The CIT offered fellowships for faculty to help advance the mission of the school through a Technology Fellows program and an OASIS Fellows program up until 2007. However, both as part of the recommendation of the e-learning study group, and our expanding use of the Moodle LMS, the fellowship programs administered through the CIT underwent dramatic changes. First of all, we began to promote the use of the Moodle as the LMS of choice for building enhanced, hybrid and online courses and renamed the OASIS Fellows program to the LMS Fellows program. Second, as stated in the e-learning study group (2008) recommendations we began to, “offer an ‘extreme makeover’ pilot to gain experience and expertise with best practices in online learning” (p. 9).
The LMS Fellowship program became a catalyst for online technology adoption across the campus and would eventually spin-off the VLC Fellowship program itself. In 2010, as a result of cutbacks in Academic Affairs, the CIT merged with the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) and became the Center for Innovation in Teaching Excellence (CiTE). In 2011, we
created the VLC Fellows and renamed the LMS Fellows to the Moodle Fellows program. Many of the same key individuals who were early adopters of technology began to take on leadership roles as we sought to move Columbia towards adopting the technology required to develop and offer online courses.
By early 2013, over 150 departmental learning communities had formed, many of them a direct result of the VLC Fellowship program initiative. A description of the VLC Fellowship
program on the CiTE web site (2014) states that,
Up to 10 proposals will be funded at $1500 per faculty or staff member. This fellowship is designed to provide support and resources for faculty and staff members to create online resources and communities for a multi-section course or an entire department or
program that meets an identified need. VLC Fellows will be able to create spaces for dialogue and interaction, as well as repositories of handouts, syllabi, multimedia
resources, documentation, departmental procedures, and policies that full and part-time faculty and staff can access 24/7 (p. 1).
By late 2013, Columbia had added almost 50 new online courses and the number continues to rise. Moodle Fellows Suzanne McBride and Anne Becker (2013) provided the provost with a white paper on online learning including some of the challenges that faculty faced in the new information ecology, “The successful transition of instruction to the online
environment – whether it’s a few courses in one department or a concerted effort college-wide to offer all levels and type of classes in this manner – is not simply a matter of faculty interest and motivation. Rather, it’s a complex process, heavily dependent on the level of institutional support” (p. 4).
In late 2013, the faculty Senate formed an ad-hoc committee for online learning charged with delivering to the full Senate a report and recommendations for supporting online and distance learning at Columbia. I was asked to be a member of that committee. Once again,
several members of the committee, including the Chair, were key individuals who had supported the use of technology in teaching at Columbia for a decade or more. Moreover, they were aware of the history and culture at Columbia, including the rich history of supporting a diverse student population. Some of these individuals were also active in online learning communities that not only served Columbia, but were interconnected with extended virtual communities outside of the Columbia culture.
In early 2014, the ad-hoc committee on online learning delivered its recommendations to the full faculty Senate. These recommendations were as follows:
Recommendation: 1 The college should form a high-level technology committee
overseen and driven by senior leadership to develop short and long-term goals, and strategies that integrate both the needs of ICT and learning technologies. This committee must be centered on academic goals for future learners. Students and prospective students should be the primary client. Goals should include but not be limited to:
• Increasing flexibility to include a more diverse student cohort;
• Increasing teaching/learning interaction between teachers and students to develop more individualization of learning;
• Commitment to developing skills in digital and information literacy throughout the curriculum;
• Commitment to using technology to support the development of the following: future skills; of independent and life-long learning; initiative, communication; teamwork; adaptability; collaboration; networking; and thinking skills within particular disciplines, as well as among disciplines.
Recommendation: 2 College leadership should consider reorganizing oversight of
purposes of developing an integrated technology policy as well as tracking and
accounting for technology resources. This oversight must include the Provost, CFO, as well as the offices of the General Counsel and Campus Environment. The traditional oversight of IT housed under the CFO is customary in most institutions given the range of activities an IT entity must facilitate and implement. The recent history of temporary CFOs has been devastating to IT. IT at Columbia even in its heyday was under- resourced by national and even local standards.
Recommendation: 3 Technology goals and strategies must come with clear tracking
and assessment protocols.
Recommendation: 4 Academic leadership should recognize online learning and hybrid
approaches are not the same as traditional face-to face classes. Using technology to slightly alter classroom teaching/learning simply adds cost to the enterprise with no measurable learning benefits. Assist school curriculum committees to push curriculum development to include technology as a default in any new courses and program development.
Recommendation: 5 Designing and funding comprehensive training using new
developments and research in teaching and technology are needed. Develop platforms for ongoing discussions among faculty and administration about technology and
teaching and learning.
Recommendation: 6 Aggressively identify potential areas of innovation in both online
learning and alternative approaches to the traditional classroom unique to Columbia’s circumstances and mission. Identify and support those individuals who currently show innovative promise.
Recommendation: 7 Discover ways that an arts and communication college is where it
tracks and assesses the consequences of these decisions. The reason for this is solely to jumpstart a better, more accountable and nimble strategic planning and
implementation process going forward (pp. 2-4).
These recommendations show a cultural awareness and maturation of ideas that had formed over a decade or more. The report from the ad-hoc committee provided a basis to ask more from the administration and, in particular, IT, to support the (not so) new information age of education and raised the bar for academic leadership as well. More important, this was a
declaration that academic community as a democratic body was prepared to take ownership and responsibility for organizational and strategic planning. Their statement was clear and the motion to adopt the recommendations passed. Columbia faculty realized there would be no magic remedy from an outside consultant or experts in the field. It was time for Columbia faculty, administration and IT to bring Columbia into the 21st century.