Global Virtual Classroom Project Receives CUNY
Ribaudo Award
January 28, 2008
For the past four years, students at the College of Staten Island
have been able to attend classes in Turkey, China, Greece, Italy,
and South Africa without having to leave the comforts of the
College’s beautiful 204-acre campus. Thanks to the Virtual Classroom
Project, where students at CSI link to higher education institutions
in other countries, and students at those colleges also connect with
them, everyone involved gains insights to other parts of the world
that they previously only might have imagined.
Now, the Project, which is the result of a collaboration between
Mike Kress, CSI Vice President for Technology Systems; Mark Lewental,
the College’s Director of Media Services; and CSI faculty members
(the late François Ngolet, Jane Marcus-Delgado, Catherine Lavender,
and Emmanuel Mbah) has been honored by The City University of New
York, which has presented the Virtual Classroom Project with a
Ribaudo Award for Innovation in Technology. The award honors Michael
Ribaudo, the late CUNY Dean of Computer Information Systems and
Chief Technology Officer.
“This award means so very much to CSI because Mike Ribaudo was
instrumental in developing our video conferencing facilities and he
was a good friend,” Kress remarks. “Mike went ‘all in’ on the
University-wide Media Distribution System, which formed the
technology base for our virtual classroom more than a decade later.”
In addition, Kress thanks “Professors Emile Chi and Roberta Klibaner,
Ethem Kok, and Ann Helm for their assistance in recruiting our
international partners.”
Since CSI became one of only ten colleges nationwide to receive
support from the U.S. Department of State to participate in the
program, the Virtual Classroom Project has been linking students at
CSI to their counterparts at Kahir Das University in Turkey,
Shanghai TV University in China, the American University in Rome,
the American College of Thessonaliki in Greece, and Rhodes and
Metropolitan universities in South Africa.
Through the Project,
these institutions share students, faculty, lectures, curricula, and
technology through a variety of technologies such as
videoconferencing, email, Internet chat, and the Blackboard
classroom management system, which provides students with access to
class materials online. Interaction between students continues after
class sessions via email and Blackboard technology.
Dr. Tomás Morales, President of CSI, notes that the Project’s
connection to Turkey is “especially critical, as it has given [CSI]
students an opportunity to collaborate with a primarily Muslim
student body. There is perhaps no more important topic for our
times,” he adds, “than improving the United States’ relationship
with the Islamic world, and the [Project] has built invaluable and
durable bridges toward that end.”
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