Decade of Innovation at CCNMTL: 1999-2009

New York –March 3, 2009. This month the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Under the leadership of co-founders Frank Moretti and Maurice Matiz, the Center opened its doors ten years ago to promote the purposeful use of new media and technology in education. Since then, the Center has worked with over 4,000 faculty and instructors representing each school at Columbia University to develop over 200 educational projects and initiatives.

“When recalling the last ten years, I am most grateful for tremendous faculty partnerships,” said Maurice Matiz, CCNMTL vice executive director, “and I am amazed by the achievements of our dedicated staff, whose work has affected positive change in Columbia University’s classrooms.”

Faculty and school partnerships continue to be a hallmark of the Center’s work. In December 2000, an additional office was opened with the College of Dental Medicine and Dr. John Zimmerman to serve faculty on Columbia University’s Medical Campus. The establishment of this office led to the development of many rewarding projects with CUMC faculty including the Heart Simulator, Virtual Techniques in Dentistry, and a number of simulations around public health issues.

CCNMTL has been integral to the adoption and support of critical teaching and learning platforms at Columbia University including CourseWorks, Columbia Wikispaces, and Columbia on iTunes U. CourseWorks, launched in 2001, offered instructors a new, online space for course materials and collaboration. Additionally, the CU Analyzer project, also released in 2001, exemplified early analysis and synthesis tools, which are critical for encouraging student learning.

In 2002, CCNMTL pioneered design research methodology for project development that integrates the exploration and development of digital technologies with pedagogical theory and practice; all of the Center’s projects follow the iterative cycle of research, development, and assessment defined by this methodology.

“From the outset, we have been a learning organization that fosters and uses build-to-learn principles,” said Frank Moretti, CCNMTL executive director, “this philosophy has allowed us to assume a leadership role in the conversations around education and technology.” The Center has leveraged its leadership role on campus to host four New Media in Education conferences highlighting faculty partnerships, classroom innovations, and new tools for instructors.

Over the past decade, CCNMTL has received over $10 million in grant funding and has helped faculty partners obtain much more in project funding. Recent grants have supported many of the Center’s Strategic Initiatives, which are paving the way toward the next decade of innovation. Read more about CCNMTL at http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/10th.

1999
The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) is founded at Columbia University on March 1, 1999 as a University-wide initiative with the mission to enhance teaching and learning through the purposeful use of new media and technology. With its Faculty Support Lab open in Butler Library, CCNMTL begins its work with Columbia faculty by creating websites for instructors to post course content online. The Center also launches the first version of one of its flagship projects, Brownfield Action, and its first multimedia study environment, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, F. Jameson.

2000
CCNMTL’s services expand as the Center opens a new office in Lewisohn Hall. Columbia College Today features CCNMTL in a cover story on the digital revolution occurring on campus, entitled Columbia Goes Digital, and the Center releases the multimedia study environment, The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. Other projects released during this year include Hell's Kitchen South Project and Paradise Lost Book IX by John Milton.

2001
CCNMTL provokes discussion about new media, technology, and education with symposiums and seminars for the academic community. Its first major conference, Columbia University: Moving Education Into the 21st Century With New Media, focuses on the impact of new media on education, and the Center's University Seminars in Media Teaching and Learning bring together scholars and practitioners to discuss emerging technologies in higher education. CCNMTL also opens an office on the Columbia medical campus and establishes the Experimental Digital Classroom in Lewisohn Hall. The Center releases a series of e-seminars available on Fathom.com, and develops the teaching tool, CU Analyzer. In May, Yahoo! Picks features The Rohde to Srebrenica in its weekly selection of favorite websites.

2002
CCNMTL and Columbia’s Academic Information Systems (AcIS) department launch CourseWorks, the University's course management system, and the Center begins providing CourseWorks support to Columbia faculty. CCNMTL also releases several new projects, including Epiville and the News Reporting Simulation, and receives a joint grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop Relief Sim with Oxford University. Physics Today highlights Seeing the Whole Symphony in the Web Watch section of their October 2002 issue.

