How does TLC compare? Columbia

Next on my list was Columbia. Again, there are courses on specific technologies offered by The Teaching Center of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The Teaching Center offers some interesting opportunities, such as a seminar earlier this year on "Preparing Future Faculty" that was held monthly from January to April. However, if you look at the navigation bar on the left of the Teaching Center's pages, you quickly discover that there are no events listed under "Teaching With Technology." Obviously the Graduate School believes that instructional technology is important enough to warrant notice on their front page, but at the moment it seems that any events connected to this subject aren't making their present felt online. (Of course, as I've mentioned previously, TLC has a similar problem. Anyone conducting research like I have on Emory might be hard pressed to find much about our initiatives.)

Columbia, like Harvard, seems to have many different schools under the umbrella of the university. As such, parts of the community are very invested in the academic application of technology to academic spaces. For example, the Center for Technology and School Change is a part of Columbia's Teachers College. As was the case with Harvard's TIE program, Columbia's CTSC is directed toward K-12 education and/or consulting. Teachers College has another program with similar aims: Communication, Computing, and Technology in Education. If I had to characterize the differences between the programs, I think the latter is a degree-granting one that prepares people to academically discuss technology in many facets of education and to go on to work professionally in related fields. The former builds on this mission with the specific goal of effecting progressive educational change via technology.

There are other programs throughout Columbia's infrastructure that address technology and teaching. But my overall impression is that the Graduate School (the entity to which I'm comparing Emory's efforts) is not offering much beyond short workshops.