High Schools Enroll in Columbia University’s Online Courses

NEW YORK — Columbia Interactive Arts & Sciences today announced that select high schools across the country will offer Columbia Interactive courses to their students starting this spring. Participating high schools that have partnered with Columbia Interactive to offer the online courses include: Grandview Preparatory School, Boca Raton, Fla.; Regis High School, New York; Albany Academy for Girls, Albany, NY; Berkshire School, Sheffield, Mass.; Mount Alvernia High School, Newton, Mass. and St. John Vianney High School, Holmdel, NJ. This reflects a trend toward high schools using the Internet to offer the best education possible to their students.

Columbia Interactive Arts & Sciences (http://www.as.columbia.edu) is the newly created online presence for Arts & Sciences at Columbia University in the City of New York. Columbia Interactive was formed through a partnership with Cognitive Arts, a leading designer of educational software that bases its “learn-by-doing” methodology on 25 years of academic research into how people learn, remember and reason.

The courses most popular with the high schools are classes in information technology such as Introduction to Java and Introduction to C++, which are difficult to provide at the high school level.

“We conducted a lengthy search to find online courses to offer our students and Columbia Interactive far surpassed others in the field. We found that the `learn by doing’ approach coupled with their significant technology advances and the Columbia University name, rendered it the best of the best in the field,” said Jeff Devin, founding headmaster, Grandview Preparatory School, the first high school in the country to offer Columbia Interactive courses to its students. “This partnership we are now entering with Cognitive Arts and Columbia Interactive further validates Grandview’s institutional mission of fully incorporating educational and business technologies into the traditional academic setting.”

“Cognitive Arts uses technology to create learning environments that are truly dynamic and stimulating. These courses are designed so students of any age, whether high school students or corporate workers, can learn skills that they can apply in a job or in life,” said Dr. Roger Schank, founder and chief technology officer for Cognitive Arts Corp.

About Columbia Interactive Arts & Sciences

As one of the most exciting and innovative opportunities available on the Web, Columbia Interactive offers online access to world-class educational experiences. Interactive technology is leveraged to create a highly individualized learning experience based on the powerful benefits of learning by doing. Students participate in authentic simulations to acquire knowledge and learn new skills that can have an immediate application to real-world situations. They have the flexibility to move forward at their own pace, learn from missteps and build on each success. In a feature unique to Columbia Interactive, expert tutors provide extensive individual guidance and feedback throughout each course.

Later this year, Columbia Interactive will introduce an expanding range of traditional Arts and Sciences courseware including economics, psychology and physics. Additional information technology courses, Introduction to HTML and Introduction to SQL, are scheduled to be offered the end of Q1 2001.

To learn more, visit www.as.columbia.edu or call Columbia Interactive toll-free at 866/500-4771. For customized corporate programs and services, contact a Corporate Account Representative at 866/353-6089.

About Cognitive Arts (www.cognitivearts.com)

Cognitive Arts is the leading designer and developer of virtual university and professional e-learning solutions for the education and corporate markets. Its curricula have been used by thousands of students and Fortune 500 employees. Clients have included Hewlett Packard, IBM, First Union, GE Capital, Harvard Business School Publishing, Northwestern University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

With offices in New York, Boston and Evanston, Ill., Cognitive Arts optimizes technology to engage the student completely in the learning environment — an environment which allows the student to learn by doing, fail safely and immediately learn through just-in-time coaching and expert stories. Cognitive Arts’ “learn-by-doing” approach to education is based on the theoretical work and design strategies of its founder Dr. Roger Schank. Over the past 25 years, Schank has led the revolution in the scientific understanding of how people learn, remember and reason.

Cognitive Arts investors include GE Capital and ING Furman Selz.