Page 31 - Campus Technology, October 2017

C-Level View
A bit more recently, we created a new experience lab: our Design Experiences Lab, where students explore de- sign thinking or user-centered design approaches. The lab was created around the question, “How do we provide the most desirable space for students to engage in these semi-structured design experiences together, on a drop-in or ad-hoc basis?”
CT: Is the room flexible, to accommodate small groups or an entire class if desired?
Bowen: Yes, instructors can either bring their classes or groups in, or send them over — we have experts in design thinking who can facilitate a discussion among students. So you can see, the lab staffing is an important element of an experience lab: We build in on-site guidance on specific topics relevant to the experience lab and beneficial to student learning.
CT: How do you make sure you are not serving only a smaller proportion of the student population with ex- perience labs?
Bowen: As we think about different kinds of spaces and dif- ferent kinds of collaboration and lab use, of course we find the need for different tools in different spaces. And certain spaces tend to serve particular needs. But, our goal in IT is
to begin to engage more students in using the labs, overall. We want all our students to learn from the experience labs.
The question becomes, how do we engage not hundreds, but thousands of students? What we learned was, if we design many, multiple smaller spaces around campus, we can have more engagement overall. By having more types of labs that serve more types of disciplines and courses in different schools and departments across campus, we have more impact.
CT: Does it increase costs to operate so many experi- ence labs?
Bowen: No, because we are targeting the technologies placed in the labs according to each lab’s purpose. And there are more of the smaller rooms (less than a thou- sand square feet) available on campus — so using those already-available spaces is usually less expensive than constructing larger collaborative centers.
CT: Does an experience lab, not being more general- ized, involve some initial, specialized design work?
Bowen: Of course. These labs are no longer square boxes in which you seat up to a certain number of people. We have to create the right space. For any given lab, we ask: How do we grow a space that will help achieve the specif-
ic learning outcome that our faculty are looking to achieve? And we have to create these labs in such a way that
we are helping faculty, not causing a burden. We have to provide support, both in the lab and for the faculty as they plan to integrate the lab into their courses — as they en- gage their students with new kinds of assignments.
CT: What organization on campus is responsible for all these labs? Does all this happen through the me- dia center, or through the library, or even through IT?
Bowen: Actually, IT is a good home for this, and experi- ence labs provide an opportunity for IT departments to lead their campus in the thoughtful application of technol- ogy. And who better than IT to think about how to scale these labs? Of course, many institutions already have groups that support computer labs. And they have people who not only provide support in the labs, but also work with faculty to get value from these spaces.
For us at Penn State, IT is the home for experience labs, and we have the creativity and drive to approach this re- sponsibility. Our first, overriding questions are: How do we diversify the notion of a lab? How do we create many won- derful experience labs and help people to use them? That’s where our priorities lie. From there, we can better approach issues like scheduling and administration. We welcome seeing these labs well used and productive!
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | October 2017
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