Gap Having coursework come alive through new media surely excites students.
Columbia now has a program that turns graduate students into digital assistants to help bridge the schism between what students expect and what teachers will try. The program's origins extend a few years back, when Nick Turro, a professor of chemistry, and Leonard Fine, director of undergraduate labs in the chemistry department, realized that computer programs might make understanding chemistry easier for the students. So the department turned to undergraduates, who teethed on computers in grade school and actually enjoy wrestling unknowns on the computer, especially when they are earning money doing it. Last summer that program was taken over and expanded by the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning . Seventeen graduate students from almost as many departments spent six weeks learning Web development skills and how to use technology to enhance teaching.