How evolving AV technologies support pedagogy in higher education and make learning more experiential. Much has been written about the existential threat to institutions of higher learning posed by massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other “virtual” modes of education. But it may be technology adoption inside the physical classroom that has a significant impact on campus. Engaging educators need little more than their voices, intellect and enthusiasm to leave a lasting impression on students. But give them new audiovisual tools and the paradigm shifts. Students themselves become actively involved in their own education. They engage more in the process of learning and enjoy a deeper understanding of subject matter. Photo: John Delacruz, San Jose State University Vijay Sammeta, CIO of San Jose School is Really in Session
Transcript
How evolving AV
technologies support
pedagogy in higher
education and
make learning more
experiential.
Much has been written about the existential threat to
institutions of higher learning posed by massive open online
courses (MOOCs) and other “virtual” modes of education. But
it may be technology adoption inside the physical classroom
that has a significant impact on campus.
Engaging educators need little more than their voices, intellect
and enthusiasm to leave a lasting impression on students.
But give them new audiovisual tools and the paradigm shifts.
Students themselves become actively involved in their own
education. They engage more in the process of learning and
enjoy a deeper understanding of subject matter.
Photo: John Delacruz, San Jose State University
Vijay Sammeta, CIO of San Jose
School is Really in Session
“Creating student empowerment means having students at the helm of their own learning,” says Paul Hutchinson, Ph.D., lecturer in the Organizational Behavior Department at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Hutchinson takes advantage of BU’s new Interactive Studio Classrooms to create multilayered, technology-rich, team-building challenges. “As we look at how learners actually process information,” he says, “we need to know the best way to present it.”
Technology can help, but it’s only one tool. You can put the coolest new AV technology in a higher education classroom, and although it can enhance learning, it’s no substitute for dynamic teaching and compelling content in a well-designed environment.
“Any conversation about technology for learning spaces needs to start with pedagogy,” says John Cook, CTS®, Vice President of Technology for consulting firm The Sextant Group. “Technology should be used to activate and amplify the learning experience, not drive it. Pedagogy drives technology, not the other way around.”
Empowering Students
N. Venkat Venkatraman, the David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management at BU’s Questrom School, was the visionary behind the first Interactive Studio Classroom in 2012. The project’s success led to five more studios at Questrom and several others across campus.
“What we found when we started designing alternatives to traditional classrooms is a model where students are no longer passively listening to a faculty member,” Venkatraman explains. “They’re actively engaged. The reason we called it a studio was to give the feeling that students were creating something — an output, something that they could share with other students.”
Each studio at BU is an open-plan learning space comprising six pods. Within each pod, up to six students collaborate around tables. They have the ability to connect via laptop or tablet computer to share content and ideas on the pod’s large monitor. Students can also send content from each pod to a much larger display at the front of the studio, where there is also an electronic whiteboard.
Venkatraman says that when they designed the studios, the first goal was to decentralize the learning space and take the focus off the professor. The focus now is on teams of students. The second design goal was to make each studio a node on a wide-area network so professors could bring in experts from outside through videoconferencing and other technologies.
“All of this is to create debate, discussion and dialog in the classroom,” Venkatraman says. “The reason students come into the studio — and why they can’t simply watch what I teach on video — is because the real learning is not me lecturing. The real learning comes from how students internalize and debate the ideas in the room.”
In his studio classes, Venkatraman’s students have used videoconferencing to present to executives from the Ford Motor Company and Verizon. The executives participated in classroom critiques, offered guidance, and interacted with students.
“One of the things that our studio rooms do really well is facilitate
Modern AV in EducationHear technology managers from Duke University and UCLA discuss the types of systems that colleges and universities are installing and the challenges they face during design and integration.
PODCAST >
collaboration,” says Rebecca Kessler Williamson, Curriculum Technology Manager of Information Technology Services at the Questrom School. “Part of that is due to the curriculum here at Questrom, but a lot of it is also because students are used to working together to solve problems or share solutions outside the classroom.”
Many of the school’s different departments use Interactive Studio features, Williamson says. “And each uses them differently, which is great and really highlights the flexibility of the technology.”
