Page 32 - Campus Technology, April/May 2017

21ST CENTURY CLASSROOM
interested in researching the impact could provide a larger- scale transformation. It is important that we have the administration stating this is something it is committed to. The momentum has increased exponentially because of the commitment to the initiative.”
Learning Research Studios at San Diego State
Like Indiana, San Diego State University (CA) wants to provide instructors with a smorgasbord of active learning spaces and technological options, said James Frazee, senior academic technology officer and director of instructional technology services. He described how SDSU created a set of Learning Research Studios to allow faculty to experiment with active learning. “The idea was to build classrooms that we could use as incubators to get faculty to try some new things — and have a safety net underneath them while they experiment with new technologies for teaching,” Frazee said. “The underlying goal was to promote curriculum reform and move away from the didactic, one-way flow of information we see so often in large lecture halls, which can be a passive environment for students. The technology is a bait to get them in talking about how they are designing their courses. Recognizing the social nature of learning, we want to encourage more collaboration-minded instructional design such as having their students working on authentic, complex tasks in small groups, using team-based learning strategies
to dive more deeply into content than they might otherwise.” One of the rooms is called the Learning Glass Studio. It uses a technology for recording lectures that allows instructors to write notes while maintaining face-to-face contact with students: a transparent whiteboard paired with a lecture capture system. The instructor writes normally, left to right; the system records him or her through the glass;
and then the recorded image is flipped so students can view the notes correctly through a monitor. The environment allows professors to interact with students and record the session, as well as live-stream it to remote learners.
Frazee said faculty members can teach in one of these spaces and then return to their individual college and say, “We need a space like this in our college. Let’s do some
Indiana University’s Immersive Showcase Classroom
Mount Union’s Digital, Written and Oral Communication Studio
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | April/May 2017
Indiana University; University of Mount Union