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Summer Project Planning – Too Soon?
By Lisa Stephens and Rebecca V. Frazee of FLEXspace.org, featuring an interview with Dr. John McCune, Director of Academic & Collaborative Technologies at SUNY Fredonia State College, and Caroline Pepper, Learning Environments Manager at Loughborough University, and Vice-Chair of SCHOMS – Stand Conference for Heads of Media Services.
To see learning space examples featured in this column plus hundreds more, login to FLEXspace.org and visit the Gallery “FEATURED IN HIGHER ED AV MAGAZINE”
The post-holiday season is typically when attention turns to learning space planning. Campus surveys are distributed, data is interpreted, focus groups are scheduled, and budget priorities are set for designs, renovations, and technology rollouts.
How are these issues specifically impacting the planning cycle and the role of AV specialists and academic technologists? We reached out to our FLEXspace colleagues to get a sample of how the pandemic response has influenced upcoming plans and schedules. Not surprisingly, even as vaccines are being deployed, COVID is still dominating campus plans for the summer.
Thinking ahead to Summer 2021 – in general – what are you thinking?
John: I remember when faculty began migrating course materials from overhead transparencies to PowerPoint. Obviously, this drove video projection installs and new classroom standards, But I sense that Zoom capable rooms will become a new standard to some density of classrooms as yet determined. This doesn’t strike me as a fad. It’s a paradigm shift being driven from multiple angles. The quality of students’ learning experience remains our focus while strategically responding to these evolving needs.
Most of our summer projects are driven by refresh cycles to replace out-of-warranty equipment as much as time and budget allow. Our campus is primarily residential with about 5,000 students. It’s known for – and values – smaller class sizes, so we don’t have a large inventory of lecture halls to accommodate social distancing. The only logical approach is to reduce the classroom population by combining live classes with remote and online teaching. For example, the student union is comparatively spacious to accommodate events, conferences. and large lectures, but there’s not a lot of technology installed suitable for classes. The union quickly morphed into a site full of large learning spaces – the team had to quickly identify how to deploy multiple mics and cameras in classrooms that were never intended for that kind of use. It’s not pretty, but it’s worked.
Caroline: Loughborough University is a medium-sized university based in the Midlands with a satellite campus in London. It currently has circa 18,000 students and an estate covering 440 acres. My role as Learning Environments and Student Experience Manager is to work within the Estates and Facilities Management department to develop and manage the teaching estate. I am also responsible for the wider management and allocation of space across the University.
The pandemic resulted in a freeze of the University’s ambitious capital program, and a reprioritization of mission-critical projects. Microsoft Teams was implemented with break-neck speed to support core teaching and will continue to be developed to support synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning. This includes changes to the AV architecture to integrate multiple systems including the timetabling software – CMIS, lecture capture software, additional cameras, audio, and the control systems.
We’re disappointed that conditions forced the development of an IT Superlab to the back-burner. This is a 24/7 IT lab accessible to students from all schools supported by appropriate technology and amenities to provide a comfortable, inclusive, and effective learning environment. We are bridging the gap with a virtualized computer lab workaround, but need to get back on track within the next 2 years to align with the forecasted increase across five programs.
The pandemic has given rise to several positive cultural changes to the wider estate which will be taken forward in 2021. The importance of study spaces has come into focus over the last 6 months. Individual academic schools are starting to recognize the benefits of collaboration to maximize resources. This includes the sharing of specialist and non-specialist teaching labs which are technology-enabled to support blended delivery, and cooperation to release some ‘redundant’ and substandard spaces for repurposing and development – including additional study spaces. Our STEMLab is an excellent example of this where more teaching modules continue to be relocated to this shared facility.
What Forces Are Driving Change?
Funding streams are uncertain which has stifled development but forced innovation. Caroline well-summarized our common dilemma as the “Necessity to mend, recycle, repurpose, and recreate without spending money.” After pivoting during the initial COVID outbreak, John revisited the pressure during the summer to, “Do the best you can with what you have and hope like heck that a boat-load of webcams arrive before classes begin!” A common theme for everyone we spoke with was that funds for normal summer classroom maintenance were redirected to webcams, USB microphones, and laptops.
John: Safety is critical. Clearly, social distancing will still be the seat-capacity norm until health officials declare otherwise, but obviously, we don’t want to over-invest in remote delivery options at this point if we can extend the current solutions, then install more permanent solutions that create a higher quality experience for our faculty and students. In addition to safety concerns, it’s also important to be responsive to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) concerns when planning for hybrid, HyFlex, and video capture. We’re learning a lot about student access, but with budgets understandably constrained and priorities fluid – there is a sense of “wait and see” if funds can be made available to meet campus priorities moving forward. The normal 5-year strategic plan has become a 1-2 year plan to see how technology and costs evolve. As much as we look forward to an end of social distancing, nothing will completely go back to the way it was pre-pandemic.