2003
CCNMTL moves under Columbia University's Information Services Division and continues to create innovative teaching tools and resources, including its first version of VITAL. This web-based video analysis tool allows students to analyze and annotate online video. Additionally, the Association American Colleges and Universities selects CCNMTL’s Brownfield Action as one of its four Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities models for 2003. Several other CCNMTL projects are released this year, including the Heart Simulator and the Cultura Project. The Center also begins to provide support for Columbia’s Frontiers of Science program and supported the Midnight's Children Humanities Festival with a website featuring information and video recordings of the various festival events and information on the performances at the Apollo Theatre.

2004
Several grants are awarded to CCNMTL and its faculty partners in 2004, including three National Science Foundation grants to produce or expand on VITAL, Brownfield Action, and a web application for the Black Rock Forest Consortium. The U.S. Department of Education also awards CCNMTL and the College of Dental Medicine a grant to develop the Personalized Lifelong Learning Plan. New projects like Library Compass and Responsible Conduct of Research Modules, and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste are also released.

2005
CCNMTL expands its project portfolio with a collection of multimedia study environments and web-based analysis tools. Noteworthy projects include The Autobiography of Malcolm X Multimedia Study Environment, which presents Malcolm X’s memoir as the textual “spine” of the environment with links to critical annotations, audio, video, and images about the text. The Image Annotation Tool is also created—providing the faculty and students with a web-based application that enables the collection, close study, and annotation of digital images. During this year, CCNMTL also developed projects like Kaleidoscope, the Journalism School Content Management, and the Online Music Reserves.

2006
In addition to releasing projects like Virtual Techniques in Dentistry and Emergency Preparedness Directed Learning Experiences, CCNMTL partners with the Columbia University Arts Initiative to create the Havel at Columbia site, a multimedia resource to support former Czech President Václav Havel's residency at Columbia. The Center receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control to create Connect, and the CCNMTL video analysis tool, VITAL, is deployed in graduate and undergraduate courses at Hunter College. CCNMTL also begins using wikis as a platform for educational projects, creating the Social Justice Movements Wiki and the Reading and Writing Women Wiki. This year marks the fifth anniversary of CourseWorks, which is used by more than 2,7000 courses and 25,000 Columbia affiliates.

2007
CCNMTL establishes the Triangle Initiative, the first of three initiatives designed to extend the scope and reach of the Center’s work. Connect and Collateral Consequences are borne from this initiative. Additionally, CCNMTL begins to support podcasting in courses and creates the site, Podcasting@Columbia, where students can subscribe to audio and video podcasts of course lectures. In spring 2007, the Center hosts a two-day conference on video and education, entitled Video, Education, and Open Content, and in fall 2007, the Center launches Columbia Wikispaces —a platform offering a wiki to every registered course at Columbia.

2008
CCNMTL’s strategic initiatives, Global Learning and Digital Bridges, generate several projects, including Mapping the African American Past and the Global Classroom, and a team of Center staff embark on a research and development trip to South Africa as part of an NIMH-supported project on HIV-treatment adherence known as SMART +SA. CCNMTL also hosts two conferences, Innovation in the CUMC Classroom, designed for Columbia medical and dental faculty, and the New Media in Education 2008 conference, the Center’s fourth bi-annual event for the Columbia faculty to explore emerging technologies used in Columbia classrooms. CCNMTL also launches Columbia on iTunes U, an online platform that allows students, faculty, and the public to download Columbia-produced media content to mobile devices or personal computers

2009
CCNMTL celebrates its 10th anniversary with a celebratory website offering a retrospective look at the Center’s work over the years. Continuing with project development and releases, the Center embarks on a number of partnerships with organizations, including Project Rebirth and Black Rock Forest. The Center also launches Engaging Digital Tibet, a project under the Digital Bridges initiative that allow students to work with Tibetan source materials in an online environment, and REAL —a web-based tutorial for Columbia University medical, dental, and nursing students to learn about internal cardioverter defibrillators. Projects on the horizon for 2009 include the Vietnam Digital Library, the Virtual Forest Initiative, and PediaLabs.

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