By Rebecca V. Frazee and Lisa Stephens of FLEXspace.org, featuring
To browse details, images, floor plans, and more from spaces featured in this column, plus hundreds more, log in to FLEXspace.org and visit the Gallery “HEAV – HEAV – Higher Ed AV Magazine Feature”
It’s budget planning vortex time! June 30th is the last day of the fiscal year for many of us, with all the winter planning and procurement underway for summer installs. Here’s hoping supply chain issues have settled down!
It’s a challenge to break out of the day-to-day campus operations and support to remain current with learning environment updates and technology opportunities. We touched base with a few “FLEXspace Friends” at the University at Buffalo and UC San Francisco and an industry perspective from Talem3 to see how they manage budget planning.
When budgeting for AV and classroom technology needs, what external resources do you use to gain insight into project needs and possibilities?
Christopher Clune, Director of UB’s IT Customer Service (ITCS) began with a key point about campus AV standards that provide a consistent user experience across centrally scheduled campus classrooms. “While we tend to stick to our standards, we look at all possible paths and solutions. We inform those decisions on what we see at trade shows/peer conferences. From those, our goal is to be at the forefront of the AV classroom experience in higher education. We have been consistent about bringing the latest, most useful teaching technologies into our learning spaces.”
Matt Epperson, Director of Educational Technology Services and Benjamin Waller, ETS Supervisor & Technology Innovation and Outreach Specialist at UCSF both described how relationships with a variety of collaborative groups and technology manufacturer reps can help identify solutions, as well as making time to read Ed Tech trade publications.
Benjamin offered, “I try to be the voice of the front-line people who do the work and are not often brought to these kinds of discussions or involved in surveys distributed to faculty and students. At UCSF, much of the faculty’s day-to-day classroom and online technology work is supported by professional staff within individual schools, so I often focus on approaching the folks directly supporting their faculty and students.”
Matt took a little higher altitude view, “We take a multi-prong approach and also lean on the expertise provided by national organizations and publications such as Educause, FLEXspace, Avixa, and Campus Technology to name a few” said Matt, “Fortunately, being a part of the UC system allows for collaboration with our sister campuses to discuss tools, tips, and trends from others’ experiences. Additionally, we are able to take advantage of UC system-wide license agreements that provide cost saving benefits.”
Frank Rosa,Co-Founder of Talem3 suggests a data driven approach to identify, budget and replace at risk technologies with target standards to maintain a great learning space experience. In addition, we agree with Chris, Matt and Benjamin that continual collaboration is essential. Importantly, consultation with Academics for requirements, vendors for understanding technology trends, AV staff for operational feedback, teaching and learning centers for gaining insights is imperative. Key factors include:
- Data Driven: The collective technical and non-technical assets in a space influence learning space experience. The majority of higher education institutions manage large volumes of asset types and asset instances across many learning space types. Therefore, insightful, informative, and timely tools are critical to better managing budgets as well as service levels. For example, based on current standards and asset mix Talem3’s end-of-life (EOL) tool provides actionable decision-making insights such as when to replace at risk technologies, offers five-year budget outlooks for maintaining the learning space experience, and delivers cost saving and mass volume opportunities. Talem3’s powerful EOL reporting provides the basis for budgeting and targeting learning space experience by leveraging data to make informed decisions.
- Technology Trends and Policy Changes: Look ahead and plan for occasional technology advancements such as moving from analog to digital or shifting to AVoIP. In addition, policy developments like bring your own device (BYOD) learning spaces as well as changes to content delivery through HyFlex or flipped classrooms can have a profound impact on asset choices and budget.
- Academic Requirements: Collaboration between Learning space service providers, faculty and student focus groups is essential when considering and planning for academic requirements. It is recommended to establish a cross-functional advisory group to ensure the planned changes are strategically aligned, sustainable, consistent and intuitive. The advisory group must consider the impact of new technologies on faculty training and content. Developing a mission principle with key stakeholders, such as “learning spaces should be accessible, comfortable, flexible, sustainable, consistent and technology infused” can help guide proposals and align with institutional goals.
Frank also added, “From an external perspective we highly recommend Higher Education AV groups such as FLEXspace, ETC (formerly CCUMC), SCHOMS, AETM, HETMA, etc. These not only have relevant resources such as documents and guidelines but also highly interactive and specialized discussion groups. Specialized vendors such as Talem3 are also active in these communities.”
*Frank’s point about Academic Requirements is very similar to the FLEXspace Integrated Planning Pathway (FLIPP).
How do you gain direct insight from your campus user communities?
Chris: UB does a good job of collecting survey data annually from both students and faculty with separate IT surveys. We also have regular advisory meetings with representatives across the distributed IT personnel within each of the schools and we also meet regularly with a Faculty Senate IT subcommittee. Of course we also seek feedback from helpdesk and analysis of help tickets, one-on-one meetings with faculty and feedback from senior leadership through other governance structures. We also involve multiple committees that look for cost-benefit opportunities to determine what rooms may need technology and furniture, fixtures and equipment (FF&E) upgrades.
Ben: Working day in and day out with course coordinators and schools ed tech teams. Consulting with them on their needs, helping them get support, or training them to be self-sufficient, based on their needs and resources. This also helps us shape our training process, room controls, technology, etc. Being a part of ed tech related groups on campus is very helpful in learning about new technology others are interested in, pooling our requests and advocating for new technology together.
