The Classroom of the Future

This paper was presented at the 1995 CAUSE annual 
conference. It is part of the proceedings of that 
conference, "Realizing the Potential of Information 
Resources: Information, Technology, and Services--
Proceedings of the 1995 CAUSE Annual Conference," 
pages 6-8-1 to 6-8-10.  Permission to copy or 
disseminate all or part of this material is granted 
provided that the copies are not made or 
distributed for commercial advantage. To copy or 
disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, 
requires written permission from the author and 
CAUSE. For further information: CAUSE, 4840 Pearl 
East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; 303-
449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu.


THE CLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE

Dr. Raymond K. Neff 
Vice President for Information Services 
Case Western Reserve University


ABSTRACT

This is a time of transition from blackboard and 
chalk and use of the overhead projector to the 
general-purpose projection system capable of 
handling all formats of digital and analog media 
and the classroom where there is a networked 
computer at each seat.  Distance learning 
opportunities abound and are being explored, 
especially in the health science and engineering 
disciplines and professions where there are 
continuing education requirements. The ability to 
deliver credit-courses to homes and business 
locations represents a potentially significant 
revenue source for universities in the years to 
come.  Our classrooms of the future must be 
designed to accommodate the widest range of 
distance learning situations.  We now have the 
opportunity to link people and information 
resources in our region by using videoconferencing 
and video mail. Extending the classroom to wherever 
the student is located is the logical end of these 
early ventures.  Information technology, properly 
developed, will produce the customized electronic 
learning environment we believe will be the 
hallmark of higher education in the twenty-first 
century.


The classroom of the future is, as a matter of 
principle, wherever the student is.  On campus, 
this means they are in traditional academic 
buildings, libraries, laboratories, the professor's 
office, and, last-but-not-least, the residence 
halls and fraternity/sorority houses. With the 
evolving global information infrastructure (a.k.a. 
information superhighway), we have the ultimate 
delivery vehicle for "distance education." At Case 
Western Reserve University, we have implemented a 
campus-wide 100% fiber optic network in all of our 
academic and residence buildings and are using it 
to prototype new instructional methods. This paper 
is a progress report on our designs for the 
classroom of the future and how we are presently 
using them.

The format of the classroom of today is based on a 
twelfth century model! It was the educational 
innovation of its time, and its time was when books 
were rare, and lecturers read from them to their 
class of students, who were basically copyists.  
Students did not take notes in class; they took a 
form of dictation.  The shape of the lectern we use 
today reflects its original purpose which was to 
hold the larger, hand-copied book at a reasonable 
angle for reading to the class.  The word lecturer, 
in fact, is derived from the Latin root infinitive 
"legere" meaning "to read." In Britain today, 
Lecturers (Latin root word) are called Readers 
(English root word).  Thus, the foundation of the 
classroom of today is solidly in the middle ages.

As to other innovations, the blackboard, with slate 
and chalk, was introduced into higher education by 
way of engineering schools in the third decade of 
the nineteenth century.  The electrified "Magic 
Lantern" slide projector entered the classroom 
during the last decade of the nineteenth century; 
movie projectors, photographic slide projectors, 
tape recorder/players, and phonograph players were 
introduced into classrooms during the early decades 
of the twentieth century, and the overhead 
projector, which many of our colleagues have still 
to master, came out of the bowling alley at the end 
of World War II.  The computer was first used in 
the classroom by attaching time-sharing terminals 
to television sets, and this became a standard 
method of bringing the computer into the classroom 
by the late-1960's.  By the mid-'70's large-screen 
projectors of computer displays had become 
practical, but these early systems for lecture-hall 
sized classes were frightfully expensive.  By the 
mid-'90's, the evolution of information technology 
for the classroom has come far, and we have many 
cost-effective options from which to choose.

In this paper, we will show how to integrate many 
of these possibilities and bring full multimedia 
order from the seeming chaos.  Our order comes from 
the singularly important transformation of all 
formats of classroom media from the analog domain 
to the uniform format of digital, binary-encoded 
data.  Once information is transformed into the 
digital medium, it can then be displayed and 
manipulated with relative ease.  Most 
significantly, digitally encoded information can be 
transmitted at very low cost, so that where the 
information is stored and where it is used can be 
widely dispersed.  The implications of this for 
education are just now starting to be grasped by 
the education community.

The classroom of the future will likely be built in 
three different models:

The most common (model I) will be the simple 
extension of the familiar lecture hall with the use 
of large-screen projection as the output display 
from a multimedia computer and the lectern being 
augmented with digital controllers.  Model II will 
put a personal microcomputer system at each 
student's seat; and model III will involve linking 
the instructor to remotely located students using 
an extension of a video-teleconferencing system.  
In any particular situation, one can have a mixture 
of these different models, so that the most 
prevalent version of the classroom of the future is 
likely to be a hybrid of all three models.  At Case 
Western Reserve University, we are using several 
classrooms which have the functionalities implied 
by these models; we have also built versions which 
are hybrids of models I and III.