Caroline: Student demands for campus spaces, even to support online learning, are a driving force as well. A recent student survey revealed that although students need, want and value face-to-face teaching delivery, they also want to continue with the option of online learning to enrich their experience, this requires more designated space. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of technology-enriched spaces across campus. Students need the ability to book a study seat or use a virtual PC to access key software. In a recent consultation, one student quoted, “to ensure a sense of belonging, collaboration, and wellbeing, we need study spaces to help with learning.”
Faculty Focus and Development
John: Our campus is heavily weighted toward small to medium-sized classrooms; professors rely on in-person lectures, “chalk and talk” or “PowerPoint and talk” so the shift to “blend and Zoom” with remote and seated students forced by social distancing was pretty dramatic. But since “safety is job one” and the assumption was “this won’t go on forever” the solutions didn’t have to be pretty, just functional! HyFlex is nice, but to be effective, students at the remote site need to be seen and heard and as engaged as the students located with the instructor. We tested monitor placement in the back of the room so professors were always mindful of the remotely connected students.
We were not particularly successful initially – sound was an issue – it was very difficult for students to interact with the remote students as they would in a classroom – that’s where the intentional investment will need to be more strategic in the future. The good news is that this may enable us to expand enrollment if we can offer classes to people who for whatever reason may not be able to be in the classroom once social distancing is not required. We need to better understand the scale of that need.
Supporting Faculty
John: So much is NOT about the technology as much as helping faculty be comfortable using the technology. For instance, faculty tolerance for being “on camera” has grown, but students anecdotally report that the instructor’s effective use of video varies. It requires extra thinking – and that’s really difficult when you’re busy giving a lecture. Our leadership trusts our interaction with faculty – obviously, we don’t want to become a further source of disruption during a health emergency. We try to be supportive without being intrusive and offer a lot of extra training opportunities.
Our campus was among the first to have a remote accreditation experience. It was up to our staff to lead by modeling best practices during the accreditation visits, which many faculty picked up on and took into the classroom. Obviously, this is a unique opportunity to provide helpful “learning moments” over a series of days. Any minor user-error technology glitches could be immediately addressed by the support staff, which I think people took notice of.
Involving Stakeholders in the Process
Caroline: Prioritization is a challenge! Students are not willing to compromise on their experience, and why should they when paying the standard UK fee of £9,250 per year. They are both a business partner and consumer in their education and should be at the heart of every project. To ensure stakeholder involvement, we have an established Learning Environments Innovation Group which is led by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Teaching. This includes a range of stakeholders to ensure a holistic approach to the development of spaces and services. This includes most importantly students and academics, but also representation from the library, timetabling, student welfare, health & safety, and IT Services. It is always a lively and engaging meeting, with conflicting views and opinions. This governance group will oversee all learning environment project delivery, and in the process gain an understanding of the multidimensional perspectives from stakeholders. The last meeting focused on the virtualization of IT labs, technical challenges of synchronous teaching delivery, and the development of study spaces.
Technology Integration and Fresh Perspectives
John: It’s critical to get systems well-integrated. Today we had meetings with colleagues about even tighter integration between Zoom and Panopto – and more importantly – file management! We’re creating nearly a TB of storage needs a week – and we’re a small campus. Zoom doesn’t want to be in the file storage business, and everyone needs to understand best practices for the continuity of student and faculty experience.
Reliability is key, but software solutions have come a long way. We’re starting to consider more software vs. hardware solutions for switching, routing, and remote support. We have at least temporarily abandoned our refresh cycle. If equipment works, keep going. Have a plan if it breaks, but we’re not replacing equipment just because it’s old.
Space management took on a whole new meaning. Looking forward, we’ll need to consider what rooms were used, which were not, and whether we can repurpose some of that space to better meet our needs.
Finally, looking in the Rearview Mirror – What do you Expect to Remember?
An elevated role for academic technologists
John: I’ve always enjoyed working with faculty, but this will be remembered as a time for academic technologists helping to lead professional development. We strive to be sensitive to the needs of our faculty and empathetic to the huge shift this pandemic wrought. I hope our faculty colleagues will look back and validate this in the future.