Matt: In addition to formal campus-wide IT Governance and Ed Tech focused committees, members of our team regularly meet with representatives of the schools and graduate programs. Having these one-on-one conversations allows for open, frank discussions to gain insight about faculty and student needs, particularly feedback from constituents about what is and isn’t working. Our longevity in the space has allowed us to build relationships that allow for candid conversation and honest feedback — these interactions provide incredible value when it comes to planning for build outs, upgrades, and needs identification.
Frank: Having an effective collaboration channel to gain insights and feedback from your user community is essential for Learning Space Service providers. We have observed many approaches to this, and approaches vary from institution to institution often shaped by culture, leadership and budget priority. The Faculty Module from Talem3 allows for an efficient means of communication between a large population of faculty and learning space service providers. Since it bundles pedagogical training of learning space assets it naturally draws more faculty engagement.
How do you manage funding proposals? Who gives the “green light”?
Chris: Our funding approval is driven at the VP/Sr Administration level through committee structure. Primary proposals are made through end-of-life reports from our learning space management tools. Proposals are managed through multiple paths: if a capital building project, it is informed by the needs of that department and adherence to standards. If it is related to maintenance life cycle replacement, we first look at the data from 1 and 2, and then make proposals through leadership. Needs are also determined by performance of the technologies in the classrooms. Leadership at the CIO and VP levels give the green light.
Matt: We generally do not operate with proposals for funding. We have a small team of in-house AV engineers who perform the majority of our small to medium sized build outs and upgrades. This group of professionals track needs across the UCSF landscape and plan accordingly to budget. Classroom based projects of that scope are typically funded through our department’s annual budget and are self-sustained. Larger “capital projects” are identified years in advance. We engage with both campus leadership and Real Estate services to determine priority, location, funding sources and timelines.
Frank: In our experience, the approach varies among institutions. We have seen a combination of regular central budgets that are leadership driven, and annual proposal submissions that vary from year-to-year and compete with other investments. Nevertheless, key success factors for learning space investments include preparing a solid business case with alignment to institutional goals, carefully vetted financials, strong stakeholder support and accountability. We have noticed that institutions that prepare detailed EOL models with five-year projections are more successful.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Matt Being budget conscious is key to allowing more budget room for refreshing of gear in older rooms. Find the lowest cost solution that brings better functionality than the space had before without losing anything often used before in the space or compromising core room stability. Benjamin: Keeping Zoom and recording options in mind is key in any modern classroom.
Frank: Technology changes rapidly and requires active EOL management to avoid functional or performance degradation and to maintain a positive and progressive learning space experience. Given learning space expectations, technology complexity, the volume of assets and limited budgets, a data driven approach delivers well-timed, optimal solutions.
Matt: The last ten years has seen constant flux across UCSF campuses as we sunset older buildings that are no longer viable for various reasons and as we bring new buildings on-line across new and well-established locations. The majority of these new facilities include state of the art active learning classrooms, so we are very fortunate to be able to have a significant number of our older classrooms replaced with brand new spaces.
Leading by Example!
My favorite budget story comes from USC – where Joe Way has described how he transitioned from a private business into higher ed classroom technology planning.
“I attended a CCUMC (now Education Technology Collaborative) conference while serving my prior campus and wandered into Lisa presenting FLEXspace.” Rebecca was a tiny zoom figure in the corner, and the screen was filled with little tiles of classrooms.” I told my Associate Director we needed to sign up & we did!
When I joined USC, we were challenged to create the best classroom spaces in all of higher ed, so I got together with my design architect, Chi Hang Lo,and we leveraged it for ideas and research.
We narrowed down the features we felt were important to include in our classroom renovations, and created a very short budget brief and presentation from the Idea Board to our executive leadership. They immediately gave the green light, and that’s what we’re currently executing and uploading back into FLEXspace.
My colleague walked out of the budget presentation with me and said, “What just happened in there?!” I was confused by the question. “Joe, I’ve worked in higher education a long time, and that’s the first time I’ve seen a budget presentation granted for the full ask!”
Of course “Team FLEXspace” was grateful that Joe was willing to tell that story at SCUP’s Annual Conference last fall, not just because we appreciated the endorsement from a major institution – but because it was evidence that FLEXspace was being used EXACTLY as we the Learning Environments Task Group at SUNY had envisioned nearly a decade ago!
Christopher Clune, Director, IT Customer Service, University at Buffalo
(Chris also thanks John Pfeffer, ITCS Assoc. Dir. of Learning Space Design as a co-contributor)
Benjamin Wallen, ETS Supervisor & Technology Innovation and Outreach Specialist
University Of California San Francisco
Matt Epperson (no Photo), Director of Educational Technology Services
Asst VC, Educ Tech Svcs, Student Academic Affairs
Frank Rosa
Co-Founder – Talem3
Oshawa, Ottawa, and Brampton
Ontario, Canada
info@talem3.com
Details are available in FLEXspace
In Closing
Thank you again to our generous FLEXspace friends for contributing their stories. Feel free to reach out to learn more about their BYOD efforts and other campus learning space stories, and see other BYOD examples in FLEXspace.
The FLEXspace Team
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.
REBECCA V. FRAZEE, Ph.D.
Faculty, Learning Design & Technology Program
San Diego State University
Associate Director, FLEXspace.org
Dr. Rebecca Vaughan Frazee recently joined the University of California San Francisco as a Digital Equity Education Analyst, helping the IT Education team ensure equitable provisioning of a robust teaching and learning environment to meet the needs of the UCSF faculty and students and serve the UCSF education mission. Rebecca is a former faculty member in the Learning Design and Technology program at San Diego State University, School of Journalism and Media Studies where she taught for over 15 years and served as a faculty peer mentor. ]
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, maker spaces, 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.