General-purpose projection systems

Modern classroom projection systems have evolved to 
a point where they can provide high resolution 
viewing such that students can see demonstrations 
and other "effects" better than they ever could in 
the "classroom of the past." When these projectors 
are attached to a high-speed digital network, a 
remotely located student and the teacher can be 
linked together as effectively as if they were in 
the same room.  This is especially relevant in 
considering computer-oriented multimedia, because 
in many respects, the workstations of tomorrow will 
combine high-quality video display screens with the 
ability to process the multimedia information in 
just the ways we want it, customized to the time 
and the purpose of the particular learning 
situation.

At CWRU, we have adopted a standard of two high-
resolution projectors per classroom.  Each may have 
an independent or common video source.  Why two? 
With today's display technologies having roughly 
0.8 - 1.3 million pixels, there simply are not 
enough pixels of information with one display.  
With two, it is easier to use teaching methods 
which feature the paradigms of compare-and-
contrast, before-and-after, type A-versus-type B, 
etc.  A common occurrence in classrooms so equipped 
is to use one projector to hold the outline for the 
class session and the second to work through the 
details, whether using the computer, video or 
photographic sources; another scenario uses one 
projector to display the professor's class notes 
and the other to display computer simulations.  
Interestingly, with two projectors, our experience 
is that the use of the blackboard is much reduced.

Our projectors are general purpose and can handle a 
wide variety of media sources, including computer 
display output (ranging from ordinary personal 
computers to the highest performance workstations), 
carousel-type-35mm photographic slides, 
videotape/videodisc, 16mm movies, broadcast/cable 
television (using NTSC signaling).  One important 
peripheral used with the projector is a desk-top 
document video camera; such a combination of 
devices duplicates all of the functionality of an 
overhead projector and replaces the use of acetate 
foils and grease pencils with ordinary pencil/pen 
and paper.  If the document camera handles color, 
then the projected images reflect that.  The 
principal advantage of this arrangement is in a 
distance education setting where remote students 
can readily see the transmitted images from the 
document camera which otherwise might be difficult 
to make out when using a wider-angle television 
camera suitable for viewing the instructor and/or 
the class itself.  It is worth noting that we use 
projectors which can accommodate both NTSC (the 
standard for North American television) and RGB 
(red-green-blue) signaling.  As configured at CWRU, 
the dual projection system is coupled to a dual 
stereo sound system to generate high-quality audio 
information in the classroom. This sound system is 
balanced so that when both projectors are employed, 
the dual stereo systems do not interfere with one 
another.

It is our experience that the use of even one 
computer projector in the classroom can cause the 
instructor to divert his/her attention from the 
students and be drawn to the screen display.  The 
loss of eye contact with the students can reduce 
the effectiveness of the learning experience.  To 
remedy this problem, we have installed a high-
quality video monitor in the podium, so that the 
instructor can switch between the projected image 
and the students with simple eye movements.  This 
has proven to be a satisfactory solution, and so we 
have replicated it for both projectors in a 
classroom.

Mobile computers

At Case Western Reserve University, we have 
developed a concept where the student and the 
professor both bring their portable computers to 
class. (They also take them to the library and to 
laboratories and use them in their residence 
halls.) Because connectivity with the campus 
network is so important, each student's desk, 
wherever the student may work, is equipped with a 
network information outlet which "docks" with the 
mobile computer. The newly developed PCMCIA-
interface adapter card for Ethernet networking is 
one cost-effective way to connect a high-speed 
network to a portable computer by using a 
microcomputer interface now becoming standard for 
this type of machine.  Thus, each student is fully 
"informated" as s/he participates in any type of 
classroom-based learning.  When a computer 
projection system is integrated with these multiple 
computers, each person can contribute to the class 
by showing whatever information is pertinent. The 
computer can realize its potential power to 
illuminate a point of discussion by tapping into 
electronic libraries worldwide.  It can also serve 
to demonstrate a relationship, simulate an event or 
process, or simply be an efficient note taker and 
organizer.  With so much potential, it is not 
possible to catalog all the possibilities here.

For undergraduate students, our campus features a 
residential living style.
     
