I’ve just released version 1.19.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is one of our twice-yearly major feature releases for the site.

The centerpiece of the release is a complete redesign and rebuild of the main home page. This redesign, years in the making, includes a few new features:

• “Featured” sites and groups, allowing the Commons team to highlight content
• A new “shortcuts” section, giving easy access to useful links based on a logged-in user’s role (student, faculty, etc)
• A personalized section at the top of the logged-in home page, with links to a user’s most recently active groups and sites
• Suggested groups and sites based on a logged-in user’s campus affiliations

Through the redesign process, we’ve emphasized best practices for modern web design, including compatibility across devices, accessibility for screen readers and other devices, and a simple, readable aesthetic.

We also built a number of features around the site:

• A toggle that allows users of the Courses directory to filter for only those courses that are public
• A flag that allows group and site creators to indicate that their Teaching-focused content is OER-related, and a filter on directories that allows users to browse for content that’s tied to OER
• The ability to edit the Instructors associated with a Course
• Improved visibility settings for a user’s Pronouns field

For complete details, visit the 1.19 milestone, or the post announcing the release on the News blog.