‘Talk Back’ Tech
“AV technology got a lot more exciting when students could ‘talk back’ by interacting through threaded discussions, posting information, and sharing content with better image quality,” says Lisa Stephens, Ph.D., Senior Strategist for Academic Innovation at the State University of New York (SUNY).
SUNY has to make course content as accessible as possible, Stephens says, because the school system serves its share of working adults and other non-traditional students, who want classes anytime, anywhere. “A lot of education has to be driven at the convenience of students,” she says. “When faculty and students are exchanging information and bridging time and place, the possibilities get really exciting. But you need to make that technology as transparent as possible.”
Education by Visualization“There is a moment in every medical student’s world when they are
working on their cadaver and realize that the anatomy and organs aren’t
necessarily where a textbook says they should be,” says Lisa Stephens,
Ph.D., Senior Strategist for Academic Innovation at the State University of
New York.
But give them modern visualization technology and digitized patient
scans and they can take better control of their exploration. Detailed
visuals can be displayed on high-resolution screens — or even on
personal mobile devices. The latter makes cadavers portable, giving
students the chance to extend their learning outside the anatomy lab.
Stephens explains that the University of Buffalo is creating a Structural
Sciences Learning Center for its medical school to take advantage of new
education technologies. “Imagine the power,” she says. “Students have
limited time together in the anatomy lab, but they could still study with
each other outside the lab through webconferencing and sharing and
manipulating images of their ‘patient.’ Moving from books and models
into a world where medical students can study three-dimensional images
of the human cadaver prior to normal dissection protocol is amazing.”
Recently, at San Jose State University in California, students met with American expatriates in the United Kingdom, China, Dubai, Australia, Mexico and other parts of the world. The special guests shared their professional and personal experiences with students, who were able to interact with them and ask questions in real time, thanks to the school’s telepresence technology.
“The integration of telepresence enables a truly unbounded learning experience where students can learn from experts all over the world,” says Bobbi Makani, Ph.D., Senior Director of Collaboration and Academic Technology Integration of IT Services at San Jose State. “Guest speakers have been able to share their valuable industry experience with our students from other parts of the world.”
Today’s telepresence systems are typically more advanced implementations of videoconferencing, designed to make participants feel like they’re in the same room. Cameras and large displays are positioned in such a way that it simulates a face-to-face meeting, even though the people at either end of the conversation could be thousands of miles apart.
At San Jose State, telepresence-enabled learning spaces link classrooms around the world. A recent session connected nursing students in California and Ireland to discuss their shared experiences. Educators also used telepresence to connect marketing classes on the east and west coasts of the United
Notes From the FieldMary Poffenroth teaches biology at San Jose State University, sometimes
to 400-plus students at a time. What does she think of AV technologies
that support pedagogy in higher education?
“Using AV technologies allows accessibility and mobility for a wider array of
students by giving them all the tools they need to be successful,” she says.
“When running a large class, it’s essential that everything be as efficient
as possible. AV technology makes this possible by saving me time and
reducing confusion for students. For example, you can give audio-
recorded feedback in Turnitin.com,” Poffenroth says. “Then there is my
favorite, the pre-first-day video!”
A week or more before class begins, Poffenroth sends an email to
all registered students giving them information about her class and a
video link. In the video, she goes over the major points of the class and
answers common questions. “This saves me an enormous amount of
time and helps students fully understand what they are getting into.”
And she encourages other educators to explore uses of AV technology,
even if they’re not quite sure how technology fits with their pedagogy.
“We need to continue to push ourselves as much as we push our
students,” Poffenroth says. “How can we ask our students to explore
uncomfortable, uncharted waters if we will not go there ourselves?
CASE STUDY >North Carolina State University’s James B. Hunt Jr. LibraryStates. Different professors taught a
joint class in which they explored the variations in marketing approaches between two regions of the same country.
“There is no shortcut to learning the technology,” Makani says. “It’s going to be bumpy at first, but once you learn it, you will realize it’s truly an empowering and engaging experience. And the more you use it, the more comfortable you will be, and you’ll start wondering why you didn’t get engaged earlier.”
