Incubating Next-Gen.Edu

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The 21st Century Classroom

Incubating Next-Gen.Edu

6/1/2008

By Dian Schaffhauser

The cost to furnish and outfit the Studio came to about $175,000, according to Israel Fletes, manager of UCR multimedia technologies, who adds that much of the equipment being used in the Studio reflects technology the faculty is already familiar with. The project came about spontaneously: During the remodel of an existing building, the vice provost of undergraduate education repurposed a classroom and compiled a modest budget to allow Schouest and Fletes to pursue what turned out to be parallel dreams for each. Fletes and his team were seeking a better way to try out new technologies before introducing them into classrooms. Schouest wanted to reexamine assumptions regarding how instruction in a classroom should transpire for optimal learning.

"There's a culture of a student walking into a room, and the instructor is over there, and we're over here, and it's almost antagonistic," Schouest explains. In an effort to replace that, he says, "We ripped up the room completely; moved everything out of it. Then, before we brought anything into it, the question we had to ask was, ‘What's the pedagogical value of it?' If we were able to come up with a way it could be used in teaching, it would go into the room."

Outfitting from the ground up. Technology has not been the only consideration. For instance, in the Studio, the carpeting is composed of contrasting squares. That, says Schouest, allows the faculty member to say to the class, "OK, if your chair is sitting on a light-colored square, you're part of this team. If you're on a dark square, you're part of that team." The flooring thus becomes a mechanism for creating groupings, he explains.

UC-RIVERSIDE's Fletes and his team conceived of the Hyperstruction Studio as a way to try out new technologies before introducing them into classrooms.

The classroom component assessment then moved to the tables: Steelcase Turnstone models in both slate and maple providing flexible groupings. In fact, the room itself is highly configurable, and though it was constructed to accommodate 24 students, it can hold 46 seats in a traditional classroom configuration, or can be divided in half. Chairs ("Uno" design, also from Steelcase) and tables are arranged in groupings for four students, and those can be merged for larger teams. A Bretford rail system allows six whiteboards to extend across two walls, or be pushed out of the way when not needed.

The presentation controls include a video wall that consists of a Panasonic 42-inch plasma display, two projection systems comprised of Sharp XG-C430X LCD projectors with two Da-Lite 84-inch Cosmopolitan Electrol electric motorized screens, and a 3M 9200IW Plus electronic whiteboard. Each presentation display is connected to a Dell OptiPlex GX280 PC. The video wall has full videoconferencing capabilities, says Schouest; that will allow people in remote sites to see and control what shows up on the screens, as well.

The instructor workstation includes a Dell GX280 PC, a WolfVision VZ-8plus document camera, and a Toshiba DVD player and JVC VHS VCR tucked inside a custom management station--all in keeping with the campuswide classroom equipment standards.