Classroom of the future?

On May 21, the Office of the Provost unveiled a new teaching space in the Student Building. The classroom features a video wall connected to 16 digital group workstations, which each seat six students.

“We’re calling it the Collaborative Learning Studio,” Provost Lauren Robel said.
Robel mentioned the space would be one that hopefully propels instructors into new vistas of teaching.

Each workstation is equipped with tables designed by Spectrum, comfortable chairs, a keyboard and mouse and a flat-screen Samsung monitor, which displayed famous quotes about education prior to the presentation.

“Children learn and remember at least as much from the context of the classroom as from the content of the coursework,” a quote attributed to Lawrence Kutner said.

“This classroom is for learners of the 21st century,” said Sonya Stephens, former vice provost for undergraduate education and one of the room’s designers.

The event introduced faculty to this hallmark teaching space and its technology. The room, which is designed to enable maximum collaboration between students and instructors, will be available for classes by request this fall.

The overhead monitor is a 240-inch diagonal display that includes 16 60-inch Sharp PN-V601 monitors. Everything is networked with cables rather than a wireless system. The total length of the cabling in the room is about 3 feet.

Other features of the room, which seats 96 students, include 35 total displays for content, including two projectors, 17 audio/video control systems and 50 individual connections for laptops.

“We all know as teachers that we struggle sometimes with our competition: tiny little, easily hidden screens,” Provost Lauren Robel said. “Our game, in some ways, has to go up, to compete with the world which can come into our classrooms.”

When deciding what to do with the space and after careful examination from faculty, the question turned to what does a 21st century teaching space needed to offer. This conversation began in the summer of 2010. President Michael McRobbie said he wanted to do something with the space.

“What we learned is that we tend not to know what such a space would look like,” Stephens said. “It’s difficult to imagine until you experience one. We wanted to reimagine the classroom for initiative teaching and consider how that could be facilitated by a space.”

Vice President for Learning Technologies Stacy Morrone, another one of the room’s designer, said that the space utilizes the ability for students and teachers to share and collaborate, engage in video conferencing, social networking, and most importantly, offers students accessibility, mobility and flexibility.

Following the presentation, Vice President for Information Technology & CIO Brad Wheeler, a professor of information systems at the Kelley School of Business, presented a 10-minute exercise called “Business Case for IT Investment.” The exercise required participants to label components of a case study as fact, faith or fear, which demonstrated the utility of workstations. All that was required of participants, and would be required of students, is to know how to use a computer.

“In this room, you don’t even need a podium,” Wheeler said. “The action is at the table.”