Editor's Note: This Week at the Center has switched to a monthly release during the summer months.

An important thread of activity that runs through the busy summer season at CCNMTL is that associated with faculty development workshops, which our staff facilitates for a variety of schools and programs in the University and its affiliates.

In addition to the Teagle Summer Institute for training graduate student teachers, we have also recently facilitated development programs for CUMC and a coalition, known as the eLearning Faculty Fellowship or eLFF, formed by three Jewish higher education institutions: Jewish Theological Seminary’s Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, and Yeshiva University.

In late June, CCNMTL staff members Dan Beeby, Sarohini Chahal, Kenny Hirschmann, and Ellen Maleszewski accompanied the second cohort of faculty in the eLFF program to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Atlanta . The group attended conference sessions together and then collaborated in working sessions facilitated by Center staff to apply new ideas from the conference to their courses for the coming academic year. The eLFF cohort will continue to collaborate with staff facilitators through the coming academic year.

Twitter picture of collaboration at ISTE

JTS folks collaborating at #elff2014 pic.twitter.com/yOYbJCjVtv

— D. Beeby (@dbeeby) July 2, 2014

In July, the Center was excited to co-sponsor the seventh annual Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning a day-long workshop devoted to exploring effective teaching and learning strategies in health sciences education. This year, sessions focused on instructional design and creating student-centered classrooms.

Twitter picture of presentation at Summer Institute

@ccnmtl @mcennamo offering great options for the blended classroom @columbiamed #sitl2014 #edtech pic.twitter.com/aSb3TesVVI

— Paul Stengel (@PaulStengel) July 22, 2014

Also this week: Coursera CEO Rick Levin stopped by the Center for a discussion with staff on new features in the Coursera platform and his vision of where Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will go next. On July 8th, Columbia launched Part 2 of Barnard Professor Perry Mehrling’s Economics of Money and Banking course, rated last fall by Lifehacker as one of the best free online classes available on the web.