IN THE NEWS | July 15, 2013

Article on Country X Published in Simulation & Gaming

The article, “Leveraging Web-Based Environments for Mass Atrocity Prevention,” describes how COUNTRY X, a simulation developed by CCNMTL, was used in both a graduate course in prevention of mass killing and genocide at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and at a workshop for regional conflict early warning analysts in Africa.

Harding and Whitlock found that individuals who used the simulation were more engaged and developed more complex analyses of conflict resolution scenarios.

IN THE NEWS | July 1, 2013

SENCER Newsletter Features Brownfield Action

The newsletter of Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) recently featured an article on Brownfield Action, a project developed by Peter Bower, a senior lecturer at Barnard College, and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL).

Brownfield Action is a web-based, interactive learning simulation in which students assume the roles of environmental consulting firms and use scientific data to investigate a suspected contaminated land site. In 2003, Brownfield Action was selected as a “national model curriculum” by SENCER. Since then a collaborative network of faculty have used the simulation and contributed to new curriculum and the growth of the tool.

The article covers developments at a seminar and training session for Brownfield Action held at Barnard College May 17-19, including new contributions and a vision for an interactive, 3D game-based “next-generation Brownfield.”

SENCER is a program supported by the National Science Foundation to support a community of faculty, students, academic leaders, and others to improve undergraduate STEM education by connecting learning to critical civic questions.

IN THE NEWS | February 28, 2013

The Bwog: What's So New About New CourseWorks?

This week The Bwog, Columbia's undergraduate student blog, published an interview with CCNMTL Director of Services Dan Beeby on "the what, how and why" of the new CourseWorks system. Entitled What's So New About New Courseworks? Beeby addresses questions about why Columbia decided to transition to the new Sakai system, the development process, and new features.

The piece provides a good behind-the-scenes history of the transition to Columbia's new course management system, plus some helpful tips for students and faculty.

IN THE NEWS | October 12, 2012

The Eye: What Can Online Education Do For Columbia?

The Eye, the magazine of the Columbia Spectator published a lengthy piece focusing on online learning. The article, The Virtual Classroom: What Can Online Education Do For Columbia? by Sammy Roth, is a useful summary and history of online learning at Columbia. Spurred by the growing media attention to online education and the response by numerous peer organizations, the article provides an in-depth look at the current situation at Columbia. The article features observations from Frank Moretti, executive director at CCNMTL, Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia’s chief digital officer, Robert Kasdin, Columbia's senior executive vice president, along with comments from faculty and librarians.

While the article focuses on massive open online courses (MOOCs), it does represent other approaches to online learning, including those featured at the schools of engineering and continuing education, where successful models have sustained distance learning programs for a number of years.

The author, Sammy Roth, has done an excellent job of getting quality observations from his sources and offers an accurate primer on online education issues at Columbia.

IN THE NEWS | April 24, 2012

Newsletter Features Project Rebirth

The Spring 2012 issue of MST Times, the newsletter for the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University, features Project Rebirth, a documentary that chronicles the stories of 10 people deeply affected by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

CCNMTL’s Project Rebirth educational initiative provides faculty partners from Columbia University and Georgetown University with access to hundreds of hours of footage from Project Rebirth. The initiative aims to help students better understand the many dimensions of trauma and recovery following September 11, 2001

The article in MST Times describes the documentary’s emotional impact and unique focus on the long-term aftermath of tragedy. Photographs of CCNMTL executive director Frank Moretti presenting Project Rebirth at a screening at Teachers College in October 2011 accompany the piece.

IN THE NEWS | January 11, 2012

WSJR Features MindUP Curriculum

The Sunday morning show The Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo featured an interview with Goldie Hawn speaking about the MindUP curriculum.

MindUP is a PreK-8 social and emotional learning curriculum recently published by Scholastic, Inc. In the interview, Hawn discusses the initiative and its impact on children's learning and well-being.

CCNMTL is creating an online professional development companion to MindUP that will be used to train teachers to implement the program's curriculum in the classroom. This project is funded by The Hawn Foundation and will include contributions from faculty at Teachers College and Columbia University.

