CompilED is a collection of posts by the Instructional Technologies team of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Columbia University. These views are rooted in our professional and personal experiences developing educational technology. These posts are directed at software developers and architects, user experience designers, and media/video producers of all flavors, but everyone is welcome.
Software mediates human-to-human communication, as well as human-to-machine interactions. Much like the design of a physical classroom, the architecture and design of digital learning environments expresses the values of their creators and significantly shapes learning experiences. Good software helps create the conditions for learning by catalyzing communicative dynamics, and supports good pedagogy by guiding the flows of information and knowledge.
Making and building software that facilitates good teaching requires working closely with all of the project’s stakeholders throughout an iterative development process. Our projects always begin with an educational hypothesis, one that imagines ways that digital media and networked environments can promote learning objectives. Our approach is grounded in the curriculum with a focus on translating and preserving traditional scholarly practices such as critical analysis, close reading, citing primary sources and showing your work. We also help faculty explore the frontiers of study and scholarship by creating opportunities for students to develop new digital literacies, collaborate, analyze and construct learning materials, and engage in public discourse.
Our entire team of project managers, programmers, designers, and media specialists work closely with the faculty to understand and refine project deliverables. We embrace agile development processes, iterating and improvising throughout the development journey. We specialize in designing intuitive, user friendly experiences, and have extensive experience delivering complex applications, on time and feature complete.
Our project teams are passionate about Columbia’s mission and maintain a playful sense of fascination around technology at the intersection of education and research. We take pride our adoption of cutting edge engineering, and our approach to quality control includes techniques such as test-driven development, code reviews, and continuous integration.
The Code and Content
Our team, as well as most of our projects are accessible, responsive and open. You can follow our reflections on the technical aspects of the Center’s work here in CompilED and on Github.
CompilED is built with Hugo, a general-purpose static site generator that renders HTML files as output from content files and layout templates. The project repository is available on Github.
CompilED is accessible. Please read the Accessibility Statement.
Unless otherwise noted, the content on this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. CompilED source code is on Github with GNU GPLv3 license.
If you have any questions about CompilED, email editor Zarina at zarina@columbia.edu.