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AROUND THE QUADS

Fathom To Close; Online, Digital Services Will Be Integrated

BY LISA PALLADINO

Fathom.com, the site offering digital content from Columbia and 13 other academic and cultural institutions, will cease operations on March 31, and online services and wide-ranging digital media at the University will be integrated. Fathom, which was unveiled in April 2000, had considerable financial and manpower support from the University. Effective April 1, the University’s efforts to reach alumni and other off-campus groups through the Internet will be housed internally under the umbrella of Digital Knowledge Ventures. Columbia DKV oversees projects such as CourseWorks, the interactive bulletin board for students and professors.

The reorganization will make Columbia DKV the primary venue for exploring digital media as a means of connecting the University, its faculty, schools and centers with alumni and the community. Robert Kasdin, senior executive v.p., stated that it was the right time for this reorganization and emphasized that the University remained committed to developing new technologies and innovative ways of teaching and learning. The University hopes to continue working with consortium partners to pursue new opportunities.

Columbia DKV already has successfully created innovative digital resources on behalf of the University; more than 100 e-seminars have been created and made available for use in Columbia’s curriculum and beyond. The award-winning Columbia Interactive site (http://ci.columbia.edu) created by Columbia DKV has been used by faculty, students and the public.

Columbia DKV will coordinate its efforts with other centers of digital media innovation at the University, including the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, the Electronic Publishing Initiative, the Center for Research and Information Access, the Libraries Digital Program, Columbia University’s Health Sciences and the Media Center for Art History, Archeology and Historic Preservation.

Ann Kirschner, Fathom’s chief executive, will consult for Columbia during the transition. She noted that the Fathom platform had set a “gold standard for online learning,” but that a lesson learned was how difficult it is to convince people to pay hundreds of dollars for courses over the Internet, even though more than 65,000 people signed up for more than 2,000 Fathom courses. Fathom also had marketed programs and courses for 22 other institutions.

Provost Jonathan Cole ’64, whose office oversaw the Fathom project, agreed with Kirschner’s assessment. “Parts of the experiment were highly successful,” Cole told Spectator. “I just think the external markets were not there for investments in Fathom. We put together an extremely valuable platform that will be brought into the University, and that will help professors and students working on digital media in a not-for-profit mode.”

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