IN THE NEWS | June 10, 2011

CCNMTL Featured in FutureGov Asia Pacific

FutureGov Asia Pacific, a magazine for public sector organizations and leaders in Asia and the Middle East, recently highlighted CCNMTL in an article entitled Columbia University embraces interactive web teaching. The article features CCNMTL executive director Frank Moretti discussing the center's emphasis on working with faculty to develop web-based technologies specifically for their individual curriculum.

The article focuses on Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning, a web-based learning environment created by CCNMTL that enables students to view, analyze, and communicate ideas with video.

IN THE NEWS | May 9, 2011

Malcolm X Multimedia Study Environment Revisited

The New York Times' article A Digital Critique of a Famous Autobiography discusses the multimedia study environment created by CCNMTL in 2005 for The Autobiography of Malcolm X based on research by Professor Manning Marable and his graduate students. The web site has gotten renewed attention after Professor Marable's book, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” was published last month.

The article, written by Noam Cohen, points out the vast number of multimedia references in the study environment, the accessibility of the text for study using paragraph numbering and search, the restricted access due to copyright limitations, and the unfortunate deterioration of the web site as technology standards march on leaving old sites looking distressed.

The "Autobiography of Malcolm X" multimedia study environment is still in use at Columbia. Columbia instructors wishing to use it should contact CCNMTL to obtain access.

IN THE NEWS | April 26, 2011

HuffPost Interviews Goldie Hawn on MindUP

The HuffPost Living blog released an interview of Goldie Hawn by Marianne Schall, where Ms. Hawn discusses the MindUP program. During the interview, she briefly discusses scaling the MindUP program by creating an online version with help from Columbia (CCNMTL). For more details on this project, see our project portfolio entry for MindUP.

IN THE NEWS | April 25, 2011

Public Health Publication Features Columbia Global Course

The Friday Letter, a weekly publication of the Association of Schools of Public Health, released an article entitled, Expanding the Knowledge Network through Columbia’s Global Classroom, highlighting how students from Indonesia and Sri Lanka are tuning in to classes at Mailman School of Public Health.

The April 15, 2011 article focused on the course, “Protection of Children in Disaster and War,” taught by Dr. Neil Boothby, the Allan Rosenfield Professor of Clinical Forced Migration and Health and director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health, and Dr. Lindsay Stark, assistant professor of clinical population and family health, that was shared via video conferencing and, online, using a Wikischolars site.

Michelle Hall, CCNMTL senior educational technologist, helped the group choose and set up the Wikischolars platform for collaborative editing that allowed for Columbia UNI and non-UNI access; advised how the assignments should be set up along with the RSS feeds to capture student responses. Michelle also trained the TAs and coordinators to use the wiki that was set up to function like a course management system, using a wiki page for each class session.

IN THE NEWS | September 22, 2010

Masivukeni Featured in HIV Center E-Newsletter

September 22, 2010. Masivukeni, the counselor support tool for delivering an HIV-treatment adherence intervention in clinics in South Africa, was recently featured in the Fall 2010 e-newsletter published by the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. The article, A Multimedia Intervention to Promote Adherence in South Africa, explains the research, development, and dissemination of Masivukeni, which is a joint project between CCNMTL and Dr. Robert Remien, a research scientist at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies and associate professor of clinical psychology.

Masivukeni is a CCNMTL Triangle Initiative project. Read A Multimedia Intervention to Promote Adherence in South Africa or learn more about Masivukeni.

IN THE NEWS | August 11, 2010

Mendeley Blog Spotlights Global Honors College

August 10, 2010. Mendeley, the research management tool that allows users to index and organize PDF documents and research papers into your own personal digital bibliography, recently featured CCNMTL's Ashlinn Quinn in the Mendeley Blog. In the blog post, Ashlinn shares how Mendeley is used in the Global Honors College.. Read an excerpt below:

Throughout the Global Seminar, students are tasked with finding, reading, and annotating references in peer-reviewed literature that pertain to specific matters covered in the course. In the unit on Terrestrial Biodiversity, for instance, students searched the Web of Science for academic studies having to do with terrestrial species assessment, ecosystem services, and threats to biodiversity from climate change. Each student submitted references to the shared collection on Mendeley, using the “Notes” feature to annotate the references, and “Tags” to track who had submitted which references and to sort them by topic and by assignment.

