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Program Specializations

Communication and Education

The program in Communication and Education prepares students for various roles:

• Teaching and research positions in higher education;
• Working in schools using information and communications technologies to improve educational practice;
• Conducting formative and evaluative research in the areas of educational media and information technologies, in and out of school settings and across subject areas;
• Designing innovations in the use of new media for educational purposes; and
• Working in business and government settings to design and implement corporate communication programs.

The program uses methods of the social sciences, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of communication and education. It asks in particular how education and other social systems change under the impact of new media. Faculty members and students pursue three broad areas of inquiry, enabling them to:

• Reflect on the historical effects of media and on the cultural uses of developments such as face-to-face speech, writing, printing, photography, film, radio, television, computers, and networked multimedia;
• Use anthropological and linguistic methods to study how the diverse forms of communication, literacy, information processing, and cognition condition educational practice; and
• Explore positive and negative effects of media on social relations and develop strategies for using information and communication technologies to improve conditions of education and life.

In the course of completing a degree, the student should expect to attend closely to both technical artifacts and human activity; that is, both to material systems of communication in which technologies are the primary interest and to interpersonal, direct communication dynamics in which unmediated exchanges, face-to-face, are the subject of inquiry. A major theme for continuous reflection should be the diverse ways in which the modes of communication condition the meanings actually, and potentially, communicated - whether in face-to-face conversation or through a global broadcast using satellite transmission.

Computing in Education

Students who complete the master's program in Computing in Education take positions in:

• Schools, as computer coordinators or teachers using advanced technologies in the classroom;
• New media companies, developing software and multimedia applications for education, training, and gaming environments; and
• Academic computer centers, corporate information services, and education departments at the federal, state, and local levels, managing the integration of information and communications technologies into schools.

Instructional Technology and Media

Students who have earned degrees in Instructional Technology and Media find positions in education, government, and industry. Some continue to work within formal education, as teachers, researchers, or administrators on the elementary, secondary, or college level. Others work in training and development departments in business or government agencies. An increasing number work as independent professionals in a variety of settings such as educational service, production consulting, and publishing. Still others have established themselves as researchers, designers, and producers for innovative multimedia projects.

The World Wide Web and related technologies have lowered the costs of distance learning programs greatly while increasing their flexibility. Through Instructional Technology and Media, faculty members and students join to develop the skills needed to make full use of the new opportunities in distance and distributed learning.

In recent years, students in the program have made four questions paramount:

• Which emerging technologies hold greatest promise for enriching learning experiences throughout the educational enterprise?
• What pedagogical strategies should designers embody in instructional materials, including those based on multimedia and those reflected in gaming environments?
• How should educators deploy, manage, and evaluate information and communication technologies in classrooms for optimal educational effect?
• What principles of design and practice should educators incorporate into distributed educational courses and programs?

Technology Specialist  K-12

The program, leading to a New York State teaching license for Technology Specialist  K-12, prepares candidates to become technology coordinators in schools.  Program goals include preparing participants to use technology as a set of tools with students within the classroom, to work effectively with teachers to help them learn to use technology and design, and implement curriculum in which technology is well integrated.

Participants in the four CCTE program areas share a basic conviction that good design in educative matters starts with careful attention to the needs and characteristics of the individuals that the design will serve. For example, the ability to understand the individual through empirical research and empathic engagement will make the design of instructional technology not only technically proficient but educationally valuable as well. In all, this attention to the individual in society and culture defines the technological humanism we seek through all components of the programs in CCTE-a humanism that combines the use of sophisticated technology with humane commitments for guiding purposes.