The computer and the network are right at home in 
our residence halls and fraternity/sorority houses. 
This is because we put a network outlet at every 
student's desk.  Now with 92% of these students 
having a computer on the network (computer 
ownership at CWRU is voluntary, but highly 
recommended), the virtual classroom is open for 
learning 24 hours per day. Access to faculty has 
also increased because the students use the network 
to contact faculty when they encounter a stumbling 
block.  Faculty and students now work together more 
synchronously.

The network currently brings our students a wide 
range of computer-based information resources from 
various electronic libraries, permits a variety of 
person-to-person exchanges (e-mail, voice mail, and 
video mail), and provides some 39 channels of 
television, including 24 "educational" and 15 
"entertainment" channels.  To give just a few 
examples: For students learning a foreign 
language, there are both "passive" media like the 
evening news in Russian from the SCOLA channel or 
"active" media like conversing with another student 
in Japanese at Waseda University (Tokyo) over the 
Internet.  In our virtual physics laboratories (we 
have real ones, too), students can perform 
thousands of experiments in a mere afternoon. To 
eliminate drudgery, data acquisition is 
automatically displayed in graphical formats.  
Students like this electronic learning environment 
where relationships among phenomena can be 
discovered and explored.

Diversity in computer configurations

One of the most common problems in equipping a 
classroom with a computer is in designing the 
particular computer configurations to be supported.  
To simplify this just a bit, we have three 
basically heterogeneous types of computers: those 
based on Intel processors, those based on the 
Macintosh Operating System, and those based on some 
"flavor" of UNIX.  Should each classroom support 
all three?  At another level of detail, what should 
each specific hardware configuration be?  What 
speed for the processor?  How much RAM?  Hard disk 
capacity?  Local CD-ROM? etc.  The number of 
possible configurations is daunting, and 
implementing the ultimate configuration for each 
feature is ruinously expensive.  There has to be a 
better way.

Another family of problems has to do with the 
instructor's initialization of the classroom-
based computer system.  If the computer is 
permanently installed in the classroom, then at the 
end of one class, the instructor for the next has 
to initialize the computer, and often, this takes 
more time than what is allotted between classes, 
and the problems do not stop there.  Even if the 
software can be copied and made operational in this 
period, there may still be a latent problem because 
the classroom system may not match the 
configuration which the software requires, and it 
may not be until the software is used that this 
problem becomes known.  Clearly, this "can of 
worms" can be both messy and embarrassing to the 
instructor. There has to be a better way.

At CWRU, we have been using a model where computer 
use does not require that there actually be a 
computer in the classroom!  We use the standard 
classroom dual projection system, as described 
above, together with the computer in the 
professor's own office and connect them over the 
campus network.  In this way, we solve both the 
equipment diversity problem (by using the 
professor's computer which is properly configured 
to run the appropriate software) and the 
initialization problem (since before the scheduled 
class the professor can allocate sufficient time to 
set up and rehearse the planned computer usage).  
The "trick" for our solution is in how to control 
the remote computer from the classroom.  Our 
approach uses the keyboard and mouse-pointer as 
input devices attached to the network in the 
classroom and the appropriately configured computer 
with fully operational software network-attached in 
the professor's office.  A centrally located (and 
operated) analog video/audio switch connects the 
(digital) computer network to the classroom display 
systems (both projectors and the instructor's 
podium monitors, as well as the audio subsystems) 
using the fiber optic cabling in the campus 
network.  There are also economic implications of 
this solution because as described herein, each 
classroom does not need to be equipped with a set 
of high-end computers.  There is the cost of the 
central analog video/audio switch but this is 
easily justified by the cost savings for the 
computers themselves when considering it as a 
campus-wide solution and investment.  It is 
interesting to note that with the newly emerging 
network hardware standard called ATM (Asynchronous 
Transfer Mode), it will be possible to eliminate 
the analog switch entirely; the ATM switch will 
take its place in the purely digital domain.  It 
will be necessary however to return the signal to 
the analog mode when attaching to the classroom's 
projectors and video monitors.  Because the campus-
wide network is key to the evolution of the 
classroom, we will next take up some of the most 
important elements of the network and its hardware 
and software infrastructure.

The campus-wide network infrastructure

The classroom of the future does not sit in 
isolation; it depends critically on the campus-
wide network and its extensions into the regional 
and global telecommunications grids.  Earlier we 
saw that the campus-based network provided a very 
useful service in connecting separated components 
of a single computer system.  We also will use the 
network to connect people who are separated by 
distance, particularly the teacher and his/her 
students.