Increased Collaboration
Caroline: We’ve also been seeking opportunities for collaboration. I’m a member of SCHOMS (Stand Conference for Heads of Media Services) and the support and sharing provided by colleagues across the UK has proved invaluable, especially during these challenging times. An example of this is the recent SCHOMS COVID teaching survey. Higher education is a unique industry where there is a willingness and openness to sharing best practices. FLEXspace is a great example of this.
John: My new title says it all – Director of Academic and Collaborative Technologies – I think we’ll remember this point in time as having new intentionality toward infusion, and more use of software-driven collaboration tools!
For certain I’ll look back on this as a time where everyone pulled together to ensure the quality of our instruction could remain in place even if the students weren’t in the classroom. SUNY is a huge system – and I’m grateful to my colleagues on other campuses – we really dove in and helped each other with how to manage systems and respond to the emergency at different points of time – when it first broke, and during normal break times. We learned how to use MS Teams pretty quickly which was made available across the system.
Some of the seeds for this were planted internally years ago when the Learning Space Rating System was rolled out, and FLEXspace was just getting off the ground – it opened conversations between facilities, AV/IT in ways that were not possible before we brought more intentional communication to the table when planning learning environments!
DR. JOHN MCCUNE
Director of Academic & Collaborative Technologies
SUNY Fredonia State College
John leads “an amazing team of folks that are incredibly dedicated and resilient.” John also serves as the campus Electronic Information Technology Accessibility (EITA) Officer and he well-articulates the issues we’re all facing with a combination of budget uncertainty and a “new paradigm shift for what faculty and students will expect not just in response to COVID, but new classrooms standards that will long outcast social distancing and pandemic-wrought demands.”
CAROLINE PEPPER
Learning Environments Manager
Loughborough University
Vice-Chair of SCHOMS
Caroline’s role at Loughborough University has strategic responsibility for leading the design and development of learning environments, associated technologies and services working for both Estates and Facilities Management and IT Services. She is the current Vice-Chair of SCHOMS, a higher education professional body that promotes excellence in learning and teaching environments and associated technologies. Caroline holds a master’s in Educational Research and within her role actively promotes the philosophy; ‘the way in which a space is designed will ultimately shape the learning that takes place. Pedagogy, inclusivity, and stakeholder engagement needs to be at the heart of every university building project’. Her recent publications include Learning Environments: the estate paradox, in The Inclusivity Gap, and Informal Learning Spaces: A Facilities Management perspective, in Exploring Informal Learning Space in the University.
REBECCA V. FRAZEE, EdD
Faculty, Learning Design & Technology Program
San Diego State University
Associate Director, FLEXspace.org
Rebecca teaches in the Learning Design and Technology program at San Diego State University and is the FLEXspace.org Manager. She enjoys experimenting with new technology tools and techniques to support active learning and team collaboration in higher ed and the workplace. Rebecca is a singer and songwriter and has been having fun with asynchronous ‘socially distanced’ recording projects this year. Contact Rebecca at rfrazee@sdsu.edu, and Twitter at @rebeccafrazee.
LISA STEPHENS, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean, Digital & Online Education
School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, The University at Buffalo
Project Director, FLEXspace.org
Lisa serves as Assistant Dean at the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences leading the Office of Digital & Online Education, and also serves as Senior Strategist for Academic Innovation in the Office of the SUNY Provost. She enjoys an appointment in the UB Department of Communication as an Adjunct Associate Professor. Her SUNY portfolio includes leadership of FLEXspace.org™ and serves as the SUNY Partner Manager for Coursera.
The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange (FLEXspace.org) is an award winning community and open digital repository for higher ed that houses a growing collection of user-contributed content “by campuses for campuses,” with detailed examples of formal and informal learning spaces ranging from multimedia studios, makerspaces, computer labs, hybrid/flexible classrooms, and huddle spaces to large exhibit spaces, simulation labs and renovated lecture halls. FLEXspace was launched in 2012 as a collaboration between SUNY, the CSU Cal State University system, and Foothill-DeAnza Community College District and has since grown to include over 5000 members from 1400 campuses around the world, with PennState joining the partnership in 2019. FLEXspace won the Campus Technology Innovators Award in 2016, and the California Higher Education (CHEC) Collaborative Conference Focus on Efficiency Award in 2018.
FLEXspace users include practitioners, experts and decision makers in higher education, K-12, libraries, and museums who are focused on campus planning and facilities, learning technology, A/V systems integration, instructional design, teaching, and research. The FLEXspace portal provides a sophisticated suite of features that enables users to document and showcase their own campus learning spaces, share research, best practices and tools for planning,