutions world-wide.
The platform sits alongside other institutional infrastructure, including CUNY’s Learning Management System (LMS). Part of the process of developing the platform was an ongoing dialogue with colleagues in IT, exploring opportunities for the digital university landscape to become more open, and to create a rich digital ecosystem where knowledge can be created and shared as well as supporting grassroots digital spaces.
Current practice
Once the systems we had in place became unsustainable for the scale and scope of the platform, we set out to find a new hosting solution. We needed a host that would offer the technical infrastructure and support required for such a large, complex platform as well as the educational expertise to understand what we are trying to achieve and why. ReclaimEDU offers both. Working closely with a small team allows us to remain lean and nimble as we work together in partnership.
Once the systems we had in place became unsustainable for the scale and scope of the platform, we set out to find a new hosting solution. We needed a host that would offer the technical infrastructure and support required for such a large, complex platform as well as the educational expertise to understand what we are trying to achieve and why. ReclaimEDU offers both. Working closely with a small team allows us to remain lean and nimble as we work together in partnership.
The move to a multi-region hosting service has enabled the Commons to continue to grow at the heart of the CUNY community and over the years, the platform has become home to sites such as the C3 CUNY Climate Consortium Network, the Freedom Dreaming Zine and the Archival Technologies Lab as well as the Brooklyn College Library Art Collection, John Jay College: Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) and Hostos CC Latin American Writers Institute. With each year new cohorts join the Commons, and the expanded user-base only accelerates the development of the platform.
Looking ahead
What started as a DIY space has developed into enterprise-level infrastructure at the heart of the university. The Commons empowers knowledge exchange within the institution and also provides spaces in which the CUNY community tackles urgent issues such as data sovereignty, privacy and protecting human agency.
Emerging concerns around privacy on the open web and use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) make it even more important to have a collaborative space which helps pull people together and to empower users to take control of their digital identities. As the needs of the user-base evolve, so does the technology: for example by using plug-ins that help faculty manage access to sites, enabling use of public, semi-private or fully-private sites. As the Commons grows so does its pioneering technological contribution to the open source ecosystem.
The Academic Commons is an open platform created by and for CUNY faculty, staff, and students. First established in 2009, the Commons has grown to almost 60,00 Members, who have collectively created 42,116 sites, 2,259 groups and 3,464 courses. In the past year alone over 5,000 new members have joined, and the Commons continues to thrive.
Visit https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/ to learn more.
The Commons was built by CUNY, for CUNY. It uses open source software which it shares to other institutions world-wide, including contributions WordPress-Multisite, WordPress plugins, BuddyPress and bbPress. Find out more on the dev blog https://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.
The Academic Commons uses ReclaimEDU multi-region hosting from Reclaim Hosting.
Thank you to all the CUNY Graduate Center staff who contributed to this case study, especially Matthew K. Gold, Director of the CUNY Academic Commons; Boone Gorges, Lead Developer of the CUNY Academic Commons and Luke Waltzer, Director, Teaching and Learning Center.
The case study interview was led by Reclaim’s Co-Founder, Jim Groom, and the case study was written by Dr Maren Deepwell, consultant at Reclaim Hosting.
The CUNY Graduate Center is located in the heart of Manhattan and is located within the large and multi-campus City University of New York. Innovative research, rigorous scholarship, and collaborative and interdisciplinary learning define graduate education at the CUNY Graduate Center and prepare students with creative, problem-solving expertise to thrive in a changing world. Visit https://www.gc.cuny.edu/ to learn more.
