About

Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design (CMLTD) provide a cluster of degree programs for students who seek to develop leadership capacities in the use of information and communication technologies in education and society. The program applies to all subject areas and serves students, staff, and faculty members who share a commitment as educators to use digital technologies to improve education at all levels. Work through CMLTD should move simultaneously toward two poles of understanding and practice: toward a comprehensive understanding of the cultural and historical implications of new technologies for education and life, and toward purposefully selecting and shaping the uses of new media in educational practice at all levels and subject areas. 

The CMLTD program prepares students to become leaders in educational innovation using new technologies and media. Our students create, design, implement, and research novel technology-rich learning environments to transform formal and informal education. The coursework is broad, encompassing video, computer science education, maker education, computer-based media, digital and non-digital game-based learning, cognitive science, constructivism, constructionism, critical theory, and the historical role of communication and media in education and society.CMLTD’S programs deal with the many ways in which material culture changes and shapes educational practice. Listed are current assumptions about the long-term effects that innovations in information, communication, and game technologies are having on education and culture.

CMLTD aims to prepare students to deal with both present and future implications of new media and to play a constructive role in shaping the educational response to innovations in information and communication technologies including mobile devices and augmented reality and cloud computing. Although these concerns are common to all three programs, each has distinct nuances with respect to methods and purpose:

• Communication and Education relies primarily on social science inquiry to understand, interpret, and shape how information and communication technologies influence culture and education, including areas such as literacy and teacher education.
• Design and Development of Digital Games work with computer information systems to facilitate the effective extension of digital technologies into educational practice. This strand includes within it an online masters program that can be completed by students who live too far away to attend classes during the regular academic year.
• Instructional Technology and Media concentrate on the creation and application of innovative technologies, guided by a research tradition grounded in pedagogy and cognitive science, in order to make new media work as powerful tools for study and teaching.
• The Educational Technology Specialist Program prepares educators to work with schools in the integration of technology and the development of student-centered teaching.  This program provides New York State Certification

Across the three programs, students and faculty members engage in research, development, theory, and application. All three programs put a high priority on group work; fieldwork and internships; and planning, implementing and completing innovative projects. Schools, technology companies, businesses, and other agencies are normally partners in projects, providing environments, materials, personnel, or opportunities for carrying them out.