June 2003
Volume 19
Number 3
Revisiting the Classroom
Summer on campus is the season to extend and upgrade information technology infrastructure. Most colleges and universities will be retrofitting a few more classrooms, as they do each summer, with audio-video equipment and high-tech gear to meet the constantly growing faculty appetite for IT-enabled teaching spaces. Few institutions find they have caught up with this interest, and even those that have equipped all classrooms with some technology find that the needs change and requests abound for more and newer devices.
Classrooms have been the subject of a lot of thinking, re-thinking, and debate in recent years. Many have been retrofitted with new high-tech equipment; a few have been made over heavily – with new furniture, lighting, and other amenities. Some classrooms have been converted into computer labs or other specialized facilities. But beyond the relatively easy work of putting IT devices in these rooms lies a range of harder problems: variability in teaching methods and faculty preferences, ease of use and quality of support, and the costs of sustaining and managing the technology.
Information technology has mainly added to classroom requirements and only to a lesser extent modified the prevailing ideas about what a classroom is and how best to teach. Most classrooms need to remain suitable for a range of traditional teaching methods, even after being equipped with new technology. No campus has enough of what faculty consider ideal teaching rooms, and so the drive to modify classrooms often creates more intense scheduling competition for favored spaces. In cases where the room is substantially altered there are sometimes even backlash reactions against those who pushed to change them. While it is not unusual to see unattractive rooms (without windows, in basements) converted into computer labs, it is very often the best classrooms (good locations, good furniture) that find themselves selected for technology upgrades.
Digital assets
Illustrations and demonstrations are the leading forms of assistance
to instruction that faculty say they want today. Supplementary materials
have always been important in the classroom; the biggest change in the era
of information technology is the mode of presenting them. Maps for
history, geography, and geology are available in digital form in
astounding quantities. Textbooks in all fields now typically come with CDS
filled with graphical and even multi-media information intended for the
classroom.
Colleges and universities are also increasing their efforts to convert slide collections to digital format and to make them available for classroom use via the network. And while art history is the discipline that comes first to mind in this regard, the need and interest ranges across all the curriculum. Photographs of spiders, pages of sheet music, and anthropologists’ sound recordings are all in the queue. Managing these digital assets is a new challenge IT organizations and libraries are facing now as faculty ask to use these materials in the classroom.
Modifications to suit particular faculty interests and preferences for complementing otherwise conventional pedagogy can be made if even a small number of individuals request them. For example, the costs can be under $10,000 for the addition of a projector and a few devices to feed it. And, the alteration of the classroom is not so great as to diminish its use for classes not using the new equipment.
Special subjects
Some academic disciplines have been so changed by technology that it
is nearly impossible now to teach them without suitably equipped
classrooms. In the nineteenth century, the faculty in the physical
sciences added laboratory experience to their teaching methods. In more
recent times, physical chemistry, mathematics, and graphics are among the
fields of study for which technology has moved beyond illustration; they
rely on computers as basic tools for the creation and investigation of
knowledge. Consequently, computer labs and technology-equipped classrooms
are essential for these disciplines.
So, too, computer science, music, and modern languages also have evolved to use technology in instruction and would be inconceivable as academic disciplines without it.
Where sound fidelity is essential, the specifications for modifying existing classrooms take on additional complexity and cost. Where simultaneous access to computers by students and faculty is important, the needs are again very likely considerably beyond those of the standard media/technology-enhanced room. The stock of classrooms managed by registrars’ offices is still essentially unspecialized, but with each passing year the needs of sub-disciplines put more pressure on the classrooms, and those who assign them. Accordingly, these conversions tend to be decided by departments, and not requested by faculty as individuals.
Collaboratories
Still more highly developed departures from the traditional classroom
have occurred in disciplines that have adopted heavily collaborative
teaching methods.
Fields including engineering, journalism, and applied chemistry have instances where the mode of instruction has shifted from teacher-centered to in-class workgroups that are tended or moderated by the teacher. Sometimes these groups even include participants at remote sites, connected via the Internet or dedicated video teleconference. The teaching facilities they use are usually uniquely modified to suit the pedagogy and the academic discipline. These spaces are quite different from what is usually thought of as a classroom and in some cases, more resemble a studio.
Needless to say, classroom conversion for highly collaborative learning is not undertaken lightly. The cost is high. So, too, is the specialization of the new space.
Rooms rank right along with staff positions as scarce resources on campuses of all kinds and sizes. New buildings tend to be a once-in-a-career happening for most faculty. Reallocations of existing space are perhaps even more difficult to obtain. And so space is guarded jealously and only ceded to other departments or converted for different uses with extreme reluctance. Against this background of difficulty, the equipping and adapting of classrooms proceeds slowly and cautiously.