After just six weeks of activity in the Seminar, the students have already collected almost 300 articles having to do with topics covered in the class, with new references being added to the collection every day. As the Seminar progresses, the students will refer to this library for group projects and research papers.

Visit the Mendeley Blog to read the full blog post.

ANNOUNCEMENTS | August 5, 2010

The Chronicle of Higher Education Highlights Vietnam Collection

August 5, 2010. The Vietnam Collection, an online archive of the 1983 WGBH series, "Vietnam: A Television History," which is currently being used in Columbia classrooms under Project Vietnam, was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In Archive Watch: Summer Doldrums Edition, author Jennifer Howard lists the collection as one of the cool digital archives that she came across lately.

The Vietnam Collection is housed in WGBH's Open Vault archive, and comprises original footage and stills from the 13-hour television series. CCNMTL, along with the University of Massachusetts at Boston, partnered with WGBH Media Library and Archives to make the online collection available to the public and accessible for educators to use in the classroom.

At Columbia, the CCNMTL-developed Project Vietnam enables students to discover and watch full-length interviews and a range of stock footage from the Vietnam Collection; annotate, edit, and create sub-collections of these videos; and incorporate clips into multimedia projects. Faculty from Columbia University's Teachers College, Department of History, and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures are integrating Project Vietnam into their curricula.

Visit the Vietnam Collection and learn more about Project Vietnam at Columbia.

IN THE NEWS | May 14, 2010

New York Law Journal Features New Collateral Consequences Calculator

May 14, 2010. Collateral Consequences Calculator, the recently released web-based legal tool developed by CCNMTL and Columbia Law School, was featured on the front page of the New York Law Journal today. The article describes the Calculator, which is designed to provide an online overview of the complex collateral consequences associated with sections of the New York State Penal Law, and shares why Conrad Johnson, clinical professor of law and CCNMTL faculty partner, believes the tool will largely benefit the New York legal community: "There's simply too much to know, no one can accurately assess the consequences of a conviction in their head." Subscribers to the New York Law Journal can read the full article here.

IN THE NEWS | May 10, 2010

Pierce Mattie Firm Interviews CCNMTL

May 10, 2010. Pierce Mattie, the New York-based lifestyle public relations firm, recently interviewed CCNMTL Web Designer Marc Raymond about a few Center projects and initiatives including Tobacco Cessation, Worth, and Project Rebirth.

Read the full interview, Pierce Mattie Talks to Columbia University about New Media and Exciting Uses of Digital Technology.

IN THE NEWS | May 3, 2010

The Vietnam Collection Featured in New York Times

May 3, 2010. The New York Times' Arts Briefly section recently featured the launch of the Vietnam Collection, the online video library developed and disseminated by a partnership between the WGBH Media Library and Archives, the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and CCNMTL.

The article, Rare Interviews Tell Vietnam’s Story Online, describes the Vietnam Collection's robust digital repository containing previously unavailable original interviews and stock footage from WGBH’s 1983 landmark series, Vietnam: A Television History. With a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, CCNMTL joined WGBH and the University of Massachusetts in Boston to make the collection available to the public on WGBH's OpenVault website and used for educational purposes at Columbia University and other interested institutions.

Read the New York Times article here and learn more about the Vietnam Collection and Project Vietnam.

IN THE NEWS | May 3, 2010

Opencast Community Profiles CCNMTL

May 3, 2010. The Opencast Community —a consortium of higher education institutions working together to explore, define, and document podcasting and course capture best practices and technologies—featured CCNMTL in an article detailing the Center's participation in community efforts related to the Opencast Matterhorn Project, an open source media system for managing and delivering educational audio and video content on the Web that is expected to launch this summer.

