Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL) is a Web-based learning environment that enables students to view, analyze, and communicate ideas with video. The VITAL project began in 2002 as a partnership between CCNMTL and Herbert P. Ginsburg, Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Since then, VITAL has been deployed in a wide range of courses and disciplines across Columbia University, from the School of Social Work to the School of the Arts.

Students who use VITAL learn to master close viewing skills and articulate their ideas with both text and video, utilizing multimedia for active expression rather than passive reception. VITAL features tools that enable students to edit, annotate, and store clips that they select from a course’s video library. Students then use these clips as multimedia citations in essays that are published within the VITAL environment for review and critique by the instructor and classmates.

VITAL also offers a guided lesson template that allows instructors to create linear, question-by-question exercises. These lessons mimic real-time events in which students must make an interpretation or decision based on limited information. After answering a question, students might read an expert’s commentary, encouraging them to reflect and refine their thinking.

VITAL has been the subject of numerous studies, papers, and presentations examining its impact on student learning, new pedagogical approaches to the classroom and online, and applications such as pre-professional training. For more information, please see the VITAL project’s public Web site.

CCNMTL is committed to working with faculty partners to make VITAL an effective pedagogical tool that enhances both teaching and learning for each course.

Join CCNMTL for a demonstration of VITAL 3.0 and a panel discussion on how the use of video has evolved in educational practice.

Date: Thursday, November 2, 2006, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058