 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
|
Columbia
and Partners Launch Fathom.com
Columbia, with five partners, has formed a company called Fathom that is developing a for-profit website that will provide a broad range of information that is "authenticated" by educational and cultural institutions and that will include access to online courses. The site aims to overcome the Internet's shortcoming of hosting information from undocumented sources, and is intended to provide a reliable research point for a worldwide audience of students, researchers, journalists, and the curious at large. The material will include articles, presentations, background and other research in the sciences, business, law, the arts and journalism, compiled by the university and its partners: The London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, The British Library, The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and The New York Public Library. Other institutions are expected to join Fathom before the site's launch, scheduled for later this year. "Fathom embraces the principles upon which the great learning institutions of the world were founded: to create a community where ideas flourish, to stimulate intellectual curiosity, and to aid in professional development," says Ann Kirschner, a former Princeton professor who was named president and CEO of Fathom. Examples of some of the content that will be available through Fathom include selections from Columbia's Oral History Research Project and an interactive tour of Amiens Cathedral led by Columbia professor Stephen Murray, an overview of astrobiology - which combines science, space exploration, and the search for extraterrestrials - by an astronomer and editor from Cambridge University Press, multimedia presentations of the Magna Carta and the Lindisfarne Gospels from The British Library, and a collection of over 54,000 photographs of New York that mark the development of the city, its architecture, transportation system, and ethnic and cultural diversity from The New York Public Library. Fathom, conceived as a "Main Street" for knowledge and education, will also be a portal for online courses offered by universities and cultural institutions, textbooks and other academic titles, specialized periodicals, CD-ROMs and other learning resources. Users will be able to enroll in online courses through Fathom, with tuition fees, accreditation and admission policies set at the discretion of the offering university or cultural institution. Content and policies will be overseen by the Fathom Academic Council, a panel of selected senior faculty and curators from participating institutions that will be chaired by Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole '64. The Fathom project is one part of Columbia's digital media strategy, under the leadership of Cole and Executive Vice Provost Michael Crow. An in-depth look at how Columbia is using technology for teaching, learning and profit, and how all this relates to the College and its future, will be presented in an upcoming issue of CCT.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
