By Rebecca V. Frazee and Lisa Stephens of FLEXspace.org, with guest contributors James Frazee, Chief Academic Technology Officer and Associate Vice President of Information Technology Division at San Diego State University, and Julie Johnston, Director of Learning Spaces and Acting Associate Vice President of Learning Technologies (UITS) at Indiana University, Crystal Ramsay Assistant Director of Innovation at Penn State University, Joseph Moreau, Vice Chancellor of Technology at Foothill-De Anza Community College District.

To browse details, images, floor plans and more from spaces featured in this column, plus hundreds more, login to FLEXspace.org and visit the Gallery “FEATURED IN HIGHER ED AV MAGAZINE” [link to https://members.flexspace.org/node/1911601].

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back! 

The back to school season has always proven to be an exciting time, and this year is no exception. At San Diego State University, we recently wrapped up another successful online faculty development program, the Flexible Course Design Institute, in which I had the pleasure of serving as a faculty peer mentor in addition to preparing my own fall courses in the Learning Design and Technology program. Meanwhile the team from the Learning Environments, Technologies & User Services group at SDSU and others have been working ‘round the clock to ready the classrooms and workspaces for the highly anticipated return to campus, keeping in mind that we may be entering classrooms or workspaces that have literally sat empty for nearly 18 months! Indeed it is a time for change as we start a new academic year. A time filled with fresh perspectives, curiosity and experimentation, and a sense of community like never before. What changes will we see in course design, technology enhanced learning environments, and user support services? 

A change is gonna come

It’s exciting for those of us working in user services, AV, learning environments, faculty development, and instructional design as it feels like a watershed moment for our field. James Frazee, Associate Vice President of Information Technology Division at San Diego State University, sees the emergence of a tremendous latent demand for online learning at SDSU from both faculty and students. “Because of COVID, learners have had an opportunity to experience what it’s like to learn in hybrid and fully online modalities. There are faculty who’d never taught online who were thrust into it, without any choice. Now a year and a half later, they’re reflecting on it and thinking, ‘Wow, you know what, I kind of like teaching online!’ And likewise, there are students who never thought they would take an online course who now are saying, ‘Wow, I like taking online courses because they’re super convenient. I’d like to take more of these types of classes.’ Many tools served the faculty and students well during the pandemic that they absolutely won’t abandon now that we’re returning to in-person instruction: virtual office hours, in-video quizzing and other technologies for promoting student engagement. In fact, we just had our new faculty orientation, and what was their number one priority for what they want to learn more about? How to boost student engagement!” 

Thanks to the hard work and extraordinary resources that went into the flexible course design institute at SDSU, we were able to model quality course design plus many strategies for getting students to engage with one another and with the content in more meaningful ways. The faculty experienced a blend that included a live online face-to-face kickoff and midpoint discussion, along with a closing reflection, plus many opportunities to engage with mentors and each other — instructional strategies that many faculty may not have even considered previously. Since this was my third time serving in the flexible course design institute, I witnessed firsthand the change in awareness, attitude, and skills amongst my faculty colleagues. They know it is certainly not going to be ‘business as usual’, and they are more willing and able to get out of their comfort zones to explore new course designs, new student engagement strategies, new tools and technologies both online and in the classroom. 

Crystal Ramsay from Penn State has also been reflecting on the new perspectives and new approaches campuses will need to adopt in this new world. “Since spring 2020, faculty and students have learned a lot about teaching and learning in different modes. Some of what they learned began as stop gap approaches in response to shifts to remote teaching and learning, but some of the approaches really worked. More than that, in some cases the approaches were superior to pre-pandemic, in-person strategies. If now is a ‘time for change,’ then what are the long-standing assumptions we need to revisit and reconsider around the intersections of course designs and pedagogy, instructional delivery modes, and learning spaces (online, in-person, and a combination)?

Joseph Moreau, Vice Chancellor of Technology at Foothill-De Anza Community College District, emphasized the need for higher ed to embrace change, adapt and evolve. “In returning to “normal” if we simply try to rewind to 2019, we are completely missing the opportunity of a generation.  Our students’ expectations have changed.  Our faculty’s skill level and openness to online instruction has changed.  Our institutional capacity has changed.  The nature of our workforce nationally has and continues to change.  If we (colleges and universities) don’t adapt and evolve, we risk becoming rapidly irrelevant.”

Places and spaces

Of course, campus learning spaces have had to evolve to keep up with new course designs as well as evolving student and faculty needs. Julie Johnston, Director of Learning Spaces at Indiana University, offers this advice to campuses: “Faculty and students have increased their level of technology competency and their expectations and needs have changed. Our learning space design strategies need to carefully listen to this changing landscape and readjust campus standards. We need to provide dedicated spaces where a fully on-line delivery can occur in a familiar environment that mirrors the tools found in their classroom.” 

