Copyright 1998 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 21, Number 1, 1998, pp. 54-56. 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, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Jim Roche at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

Readers Respond

Question:
Has your institution built a new or re-purposed an existing building on campus to support the creative use of technology in teaching and learning? If so, what were the basic planning assumptions and design principles, and what forms of instructional technology are supported? Please provide URLs for any supporting material available on the network.

Southwest Missouri State University is building a $20-million classroom building scheduled to open in Fall 1998. It will contain twenty-one classrooms (two equipped with student computers) and seven smaller seminar rooms, along with a fifty-station open-access computer lab, a distance learning support center, the university's radio station, a promotional television studio, and an instructional television studio. Students will have access to data network jacks scattered throughout the building in alcoves and hallways.

This building was designed and is being constructed with both flexibility and synergy as key components, applying the classroom design guidelines learned from Dr. Daniel Niemeyer (http://classrooms.com/consulting.html) and others. All classrooms have projection screens, wiring conduit in place, and will be connected to the campus data and cable television networks. At least six of the classrooms will be very media rich, containing "smart podiums," ceiling-mounted data/video projectors, and sound systems. These "smart podiums" will house a networked computer, VCR, touchscreen control panel, and additional input ports for notebook computers, document cameras, etc. Other classrooms will be served by mobile "media carts" containing a computer, data/video projector, VCR, and additional input ports. Selected seminar rooms will contain large-screen Gateway Destination systems.

By co-locating the Distance Learning Support Center (interactive TV classroom, digital media production center, faculty training lab, help desk, and support staff offices) on the same floor with the university radio station and two television studios, our intent is to encourage and capitalize on the synergy we predict as technologies converge and meld.

Greg Burris
Associate VP for Information Technology [email protected]

The University of Calgary has just announced that its "Learning Commons" will open on September 14, 1998. The Learning Commons is a set of campus services and facilities for University faculty, students, and staff who wish to enhance learning and teaching skills, be involved in the design and delivery of curriculum, or engage in research related to teaching and learning.

The name Learning Commons was chosen to encompass all of these ideas, because it embraces the concept that a university should be a community of learners and that the overall learning environment is a resource available to all. As such, the Learning Commons is as much a philosophy as a particular facility. It will offer support both in physical locations and virtually, through the use of technology.

The Learning Commons will align with the University's Strategic Direction statement of December 1996. It will facilitate redesigned curricula, partnerships, collaborations, new revenue streams, innovative research, and enhanced post-degree continuous learning opportunities. See http://www.ucalgary.ca/~commons/ for more information.

Ken Hewitt
Director, Learning Commons
[email protected]

Duquesne University has both built new and re-purposed existing buildings on campus to support teaching and learning. Basic planning and design assumptions were that faculty access had to be straightforward, powerful, and truly supportive of teaching and learning.

All campus academic buildings have, at a minimum, Ethernet connections in every classroom. Large lecture halls in two academic buildings have an instructor podium with a minimum of Pentium and Power Mac computers, projection systems, connection to the Media Distribution Center for access to Laser disks, video tapes, 35-mm slide controls. Each academic building has at least one computer teaching facility, with student workstations, faculty workstation and projection system, and connection to the media distribution system.

From the very beginning, Bayer Learning Center was designed with the use of technology to support teaching and learning. Meetings attended by architects, faculty, and the IT leadership resulted in a building that had the teaching mission of the university at its core. Each room has connection to the media distribution system, permanent video display facilities, and Internet connectivity. This building also hosts video-conferencing facilities.

Fisher Hall was completely renovated to include two floors of classrooms that have an updated version of the Bayer Learning Center facilities and a video conferencing center.

Please feel free to visit the following Web sites: http://www.duq.edu/Publications/CTE/CTESpecIs/article4.html, http://www.duq.edu/Technology/ccit/presentations/SCUP7/, http://www.duq.edu/campusmap/bayer.htm, http://www.duq.edu/Technology/nmc/nmc.html, http://www.duq.edu/Technology/ccit/presentations/cmu97/index.htm.

Lynda Barner West
Executive Director Center for Academic Technology
[email protected]

Just as the college's Instructional Computing Resource Center came into its own at San Juan College, the opportunity to design a brand-new classroom addition came along. This presented a unique opportunity for the college to build classrooms specifically designed to take advantage of the equipment, materials, and training in which the college has been investing for the past five years.

The design of this room is essentially a little theater, rectangular in shape, with a "teaching trapezoid" at the front. It has three presentation areas for the display of images, handled by three ceiling-mounted projection systems. One image can be displayed on all three walls or a different image can be displayed on each wall. Input equipment includes laser disc, video visualizer, VCR, and both PC and Mac workstations. The projection surface covering all the walls allows for writing, erasing, and projection. The room is also wired to meet all requirements if we need to use the classroom as a distance learning room.

The entire learning environment is controlled by the faculty member with either a touch-screen apparatus or a mouse, which will simply "point and click" to call any computer, multimedia equipment, or room control into play. The sound system is built into the ceiling, providing equally good acoustics for students no matter where they are sitting. The lighting is an innovative, adjustable fluorescent system. After much investigation the device control system we chose was by AMX.

These "little theaters" will have tiered seating to provide the best possible viewing of the display areas in the front of the room. The rooms have been designed so there are no bad angles, even from the back row corner seats. What we have accomplished at San Juan College may not be the answer for everybody. However, we believe our training program and multimedia classrooms will be second to none in providing our faculty members with the latest in instructional technology in an environment designed with the teaching/learning process as the primary design criterion.

