September 20, 2006. This fall, more than 300 students at Columbia University and Hunter College will use VITAL 3.0, the newest release of Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning, an interactive video learning environment created by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

In 2004, the National Science Foundation awarded CCNMTL a $2.5 million grant to support the development of "Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL): A Learning Environment for Courses in Early Childhood Mathematics Education" over five years. Led by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Professor Herbert Ginsburg at Teachers College, the project will develop and distribute model courses and a web-based resource to enhance undergraduate- and graduate-level mathematics education programs across the country. CCNMTL has also partnered with the Hunter College School of Education, where a great number of teachers in the New York public school system are trained in early childhood education.

Now more than two years into the grant period, CCNMTL has conducted extensive design research, gathering evaluations from faculty and student users to redesign and re-engineer the application for improved usability and to provide a more robust environment in which students watch videos and compose multimedia essays.

NSF funding has also enabled the project partners to videotape hundreds of new clips of young children engaged in mathematical activities, which are essential to the VITAL mathematics education curriculum. Faculty can adapt the model course according to their needs, whether they are teaching the full curriculum or a discrete modules to graduate or undergraduate students. During the remainder of the five-year grant period, the project partners will test VITAL and the new courses at universities around the country and conduct an evaluation of student learning outcomes.

This semester's VITAL 3.0 release is a limited test run of the new application, which is slated to be rolled out in a wider release in spring 2007. An earlier version is currently used in courses across several disciplines at Columbia University, including clinical social work, foreign languages, and film studies.

VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics