The last weeks of August are a time of excitement and preparation all over campus. At the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) our top priority is getting faculty ready to head back into the classroom for another successful academic year. This year, in addition to our usual schedule of workshops and lab sessions, we’ve been preparing for an early fall launch of Columbia University’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the edX platform, and we've taken some time to refresh our own focus with conferences and a staff retreat.

We are hard at work planning our Fall Premiere. This year, join us for a fully interactive, expo-style open session exploring the opportunities for blended learning at Columbia University.

The Fall Premiere 2014 is scheduled for the following locations and times:

• Morningside: September 16, 11 am- 2 pm, 523 Butler Library
• CUMC: September 18th, 11am - 2pm, HSC LL1 Student Lounge
• JTS: September 30, 11 am- 2 pm, Unterberg 501

Our annual schedule of workshops has already begun. CCNMTL's educational technologists are helping faculty explore teaching and learning tools such as Mediathread, Edblogs, CourseWorks, Audience Response Systems, and Wikispaces. This year our list of workshops is being augmented with Courseworks Open Lab Sessions: designated times where faculty can receive individualized support from CCNMTL’'s educational technologists.

More From This Week
Videos from the Learning with MOOCs workshop held at MIT in mid-August were released online. At the conference, CCNMTL staff joined other educators, technologists, researchers, learning scientists, entrepreneurs, and funders of MOOCs to share their innovations and discuss the impact of new learning technologies.

Finally, our entire staff took a moment for reflection and planning with a daylong staff retreat. Our friends, and longtime educational partners, at Black Rock Forest generously hosted our staff for the retreat, and showed us the new outpost dedicated to late CCNMTL cofounder Frank Moretti.

For more photos of our retreat visit the CCNMTL Flickr.