Another class, “IT Project Management,” will examine how to manage software projects
from a perspective that gives equal weight to technology and people, customer value and provider profitability. “You can design the greatest product
technically, but if your users have no idea how to use it, it's worthless” explained Langer.
Langer said AITM is the more advanced level of the popular Computer Technology & Applications (CTA) program run through CE/SP, one which teaches
computer programming, database design and network operation. “Traditionally, entry- and mid-level managers have been in the sink-or-swim dilemma,”
said Langer. “You may be a very good database designer, so the next logical step is that your company would make you a manager. Many of them are
former technical experts, and they don’t necessarily have any management experience.”
Embracing technology in the classroom, General Studies has made room in Lewisohn Hall for a satellite extension of Columbia University’s Center for
New Media Teaching & Learning (CCNMTL). Through the satellite extension, faculty of the Arts and Sciences interested in incorporating new media in
their courses will have the robust resources and expert support of CCNMTL’s staff in a convenient location.
Like the Center in Bulter Library, the new satellite office will train faculty to use high- tech tools to enhance class curricula and will support
them in the creation of custom-made digital content for Columbia classes. In addition to the sixth floor faculty training laboratory, CCNMTL is
participating in the development of two projects on the third floor. In collaboration with GS, a learning laboratory will provide space where digital
alternatives to one-on-one tutorial assistance can be explored. And, through collaboration with AcIS, a “smart classroom” located on the third
floor, will benefit GS students and other undergraduates. Both projects, entering their prototype phases and to be completed by the Fall of 2000, will
greatly advance the technological tools available to all undergraduates.
“The General Studies website, one of the most comprehensive on campus, was our launch pad into this brave new world,” said Peter Awn, Dean of GS.
“The new CCNMTL satellite is just further evidence of CU’s commitment to providing the most sophisticated technological tools available to its
students, alumni, and staff.”
CCNMTL is certainly not the first body at Columbia devoted to innovation in the digital domain. The difference between this new media center and
others on campus is highlighted by the final two words of the new Center’s name: Teaching and Learning. The Center’s primary purpose is to explore
and create new media applications in the interest of improving the teaching and learning environment.
Following the footsteps of enterprising Columbia faculty, with technical assistance from the Academic Information Systems (AcIS), educators have
already explored digital teaching tools for music, art, architecture, chemistry and physics. In Columbia classes today, 3-D reproductions of molecules
serve to visually explain organic chemistry; virtual buildings put architectural techniques into perspective; and a new online resource, the Sonic
Glossary, explains elusive musical concepts to core curriculum students in Music Humanities. Also, several professors have extended their classroom
boundaries to include online discussion groups and many more have switched to a digital syllabus. Already clients of the Center, Ian Bent, Joan
Ferrante, Denise Burnett, and George Flynn are extending their forays into the new digital medium.
At GS, two colloquia, a GS composition class, and Dean Awn’s own Literature Humanities course for GS students will contain new media materials
developed with the assistance of CCNMTL. Given GS’s established interest in innovative pedagogy, and given Frank Moretti has been teaching a GS core
class, Lewisohn was a natural spot for CCNMTL’s first satellite. “New media has the potential for changing the nature of the way education
works,” said Frank Moretti, co-director of the Institute for Learning technologies at Teacher’s College and executive director of CCNMTL. “By
building on existing technologies, CCNMTL can create continuity where discontinuity existed. By building on existing technologies, CCNMTL will assist
in the development of new educational applications, and help Columbia assume a position of leadership in the application of digital technologies to
education.
In development now at the Center are cutting-edge applications such as E-folio, a tool allowing users to capture, annotate, and analyze information
found on the World Wide Web. This taming of the vast information on the web will accelerate the creation of multi-media content. Also in the
not-so-distant-future is the Five Biome Project, an inter-institutional effort to combine existing digital resources at Columbia in five science-based
summer programs that take place in different locations, each in one of Earth’s biomes (desert, deciduous forest, ocean, rain forest and freshwater
wetlands). Eventually the project will evolve into a distance learning experience capable of supporting participation.
