Classrooms offer new media tools

he College's 19 "electronic classrooms"--each equipped with computers, high-resolution projectors, and other technology resources--now feature a smarter, more consistent interface that makes them much easier for faculty to use in their teaching.

Classroom Technology Services, a part of Information Technology Services, supports the 13 enhanced lecture halls and auditoriums and six computer classrooms located across the River Campus. According to "Classtech" manager Mat Felthousen, "This is the first year where we can say we have a consistent look and feel across all the electronic classrooms, including the computer classrooms." Faculty can go from one classroom to another, says Felthousen, without needing to be trained on how each classroom works.

Each electronic classroom has a high-resolution projector, VCR, DVD player, network connection, and phone line. In the lecture halls, a single touch screen panel controls all these resources, instead of making users rely on three or four different remote controls. Touch screen panels have been added to the six computer classrooms this semester.

Classtech began centralized support of College classroom technology needs in 1999, after a restructuring of the Academic Media and Event Support office. Then incorporated into the Academic Technology group, the staff supporting technology in classrooms is linked with the Educational Technology Center and other faculty-support staff, ensuring that faculty technology support is completely integrated.

Before those changes, says Felthousen, there were only two high-resolution projectors on the entire River Campus. "If a faculty member in another classroom needed to use a projector," he says, "we would have to physically remove it and take it to the other room."

Feedback on the new integrated systems has been positive, he says. The number of support calls has decreased, and the systems are generally more reliable. "Everything is already there and set up," he says. "Faculty don't have to worry about equipment being delivered on time."

Felthousen says the electronic classrooms are used by faculty across a whole range of academic disciplines. Some professors bring their own laptops to class for PowerPoint presentations. Faculty with lots of multimedia content in their classes use the rooms for screenings.

Wolf-Udo Schröder, professor of chemistry, has been incorporating technology into his teaching since the early 1990s. He has used the electronic classrooms to show animations, calculations, and simulations of physical processes directly online. "It's a different type of class you can give when you have these resources at your disposal," says Schröder.

For example, Schröder uses PowerPoint presentations to illustrate the shape of energy distributions at different temperatures. Students can see the figures and then link directly to the Mathcad software that created those figures. "So the student can see right away the details of the scientific process," he says. "I can explain things that would really be difficult to explain otherwise, with not just words but with images."

Barbara Ilardi, professor of clinical and social psychology, also makes regular use of the electronic classrooms for her lectures. "I have all my lectures on PowerPoint, and I use the Internet connection to show sites of interest and to access WebCT content during the lecture itself. It's seamless for showing embedded graphics and videos."

Student reaction has been positive, says Ilardi. "They like having the lectures all on PowerPoint, to take them through the information I'm talking about. They are much more sophisticated in terms of technology than faculty, so they appreciate our using it. They're using PowerPoint in grade school. That's what spurred me to do it."

Electronic classrooms are located in Taylor, Harkness, Dewey, Bausch & Lomb, Lattimore, Meliora, and Morey halls; the Hylan Building; the Computer Studies Building; Hoyt and Lower Strong auditoriums; and Rush Rhees Library. The rooms can be reserved for an entire semester or for individual class sessions. Reservations can be made online at the CTS Web site at www.rochester.edu/ITS/cts/scheduling.html.

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