Intercambio de opiniones literarias en la correspondencia

My story takes place at Columbia College Chicago, an urban arts college community of about 10,000 students that inhabits the south loop area of the city dispersed among a diverse array of rehabbed lofts, hotels and historic Chicago landmark buildings.

The school was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory by Mary Blood and Ira Morey Riley, changing its name to Columbia School of Expression in 1905 and, by the mid 30’s began to focus more on related and emerging technology career fields, such as radio broadcasting, a key element of Columbia’s academic identity to this day. Over the next two decades, Columbia expanded its educational offerings to include courses in television,

journalism and marketing, changing its name to Columbia College in 1944. However, by 1961, with a population of only 200 students, and under the new leadership of Mirron (Mike)

Alexandroff, Columbia underwent a significant transformation into a liberal arts college with an open admission policy that encouraged high school students interested in studying with some of Chicago’s best known and talented media and arts professionals. More significant to the culture of the college however, was Alexandroff’s commitment to creating an institution with a mission to create social change and artistic activism. Randy Albers (1998), Chair of the Fiction Writing Department at the time of the following quote, said of Alexandroff’s influence in the early eighties, “I became adjunct and then full-time, I began to realize, you know, that something more: that the College was really run by Mike Alexandroff. He was the person who had really given the vision to it and was largely responsible for, in some ways, keeping people aware of that vision and that mission “ (p. 4).

In 1992, the school changed its name to Columba College Chicago, expanding its graduate programs and physical presence in the south “loop” of Chicago under the direction of Dr. John B. Duff. From 2000 to 2013, during Dr. Warrick L. Carter’s tenure as President, Columbia continued to significantly expand its presence in the loop and grew its student

population to over 10,000 while continuing to expand its academic programs, administration and faculty (Columbia College Chicago, 2014). Columbia’s open admissions policy, while

contributing to the significant growth in enrollment was also an important part of Columbia’s mission. As Albers (1998) states, “Well, open admissions was, you know—I soon came to realize when I first arrived at Columbia—was incredibly important in generating the kind of diversity of students that I had in my classes. And in giving an opportunity to students who had been historically under-served and who, you know, deserved an opportunity” (p. 5).

While the college continued to expand its course offerings and enrollment soared, technology infrastructure lagged. During the first part of the new millennium, with the school’s first learning management system being implemented in 2003, faculty and student adoption rates remained sluggish and attrition rates remained high. A five year Title III grant application was written to address faculty and student use of technology as well as improve retention rates through improved advising. The grant application was successful and received funding from the federal government and, as a part time faculty member who was a major proponent of online learning and the use of technology in the classroom, I was hired as the OASIS (Online Administrative Student Information System) facilitator in 2005 to provide training and develop materials for faculty and students in using Columbia’s learning management system (LMS) and advising tools.

The first three years of my work were spent developing training materials for the OASIS LMS and working with various departments to help prepare both faculty and administration for an increased online presence. Through running literally hundreds of workshops and bootcamps

as well as producing a variety of video tutorials and training materials, I became a familiar face to the Columbia Community. Likewise, I became familiar with many of the faculty, chairs and deans, as well as key administrators across the campus. In short, I became increasingly aware of how the Columbia community viewed online technology, OASIS, and the use of technology in the classroom in general. For example, there was a pervasive attitude that arts education should be primarily face to face and hands-on. The idea that theatre and dance classes, for example, could be offered in an online environment seemed far-fetched to many faculty members (and still does). While other departments, notably Arts Entertainment and Media Management, Social Science, Math and Science, English, and Film and Video were, at least, offering some courses either completely online or in a hybrid fashion, meeting occasionally with most of the coursework being offered online. Despite offering stipend supported training to all departments since 2005, by late 2007, I found a significant disparity between departments who were seriously interested in developing an online presence and those who were simply not interested at all. In addition, I found a great deal of resistance not only to the use of technology and the use of an LMS to enhance the teaching experience, but more specifically to the OASIS LMS itself. It became apparent that the technology being offered to faculty was, in and of itself, a key factor to faculty adoption of online learning and teaching.

While certain areas of the campus remained siloed and virtually walled off from the virtual community that exists to this day, key individuals became engaged with our efforts to adopt technology when appropriate pedagogically. As part of the Title III grant, we held campus wide meetings for deans, chairs and IT staff and set up various committees to help

communicate and coordinate our efforts. While we had planned on expanding the use of OASIS as an online LMS for enhanced, hybrid and full online courses, there was significant resistance from key departments and faculty members to OASIS as a desirable LMS, so we decided to try something different and, with some help from the college webmaster, I downloaded and

installed Moodle on one of our computers in the Center for Instructional Technology. In the fall of 2008, we setup a pilot program with the Film and Video department and were off and running.