wpperspectives Vol. 9 No. 1 May 2011
University Festival Promotes Multiculturalism A three-week festival of the arts and culture of Africa on campus this spring brought not only a celebration of the many different cultures of the continent to the University community, but also served to provide students with a truly global multicultural outreach that ties directly into the University’s mission. “The festival works in many dimensions,” says Raymond Torres-Santos, dean, College of the Arts and Communication, the founding sponsor of the festival now in its second year. “It fulfills the University’s wish to expose students to a global education through the arts and culture, but also serves to connect the institution to the community.” Although last year’s festival, which focused on the Middle East, promoted only art and culture, this year’s program expanded to include programming from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Cotsakos College of Business, the College of Science and Health and the Cheng Library.
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Jane Hutchison (right) associate director, instruction and research technology, and Sandie Miller, director, instruction and research technology, demonstrating NJVid
Streaming Digital Video Provides Desktop Resource for Faculty, Students William Paterson University students, faculty, and staff can access hundreds of streaming digital videos at their desktops via NJVid, a statewide digital video portal and repository that members of the University community were instrumental in conceptualizing and developing. The result of a three-year, $1 million National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the University, Rutgers University, and NJEDge.net, NJVid offers centralized access to a variety of tools and services, including locally owned videos (materials owned by individual institutions that can be viewed by all), licensed commercial videos, and video lectures on demand via a Web-based streaming video portal. “Streaming video, especially interactive video, is one of the most effective teaching and learning technologies available,” says Sandie Miller, director of instruction and research technology at William Paterson and principal investigator of the grant project. “Digital video is so engaging for our students. Now with NJVid we can make that material accessible online through an easy-tonavigate web page.” The current collection is available at www.njvid.net, or by searching in the Cheng Library’s online catalog. “The library has long endorsed the use of audiovisual materials for teaching,” says Anne Ciliberti, director of the Cheng Library. “The ability to have that video now delivered to your desktop is very exciting from our perspective.” University users have access to over eight hundred commercial video titles; users must log in with their William Paterson username and password in order to gain access. There are also nearly 130 videos in the “Commons Collection,” videos solicited from entities across the state such as the American Labor Museum and college and university collections that are available for anyone to view. One important feature is the ability to annotate videos. “For example, a faculty member can select a portion of a video he or she would like their class to see and upload the link for the video clip(s) aggregated in a playlist onto Blackboard,” Miller explains. continued on page 3