TURN BACK THE CLOCK TO JUST FIVE years ago. Forward thinking faculty members at Temple University (Pa.) wanted to incorporate technology into their teaching. Students, having grown up with personal computers and video games, had come to expect it. The university was eager to help by providing what A/V technology it could to be shared among the faculty.
"We did a lot of stuff with carts," says Tim O'Rourke, vice president of computer information services. "If a faculty member wanted technology in the classroom, we would roll a cart into the class, set up a projector, set up a screen, help the faculty member log in to the system, and so on. It might take 15 minutes or more before the class was set up and ready to go, and our classes only last an hour, so it took up a big chunk of time."
Howard Laurence, facilities manager in the Media Services Department at the University of California, San Diego, knows that same story all too well. According to Laurence, equipment would be brought into the classroom, set up for the class, and retrieved when the class ended. Over the years, this model of media services became cumbersome and very labor intensive, as more and more professors began requesting projection, DVD, and other services for classes. The Media Services Department was handling as many as 150 deliveries a day-along with another 150 equipment pickups.
Clearly there had to be a better way. Enter the "smart classroom," a multimedia room design that features a fixed overhead projector and screen, a computer, and built-in VCR or DVD players. What makes them smart is a room control system that enables instructors to easily operate A/V equipment.
Vendors such as AMX, Crestron, Extron, and SP Controls have come to market with room control systems that integrate classroom A/V technology so it can be operated from a single point. Think of these systems as the equivalent of a universal remote control.
Rather than having individual remotes to operate a television, a DVD player, a projector, and a VCR, all can be controlled from one device or, as Tolkien might say, "one thing to rule them all."
"Teaching from a cart is not something anyone wants to do," notes O'Rourke. "When you go from having to roll a cart into a room to having a fixed podium that controls all the technology, it's like going from a beat-up Ford to a shiny new Cadillac. No one is going to complain."
Standards and Practices
The underlying mechanism for these room control systems is technology standardization-that is, having a predetermined array of A/V devices that are compatible with each other and that can easily be added to the system. Standardization has many benefits that make it attractive to IT departments. For example, institutions can often negotiate discounted purchase prices when working with a single vendor. Maintenance costs are also lower, because the IT staff isn't required to be schooled in five or six different brands of projectors or DVD players when just one or two have been designated as standard equipment.
In the classroom, standardization removes the last barrier to faculty use of technology. Instructors don't need to know how a particular projector or DVD player operates because the controls have been centralized and simplified.
'We've gone from fewer than 30 smart classrooms to more than
five times that number without increasing staff. I can monitor all the classrooms on all our campuses from one location. I can access a projector in a room 25 miles away.' -Carl Schweibinz, Hillsborough Community College
The University of Texas-Pan American Classroom Technology Initiative, launched in 2004, was in response to instructor feedback calling for more classrooms that are fully equipped and, more importantly, easy to operate. Director of Video Services Omar Cantu explains that standardization was a critical component of the program.
"When we began our Classroom Technology Initiative, only about 40 of our nearly 160 classrooms were fully equipped with end-to-end A/V solutions. However, none of those classrooms were standardized on a single solution, so you had dozens of operating instructions floating around for the various systems on campus. A few were outfi tted with AMX, Extron, and Crestron, but mostly they were just legacy component remotes. It was difficult for some faculty who spent all their time teaching in one classroom to go to another classroom-they would fi nd an entirely different setup."