Design by Committee
As few as five years ago, the many stakeholders who needed a say in how content, space and technology supported pedagogy were rarely in the same planning meetings. Technology consultants, AV/IT integration teams, architects, university IT departments, educational technologists, instructional designers, curriculum managers, educators and others approached the use of education technology from different points of view. Today, although the convergence of these disciplines has not taken place at every college and university, it’s catching on rapidly, spurred in large part by change. (Learn about the planning that goes into enabling AV technology at colleges and universities in the InfoComm International® white paper AV/IT Infrastructure Guidelines for Higher Education, written by AV professionals and their counterparts in higher education.)
“The biggest challenge in higher education is that we’re transitioning from faculty- and instructor-centered teaching to a student-centered teaching,” says Domenic Screnci, Ed.D., Executive Director of Educational Technology, Training and Outreach, Information Services and Technology at Boston University. “Before, it was really about the instructors — what they needed to do in a room and how. Now it’s a bit more democratized.”
“When I walk into a studio, I see on six monitors six points of view from students,” Venkatraman says. “You’ve given them a voice. Ultimately, the value of technology in the classroom is to allow more air time for students to express and shape their points of view.”
Getting to the point where technology can support new ways of teaching and learning requires early participation from AV/IT experts.
“We begin with a few simple starter questions,” says Erin Minich, Director of Unified Collaboration in Education at AV/IT integration firm AVI-SPL. And few of them have to do with technology itself. Minich says her company’s AV team wants to know how the education client envisions the learning space itself, down to the furniture. They also want to know whether planners have consulted with instructional designers. This gives an AV integrator insight into how educators intend to teach.
“When meeting with colleges and universities, the goal is to bring both the AV/IT and instructional design teams together so that all stakeholders are happy with the outcome,” Minich says.
SUNY’s Lisa Stephens is one of the coordinators of the Flexible Learning Environments eXchange (FLEXspace), an online repository of learning-space designs from around the world. By featuring innovative design solutions and opening them
Photo: The Hunt Library
Experiential Learning
John Delacruz teaches advertisingat San Jose State’s School ofJournalism and Mass Communications. He works in the creative track of the school’s advertising degree program, which means his classes tend to be studio-based and hands-on. “Collaborative and experiential learning are the backbone of my pedagogy,” he says.
Multiple video screens — both mobile and fixed — are key elements of Delacruz’s learning space. He is also planning to introduce live video streaming tools this academic year, in an effort to engage with the world at large. “We enhance students’ learning experience by providing them with opportunities to experience life outside our institution’s walls,” Delacruz says. “That’s how important AV is in the learning environment.”
to public review, FLEXspace aims to deliver planning resources for the entire ecosystem of education technology and learning-space planners.
“For example, active learning classrooms that leverage ‘flipped’ content are a wonderful marriage
of technology and pedagogy, but it requires a careful balance,” Stephens says. “Technology alone does not re-engineer teaching materials to make best use of these new environments. Like all good ‘fit and finish,’ it’s the course design and content preparation that determine the ultimate student benefit.”
Photo: Questrom School of Business Information
Technology Services
Photo: InDesign Technologies
CASE STUDY >University of the Sunshine Coast Learning and Teaching Hub
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Screnci says educators are using technology to create a specific experience, whether it’s team-based learning, critical thinking or interactivity. They’re not embracing technology for technology’s sake. The goal is to support the teaching mission and enable the most effective pedagogies.
Still, new technology is front-of-mind and can spur creativity.
“The amount of technology in our classrooms is steadily increasing,” says Boston University’s Rebecca Williamson. “As classrooms undergo standard upgrades, we’re thinking about what kinds of technologies would make sense in each room. For some rooms, it’s new interactive white boards. For others, it’s touch screens and collaboration systems. Our goal is to create flexible learning spaces that have the technology our faculty members need to teach their classes. We also want to increase faculty literacy with the technologies they currently have by showing them how to incorporate the technologies into their curricula.”
“There is no question that when you watch a class, like a studio classroom, and you watch students taking charge of their own learning, the energy in the room is just amazing,” Screnci says. “It’s a very different way to learn than what I was exposed to. It’s amazing.”
