Page 20 - Campus Technology, May/June 2018

21ST CENTURY CLASSROOM
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | May/June 2018
members wanted to “explore those types of pedagogies,” they lacked the physical locations on campus to do so.
The Saint Anselm IT&D team was certainly familiar with active learning spaces available at larger institutions. The challenge was figuring out how to pull off something comparable on a small budget. That’s when the idea of creating a prototype space surfaced, to simulate the full experience for Saint Anselm instructors.
2) Get Buy-in From Administration
IT&D put together a modest proposal to create an experimental classroom, which called for converting an existing seminar room to the new use. That required sign-off from Academic Affairs and the Registrar’s Office, which would have to pull the space out of the regular classroom schedule. The only caveat: The Registrar’s Office wanted assurances that if the room needed to be used in a pinch as a traditional classroom, it could “morph that way.”
College CIO Adam Albina secured those approvals, and IT&D set about adding the gear and furniture needed for the experiment. The group also committed to having a person in the room during classes to provide technical support by “manually” handling the various feeds to the big displays. As a result, availability was limited; instructors could only schedule the room for specific assignments. By September 2013, the experimental classroom was up and running.4
A pod and instructor station in Saint Anselm’s “Active Learning Lab,” the newest active learning space on campus. The lab supports five pods of six learners each.
Kimberlee Round, Saint Anselm College