Julie provided a campus snapshot of what’s happening this fall. “Nearly 100% of our general inventory classrooms support HyFlex. We are increasing the number of Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras in our classrooms with a 40-seat count or above and adding DSPs with additional mic’ing of students.”  At SDSU, over 75% (133) of the centrally-scheduled learning spaces have recently been converted into ‘Connected Classrooms’ which are Zoom and/or Mediasite enabled, with ceiling mounted PTZ cameras and beamforming microphone arrays. These spaces enable instructors to record and stream their class sessions and make them available to students for the duration of the course via the password-protected learning management system. The increased recording and streaming capabilities help to address equity concerns for students who may not be able to attend in person, and can help all learners (ESL, ADA). There are many benefits of connected classrooms (new Video Capture / Streaming capabilities) including:  

• Allows students to review recorded course sessions after synchronous instruction, or to view the recordings if/when campus meetings are not possible. 
• Provides transcripts (automatically generated) for recordings from the video collaboration platform, and if a student has a need for an (ADA) accommodation SDSU will caption course content in alignment with current campus practice.
• Serves diverse populations e.g., students who are responsible for child or elder care, students who have transportation issues, students who have work conflicts.
• Reduces ‘transactional distance’ or the psychological and communicative space’ between the teacher and learner.
• Encourages participation from learners who often withdraw from engaging in-person (provides a broader, and more diverse perspective)

Ground control to Major Tom

The top challenge for effectively outfitting the HyFlex classroom? You guessed it…Audio! Julie suggests, “Audio is the single most important component of a HyFlex classroom. Without a bi-directional audio system that picks up the whole class at the same volume as the instructor, neither remote or onsite students can participate in a robust conversation.” James agrees, “As I always say, in the world of AV – A comes before V.” As these leaders attest, focusing on providing high quality audio solutions is of utmost importance.  

Lisa Stephens just assisted her dean in realizing the renovation of a 175 seat lecture hall with the addition of a 1 Beyond VSX system with Biamp beamtracking microphones that functioned better than expected.  “After years of video production in classrooms with control rooms, this system gave the “feel” of a human operator in control – it’s pretty impressive for someone like me who is skeptical of AI (artificial intelligence) systems.”

Ghost in the machine

Another pressing challenge for campuses as students, staff, and faculty return to campus? Information security! Joseph Moreau, reminds us that “Information security has been a nightmare on our best days.  With ransomware hitting college and university regularly and online fraud running rampant, particularly in open access institutions, now is the time when we must get serious about investing in information security.  Truly we cannot afford to avoid this a moment longer.”

Gotta serve somebody

As Julie points out, it’s critical that we provide additional technology support for instructors who are unaccustomed to HyFlex or co-located instruction. Indeed, there have been not only changes in how courses are being designed and delivered, but also in how we provide user support services. For instance, the pandemic certainly changed operations for the faculty support group at SDSU. For years, they’ve offered services in the walk-in ‘FIT’ Center on campus (Faculty Instructional Technology (FIT) Center), and now they’ve been thrust into offering services virtually through their vFIT center – something they certainly won’t abandon as it has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from faculty and staff alike. According to the SDSU newscenter, “its rotation of instructional designers, students and other Instructional Technology Services staff members handled nearly 6,000 support requests in its first year. Through coordination with IT User Services, a one-stop virtual help desk was created and served as a model for other units across campus.” 

Joseph Moreau agrees regarding the need to reimagine a new agile, hybrid services approach that busts organizational silos and caters to user needs. “As we think about resuming campus-based services, we should not lose sight of the gains we made during the pandemic.  Truly, the pandemic has been horrible, but it is not all bad.  We learned we have a level of agility we never thought we could muster.  Yet still, the realm of onground and online remain siloed. How can we learn from the lessons of the pandemic to seamlessly blend these two realms for our students’ benefit?  Can we envision a version of our institutions that allow students to frictionlessly move between online and onground at their convenience and preference based on the constraints of their lives and not ours (college/university faculty and staff)?”

I get by with a little help from my friends

I’m sure there have been many cases where students experienced a hastily thrown together course that didn’t provide the optimal experience. And no doubt, many of our campus classroom projects have included bumps and challenges along the way, such as supply chain issues and such. But thankfully at campuses around the world, many of us in the fields of learning design, AV, IT, user services, and faculty development have come together and formed new alliances to support each other. And we continue to work hard to provide high quality, well designed online learning experiences that enable our faculty, students, and staff to embrace this new and dynamic reality.

Now more than ever, I feel a great sense of pride to be working in this field, supporting colleagues, and teaching in the Learning Design and Technology Master’s program where I get to help shape a new crop of students who want to become better teachers and instructional designers, who see the need for, and benefit of, quality course design that engages and connects students, faculty, and community. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share the learning design principles, strategies, and tools with an even more willing and able community in higher ed who want to keep striving for excellence and continuous innovation and improvement. 

 

Julie Johnston
Director of Learning Spaces
UITS
http://learningspaces.iu.edu

 

James P. Frazee
Chief Academic Technology Officer
Associate Vice President
Information Technology Division
San Diego State University
http://its.sdsu.edu

Crystal Ramsay
Assistant Director of Innovation
Teaching and Learning with Technology, Penn State IT 
Associate Director, Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design (CPAD)

Joseph Moreau
Vice Chancellor, Technology
Foothill-De Anza Community College District

 

Want to contribute to the FLEXspace Community?

The growing FLEXspace community is always looking for the latest examples of innovative and effective learning spaces. Please share your campus spaces by logging into FLEXspace.org, and contact Rebecca or Lisa if you would like to be featured in an upcoming issue of Higher Ed AV magazine.  

BIOS

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, 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.

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.