The article highlights CCNMTL's Digital Media Technologist Brian O’Hagan for his contributions in the Opencast Community, including planning meetings and working groups, and notes how CCNMTL plans to deploy Matterhorn at Columbia University: "CCNMTL hopes to implement the services of Matterhorn, namely publishing, encoding, and workflow, so that all media assets can be managed in an integrated manner as a part of the Center’s core [course] services. Once Matterhorn services are implemented as a core platform, Brian expects that CCNMTL will begin development on projects that extend Matterhorn functionality, quite likely including integration of their annotation tools."

Read the full article.

IN THE NEWS | April 13, 2010

Downtown Express Features Project Rebirth and Partners

April 13, 2010. In a recent Downtown Express article, author Julie Shapiro examines how the soon-to-be released Project Rebirth documentary is impacting teaching and learning at Columbia University and Georgetown University.

The article, Learning from the Healing Documented in 9/11 Interviews, depicts filmmaker Jim Whitaker’s quest to chronicle the recovery of nine people affected by 9/11 and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. For seven years, Whitaker collected hundreds of hours of interview footage of the nine subjects as well as time-lapse photography from the World Trade Center site, leaving him with an abundance of film for the feature length Project Rebirth documentary. In an effort to build upon the educational significance of the documentary, the nonprofit Project Rebirth organization partnered with CCNMTL and the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University to make the original, uncut footage available to professors, students, and clinicians.

Throughout the article, Shapiro describes Project Rebirth's educational initiative and sheds light on the various ways that professors at Columbia and Georgetown are using Project Rebirth in their classrooms: “Psychiatrists can study symptoms of grief and the success of the survivors’ coping mechanisms. Linguists can study the way men and women communicate differently about trauma. Anthropologists can analyze the subjects’ cultural background and how that affected their response and healing.”

The article also highlights plans for a new website for the Project Rebirth Center – an online resource for first responders, grief professionals, victims, educators, and students, featuring a wide range of resources including interview footage from the film and spaces for connecting individuals and organizations. In reference to the planned center, CCNMTL Executive Director Frank Moretti said, “[We want to] develop methods that would make it easier to respond to massive traumatic events, whether that’s 9/11, or the tsunami, or Haiti.” CNDLS Executive Director Randy Bass also shared his thoughts on how the center can benefit victims, survivors, and bystanders noting, “We run to the Web for solace, for information for other people with similar stories.”

Read the full article and learn more about the Project Rebirth Educational Initiative at CCNMTL.

IN THE NEWS | March 5, 2010

CCNMTL Featured in Columbia Spectator Magazine

March 5, 2010. A range of CCNMTL projects were recently featured in The Eye, Columbia Spectator's weekly features and arts magazine. In The Mouse Race, author Daniel D'addario expounds upon the technological happenings of the University Senate IT committee and CCNMTL. Educational technologist Michael Preston was interviewed for the article and shared a number of insights on services and projects underway at CCNMTL, including Engaging Digital Tibet, Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning, Mapping the African American Past, and the Millennium Village Simulation. Read the full article here.

IN THE NEWS | February 22, 2010

The Record Publishes Article on Country X

February 22, 2010. A CCNMTL project developed with the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) is the focus of a recent Record article. In Web-based Training Aims to Help Prevent Genocide, author Donna Cornachino explains the objectives and implementation of Country X, a project released in 2009.

Country X is a web-based educational simulation created in response to challenges surrounding the training and education of prospective genocide prevention practitioners. The simulation, developed in partnership with Professor Aldo Civico and deployed by CICR program coordinator Mark Whitlock, takes place in a fictitious nation experiencing rapid instability called Country X. Students in the course "Prevention of Mass Killing" work in groups with each student assuming the identity of one of four characters representing the perspectives of diplomatic, intelligence, military, and civil society communities. After analyzing a starting condition, players must address the situation from within their role by independently making a strategic policy decision and providing a rationale for it.

In the article, CCNMTL educational technologist Tucker Harding shares one of the overarching goals of the project: “In a course that has a word like ‘preventing’ in it, there’s a need to empower students to do something, not just know something. As part of a growing theme at Columbia to move certain courses from theory to practice, CCNMTL and our faculty partners are finding ways to bridge that gap.” Read the full story here.