Ann Degner
Director, Instructional Computing
[email protected]

The Computing Commons of Arizona State University opened at the beginning of the fall semester 1993. Designed in 1990, the Computing Commons provides a "technology hub" that draws together students, faculty, and staff from all disciplines on campus in an environment which fosters maximum interaction. Since its opening, the building and its facilities have drawn national recognition. The Commons houses a 200-workstation student computing site, nine mediated classrooms, Customer Assistance Center, Visualization Center, a computer store, and a technology-based art gallery. The total project cost $15.2M for 75,000 net assignable square feet. The building and furnishings have tremendous flexibility, which will enable Information Technology to meet changes in technology and teaching methodologies well into the 21st century.

Instructional technologies presently supported include both enabling and delivery technologies. Enabling technologies include resources that support the creation of instructional materials, ranging from the use of print graphics to digital video production. Delivery technologies include resources for learners to receive, view, and interact with instruction -- from audio amplification and video projection to cross-platform networked computers.

The building supports the R&D necessary to create and distribute instruction via asynchronous and synchronous learning environments. A great deal of information has been gleaned over the past six years in the areas of building and instructional technology. ASU is now designing a new Social Sciences/Mediated Classroom building that will allow ongoing delivery of world-class instruction.

John Babb
Director, Instruction & Research Support
[email protected]
Barbara Eschbach
Director, Facilities & Resources Administration
[email protected]

The new 120,000 sq. ft. University of Michigan School of Social Work Building makes maximum use of information technologies in all offices and teaching/learning spaces. The library and computer sites are combined into a Comprehensive Information Resources Center. Classrooms, seminar, and meeting rooms have an Ethernet connection and power at every student station, as does the Commons lounge and other sitting areas, including hallways where students wait outside staff offices. There are also a networked computer classroom, a distance learning facility, a multimedia room for developing instructional materials, adaptive technology workstations for handicapped students and staff, a clinical suite with video recording and broadcast capabilities, and broadband in each teaching/learning space and at announcement video monitors at each elevator landing. The underlying principle was flexible connectivity (e.g., large cable trays above the ceilings, access flooring, chair-height wiremold around the perimeters of teaching/learning spaces, demarkatable terminals in the BDF for local control of data/communication distribution). Instructors' stations are movable to several positions and include Ethernet and phone ports, and controls for lighting, sound, video projector and VCR through programmable touch-screen panels with presets for individual instructor preferences.

Jesse E. Gordon
Professor Emeritus, School of Social Work
[email protected]

Eads Hall, built in 1903 and one of Washington University's most venerable buildings, is being renovated and re-designed as a first class teaching facility and a "center for centers." General emphasis will be placed on the humanities, with particular focus on language learning. Eads will house such key academic support areas as the Teaching Center, Writing Center, Arts and Sciences Computing Center, and a new Language and Instructional Media Center. By housing these services in one building we seek synergy and efficiency through collaboration. Students and faculty will interact in various levels -- in class, over coffee, in computing and media labs. More than a building renovation, we see Eads Hall as a new way to organize our human and technology resources.

Eads will include seventeen renovated, wired classrooms ranging from seminar rooms to rooms that can hold fifty. In addition, two classroom/lab facilities will include individual work stations for courses utilizing technology as the core teaching tool. A self-paced language learning lab will be supported by both audio and digital technologies, individual video viewing stations, lab areas for instructors to explore software, and a large, open student lab. Support in the form of full-time staff and student assistants will give students and faculty the assistance they need, when they need it.

Dennis J. Martin
Associate Vice Chancellor
Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences
[email protected]

Virginia Tech is proud of its accomplishments in technology over the last of couple decades, but perhaps the best is yet to come. Construction will begin this spring on the Advanced Communication and Information Technology Center (ACITC). This facility is "a natural product of the technology infusions administered in recent years to almost every aspect of Virginia Tech's teaching, research, and public service missions." "The center's programmatic tendrils will connect elements of three major university endeavors: learning transformation projects, digital libraries, and technology and behavioral research programs."

Virginia Tech is very excited about this new facility and how it will help us change the ways we teach and learn. From the Electronic Study Court to the CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) to the numerous laboratories, it will indeed be "an educational touchstone for the university in the 21st Century."

Wayne Donald
Associate Director, AIS
[email protected]

At the Universidad de Monterrey, I'm in charge of a lab where the teachers can develop and learn how to use the technology in their classes. With the assistance of a group of faculty and the support of the Director of Information Services, we have created a new space for the development of projects that use technology for teaching and learning. The University of Monterrey is a private university in the city of Monterrey in the north of Mexico which began its efforts in 1969.

In the last five years, the university increased their interest about the use of technology in the different areas of the university life; in that way, many people from it have visited universities in the United States and looked for companies that can help in the use of technology. In 1997 the Vice-President of the University invited a group of persons to develop the mission and vision of the use of technology in direct view of the strategic plan of the University; then some of them assist to the Summer Institute of the AAHE, and to others congress in USA.

At the same time, with biggest group of people, faculty and administration of different areas, develop a series of projects in the next areas: training, equipment for labs and classrooms, equipment and communications, and library.

This year some of those projects began, one is the Lab of Faculty for the Development of Learning Resources; with a small group of faculty were designing it to be a support and a space for the faculty to design materials and redesign their courses with a new vision and a collaborative work with the different departments of the University. We're going to begin to offer our services next fall to all the university in the areas of training, workshops and support for specific projects.

Marcela Garza
Director, Teaching and Learning Lab
[email protected]

Next Readers Repond Question:

Has your institution attempted to assess the impact of information technology on instruction, student life, and/or administrative services, or do you have plans to do so? Please comment on your progress in one or more of these areas.

Send your response by electronic mail to Elizabeth Harris, CAUSE/EFFECT Managing Editor, [email protected]

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