Educational Technology and Methodology -- Technology Division

Program Year Four

Multimodal Technologies for Interschool Collaboration

Project Description:

The Multimodal Technologies for Interschool Collaboration project will establish an integrated set of digital database, wide area network, and ISDN-based desktop videoconferencing (DTVC) technologies to facilitate in-class collaboration among faculty and students at four Gateway schools. After the infrastructure is established, teachers at four schools will use it to develop collaborative curriculum materials, and faculty and students will use it in networked interschool classes. We believe that our use of the proposed infrastructure will improve overall class quality by increasing the rate and amount of materials we teach. We expect that our use of the infrastructure will also allow specialized faculty knowledge to be interactively shared among schools, which will broaden the offerings at each of the four institutions. These hypotheses will be tested through a formative evaluation of the project -- covering infrastructure creation, curriculum development, and interschool class-use phases. This pilot project will be used to create a center for helping other Gateway participants build and effectively use multimodal electronic infrastructures on their campuses.

Participants:

Columbia University
Anthony Webster, Director of Building Technologies, School of Architecture (PI).
Vijay Modi, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering (consultant)
Joshua Reibel, Associate Director, Institute for Learning Technologies
(consultant).

Drexel
John Morris, Director: Architectural Engineering Program (Co-PI).

Ohio State University
Jane Murphy, Assistant Professor (Co-PI).

NJIT
William Spillers, Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
(Co-PI).