Classroom technologies
Much of the equipment already in classrooms comes from the late
"a/v" era: television-style monitors on carts with VCRs. Many
classrooms also have a single RJ45 jack, possibly at the front of the room
but often placed without much forethought when the whole building was
being wired for data and the provision for classrooms was in anticipation
of future uses not yet planned. For better or worse, this is the baseline
of technology in most classrooms on most campuses.
Many colleges and universities categorize their mediated classrooms into three levels: the above-cited a/v with a network drop; those also having a data projector (and possibly an attending computer); those with an additional suite of digital devices (such as a document camera, a computer, a DVD player) at an instructor’s podium and sharing a presentation device, such as a ceiling-mounted projector.
Usage barriers
Equipping by gradations of capability is a tactic to save costs. It
presumes that room assignments can be filtered to provide just the right
level of technology to meet the needs or wishes of the instructor. But
this approach has several drawbacks as well.
The level of need is not always constant over a whole semester, leading to a situation in which some classrooms are over-equipped for what actually happens in them on most days and, inevitably, that some instructors find their rooms under-equipped for some occasional needs. This dilemma often leads to last-minute searches for colleagues who are willing to swap rooms for a day or two.
Another shortcoming of the multi-level equipping strategy is that the variety of equipment and control interfaces are bound to be more varied than if all of the classrooms were equipped alike.
Faculty often complain that every room they use has a slightly different kit, and that this inconsistency is a deterrent to using the equipment. It is often said that faculty will not tolerate looking incompetent or feeling embarrassed in front of their classes. On merely practical considerations, the time and trouble to figure out how the different equipment works tends to dissuade many.
Trends
New projectors and other display devices are becoming network enabled,
which allows them to be monitored for basic functions – and to send an
alarm in case of theft. Wireless controls and now data feed (radio or
infrared) greatly improves the ease of setting up the equipment and the
mobility of the instructor in the classroom.
The advent of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and tablet PCs hold the prospect of further reducing the cost barrier to use basic presentation software (such as PowerPoint); a presentation can be prepared on a desktop computer and then transferred to a low-cost, hand-held device for play in the classroom.
Campus network developments are also poised to aid in-class presentations by making high-bandwidth connections to servers possible. Segmented networks, virtual local area networks (VLANS), and gigabit ethernet switches now make streamed video, very large image transfers, and other network-intensive presentations possible.
Carts equipped with a wireless hub and laptop computers can be wheeled into a classroom to convert it into a computer lab in short order. If the cart includes a battery-charging rack able to accommodate the whole set of laptops, then every desktop in the classroom can become a computer-equipped station without needing an electrical supply. Wireless laptops offer campuses an unprecedented chance to expand the number of spaces suitable for computer usage without incurring infrastructure costs.
Until the arrival of laptops, furniture was another impediment to classroom technology conversions. Most classrooms on most campuses still have fixed-arm writing surfaces that are difficult to use with any kind of desktop equipment. Many newer rooms have tables and chairs. The tables are at least level (so PDAs and laptop computers are less prone to slide off) and more spacious.
While the furniture for students has not had a major effect on re-equipping the classroom for the instructor, it might yet become a problem if students begin bringing more electronic devices into the room.
Staffing
Over the history of IT on campus, no omission has been as persistent
or as unfortunate as the failure to increase staffing as the base of
equipment and facilities expanded. This trend continues for classrooms.
The gradual approach to retrofitting classrooms has generally meant that
the staff assigned to supporting them is being overwhelmed by the number
of sites to cover. Special set-up needs and occasions of multiple,
simultaneous technical problems are the greatest challenges.
Tactics for tending the proliferation of classrooms vary. Having a staff member (sometimes a student worker) visit each classroom before the first class of the day to turn on the equipment and check that it works is an effective measure, but is rarely carried out uniformly.
Placing staff in large classroom buildings is another means to extend coverage, as is deputizing non-IT staff in those buildings, such as teaching assistants or departmental technicians. However it is accomplished, the periodic inspection visits are widely believed to be the best way to minimize downtime resulting from simple failures of hardware or problems such as missing or unplugged cables.
Managing the mix
For all of the interest in enhancing classrooms with IT equipment, the
hardest problem today is that the stock of rooms has to cover both
traditional and newer teaching methods. Designs and equipment choices that
allow the new uses without compromising the old ones are the best approach
and are becoming more possible.
But the responsibility to oversee the transitions in classrooms is unclear on many campuses. Registrars own the scheduling task but are rarely involved in deliberations on what those rooms contain in equipment. IT departments are charged with installing and tending the machines. Someone needs to be the overall manager of the classrooms. TW
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