CIRT Mission and History

The mission of the Center for Instruction & Research Technology (CIRT) is to offer expertise, resources, and training to assist faculty in ways that enable them to develop greater capacities for using technology for teaching and research. CIRT also disseminates ideas, frameworks, and materials that apply pedagogical knowledge to the teaching and learning process.

The Center for Instruction and Research Technology began as a software testing facility within Computing Services in the early 1990s. By October, 1995, CIRT was launched as a more diversified faculty support facility, and in that year UNF faculty and administration decided to house CIRT under the Office of Faculty Enhancement and locate it within a newly proposed faculty center. As a result, in the 1999-2000 academic year CIRT moved to Honors Hall, Building 10. In April of 2000 CIRT hired its first full-time employee and emerged as an educational technology center where faculty could go to explore software, check out equipment, work on course development and much more.

In 2007, CIRT became an independent unit, reporting  to Academic Affairs and in 2010, CIRT expanded its facilities and moved to a larger location in J.J. Daniel Hall, Building 1, Room 1801. Today, CIRT has nearly 20 full-time employees and houses a collection of technologically advanced workstations, printers, scanners, digital cameras, digital camcorders, laptops, and other equipment. In addition, CIRT has an extensive software library that faculty can access through the main lab computers  or by checking out a CIRT laptop. The start of the university’s distance learning initiative in 2011 prompted an accelerated growth of our staff to meet faculty needs and to develop and provide new types of support to the faculty and departments engaged in the conversion of courses and complete programs to DL. The growth and diversification of services and staff has resulted in approximately half of the CIRT team moving  back to Building 10. CIRT’s walk in lab remains in our Building 1, Room 1801 location.