Last Friday, Maurice Matiz, acting executive director of the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL), gave the keynote presentation at the FIT Faculty of the Future mini-retreat, an event focused on massively open online courses (MOOCs) and online learning for faculty at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Matiz’s presentation, “The Online Learning Landscape: A Neighbor’s Perspective,” provided an overview of the major players and trends in online education at Columbia University. He discussed initiatives related to online learning, including Coursera MOOCs, new online degree programs, and public talks by national leaders in the field of online education, and shared lessons learned from these explorations.

About 90 FIT faculty and administrators attended the session, which was held at the John E. Reeves Great Hall. The session was subtitled “an interactive conversation,” and faculty were asked to participate by contributing to Twitter and live polls via laptops and mobile devices. Matiz used the audience responses as fodder for a lengthy Q&A session. The poll results were also saved to foster future conversations, including discussions at breakout sessions after the keynote.