VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics Education seeks to address the national need for improved instruction in early childhood mathematics education. In doing so, the project seeks to develop an integrated online learning environment that enhances undergraduate and graduate students’ preparation in early mathematics education. This resource will be based on the design research and prototype development of VITAL during the 2002–2003 academic year by CCNMTL in collaboration with Prof. Ginsburg. VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics Education will consist of three distinct yet tightly integrated resources that provide the basis for both the undergraduate and graduate courses:

• The VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics Education curriculum plan includes the project’s statement of philosophy, pedagogical rationale, and history; describes the sequence of presentations, classroom interactions, and homework assignments; and outlines strategies for the facilitation of these activities.
• The VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics Education digital library contains all the primary source materials—video cases, expert commentary, and scholarly commentary in the form of monographs—that students will use during the activities specified in the curriculum plan.
• The VITAL online workspace, in which students complete assignments from the curriculum plan by editing online video segments, annotating their selections, and using these collected resources as a dataset to compose their multimedia essays. These essays then become accessible online to their instructor and classmates and thus form a foundation for critique and exchange.

This integrated learning environment has already been prototyped and was deployed in spring 2003 and fall 2004 in Prof. Ginsburg’s course The Development of Mathematical Thinking. A total of 77 students from several departments at Teachers College, including pre-service and in-service teachers, participated in the course.