At Case Western Reserve University, we are using 
our campus-wide network to provide multi-site 
videoconferencing which extends the classroom 
beyond the bounds of a single building and even the 
campus itself.  (By the term multi-site 
videoconferencing, we mean connecting two or more 
locations using video/audio and computer signaling 
to form a virtual meeting, on-campus or off.) But 
why is this necessary?  At CWRU, we believe that 
our educational mission can be better fulfilled by 
bringing our classroom to students who live and 
work at a distance from the campus.  For post-
baccalaureate programs, this type of educational 
experience can be especially productive.  We are 
currently using it in several professional school 
programs, including engineering, social work, 
nursing, and medicine.
     
Consider a situation in which students are assigned 
to a learning environment located at a distance 
from the guidance of the advisor/teacher.
     
Medical students and nurses in hospital-based 
training programs is just one possible instance in 
which a videoconferencing system can meet the need 
to conquer the distance from the campus.  For some 
master's-level engineering students, the distance 
learning network reduces their travel costs and 
both the effort and time commitments necessary to 
sustaining a meaningful educational experience.

Key to extending the network beyond the campus is 
the emergence of a new type of communications 
technology called ATM.  All of the major national 
and virtually all of the international 
telecommunications carriers have committed to this 
new technology.  At CWRU, we are evolving our 
internal network to ATM, so that it will be able to 
interdigitate seamlessly with the ATM networks of 
these common carriers for full multimedia, digital 
information exchange.  Because ATM offers the 
capability of merging video/audio with computer-
based data in a flexible multimedia package, we 
will eventually have an integration of information 
formats which facilitates education.  Because, in 
the future, we will transmit and receive video 
information in the digital domain, we will be able 
to offer other varieties of computer-based 
information, especially from digital libraries, to 
augment the virtual classroom.  As we envision it 
now, the additional information can be placed in 
another window on the same display device as the 
video conference.  A simple extension of this idea 
occurs when we want to link students in work 
groups.  Because our campus' residence hall rooms 
are all wired for video and data, as well as for 
telephone, we can marry a video camera to a 
computer and originate multi-site videoconferences 
among a set of students' rooms.  Use of a video 
mail feature will provide a record of what has 
occurred, so that a team member who was absent from 
the virtual meeting will not have missed out 
entirely.

In graduate-level professional education, we see 
the importance of using the extensions of the 
campus network to bring the university and its 
information environment to the offices and 
laboratories where our students and faculty 
interact in their training.  By using the same 
advanced communications technologies of ATM and 
SONET (Synchronous Optical NETworking), which our 
telephone and television vendors will be using, the 
university will facilitate the extensions of the 
network to off-campus locations, including 
hospitals, clinics, physicians' and dentists' 
offices, law offices, social work agencies, and 
governmental agencies.

By combining the distinct technologies of personal 
computers, digital television, electronic 
libraries, and videoconferencing, the classroom of 
the future will take advantage of multimedia 
information from campus-based servers as 
transmitted over advanced ATM network-based 
delivery systems to desk-top learning stations.  
Upon this technology base, it will be possible for 
the university of tomorrow to offer a form of time-
shifted learning, i.e., providing learning 
opportunities to students which they can use at 
their own convenience.  Time-shifted learning has 
the advantage of breaking up the rigidity of 
scheduled classes which universities may find 
increasingly limiting in meeting the needs of their 
non-traditional students.  Time-shifted learning 
will clearly be useful in continuing education 
programs, as well.  This type of system will expand 
our community of potential students by providing 
more options for meeting their multiple needs.  
Readily available information and increasing the 
access to it are part of the information technology 
infrastructure we are developing.

Another significant aspect of the new learning 
modalities is the built-in capability of replaying 
a learning segment.  We know well that all students 
do not learn at the same pace, and that they relate 
new information to that which they already know.  
Since these students have different experience 
bases upon which their newly acquired information 
is to be integrated, they will not be incorporating 
it in the same way.  Being able to replay and to 
learn a new subject at the depth appropriate to the 
purpose of the user will give the student a 
capability far beyond what s/he is offered in the 
classroom of today in our "one-size-fits-all" 
formats for presenting information.  The logical 
extension of this idea is to use information 
technology to deliver customized instruction.  The 
validity of this concept is based on the 
differential "inputs" of prior experience each 
student brings to the learning situation and on the 
increasingly important learning goal of attaining 
differentiated levels of achievement as "outputs."

It has been our experience at CWRU that students 
learn better with computers because, with 
computers, learning is more likely to seem like 
fun!  Students spend more time "on task" when using 
a network-based computer, and as a result, they get 
better grades and flunk out less.  Use of the 
computer seems to have the potential of offering 
more success at the college level, which for us is 
the real meat of the "six-sigma" total quality 
management philosophy.

Extending the classroom to wherever the student is 
located is the logical end of these early ventures.  
Information technology, properly developed, will 
produce the customized electronic learning 
environment we believe will be the hallmark of 
higher education in the twenty-first century.