Summer Projects: The Final Frontier for Work-Life Balance
By Lisa Stephens and Rebecca V. Frazee of FLEXspace.org.
To browse details, images, floorplans, and more from spaces featured in this column, plus hundreds more, log in to FLEXspace.org and visit the Gallery “FEATURED IN HIGHER ED AV MAGAZINE”
This is another topic close to our hearts, and in the spirit of the work-life balance sub-theme, we offer a shorter article than usual, primarily from Lisa’s perspective (so Rebecca can have a break, and we’re flipping it next month).
Summer Renovations Post-COVID – Risk vs. Reward
The home base that keeps me connected to AV and teaching/learning is the University at Buffalo, a large AAU public research university. Research and innovation is a high priority, with teaching, learning, and technology highly valued as evidenced by regular investment in labs and technology classrooms.
Right-sizing technology integration is an art. The risk of over-investing leading to under-utilizing academic technologies is a challenge, but it’s equally risky having too LITTLE technology to effectively meet internal pedagogical needs with ever-stronger emphasis on collaboration, active learning, and small group/case study environments.
As an assistant dean, my focus is directly on supporting faculty to enable students an optimal learning experience. Thankfully, our campus has a robust infrastructure with Zoom, Panopto, and LMS (Blackboard) to extend teaching and learning – particularly during the giant pandemic-induced virtual shift. Our campus was able to shift gears and sustain academic continuity, while my local department’s focus is supporting engineering faculty to teach online – designed from the ground up!
A few weeks back, my dean asked that I explore whether a large 175 cap lecture hall, centrally scheduled to accommodate primarily engineering classes, could be adapted to HyFlex use. As described in last May’s article “AV & IT: Stronger Together!” our school assembled a team and we reached out to our classroom engineering and design folks to work through the challenge.
Navigating from “Probably Not” to “Maybe” to “Let’s Git ‘er Done”
Our school, like all others, suffered enrollment drops this past year. But engineering is also in-demand internationally, with virtual delivery an option for all students “on pause” during COVID complexities added to a stressed student visa system. If every student who intends to come to campus this fall arrives, we are in a position of demand (at least temporarily) exceeding supply! There are many graduate-level students awaiting access to degree and certificate programs. We were in a pickle!
Returning to our commitment to high-quality instruction – the campus enterprise systems did a fantastic job of spanning academic continuity – but can we better serve students who must await pandemic conditions to ease? Exploring whether the classroom could be considered for an upgrade – albeit late in the game, I received a surprisingly emphatic, friendly, “Are you kidding? Now? Summer upgrades have been on the board since before January, and it’s May!” My friends in IT explained the project timelines, and how it would be nearly impossible to squeeze in another in-house job to meet our school’s HyFlex goal of extemporaneous interchange with an instructor and up to 175 seated students with an unknown number of virtual students. This would be an AVoIP project, requiring extensive wiring of all kinds, equipment, and planning.
Supply chains are currently unpredictable, coordination with internal and external facilities contractors are already stretched to capacity, and staff are beyond capacity, awaiting well-deserved time off from the pandemonium of the past 18 months. How can we make this work? How might we build a case that the enrollment needs justified the extra effort required to bring this request to a reality? It starts with a strong needs-based case at what was truly a “late in the game” request.
We can safely set aside the debate on whether online learning will continue, and focus on the risk of “how much is enough” technology investment as students clamour to return to the classroom in person? Through the lens of our experience – HyFlex investment is justified for two key reasons:
First, HyFlex helps cultivate and serve learners who have been relegated to the sidelines of semester-bound delivery (think non-traditional students, demanding careers, parenting, and eldercare). Most traditional students fill their “jar of life” with large stones, each one representing a class, study time, perhaps a part-time job, or family commitments. But a LOT of potential student jars are filled with stones representing job responsibilities, tending to younger children, and participating in communities important to them. For those non-traditional students, education becomes the sand occupying the leftover space. It’s not that education is less important to them, but time/space needs to be created; it needs to fit in around the other large life-jar stones! These folks are seeking career advancement, having been constrained by academic calendars and time-honored institutional processes.
Second, faculty are recognizing the value of increased understanding and retention of knowledge through active learning exercises, flipped classroom teaching and breaking a traditional syllabus into well organized modular “chunks” to be consumed through traditional study coupled to exercises and group work. These stylistic elements align with well-designed online learning. “Starting with the end in mind” creates well-organized and flexible assessments. Group work becomes less about “Oh no… not another group project where I do all the work…” and more about measurable accountability. As tools become more familiar to faculty and students – elements of online “bleed” into traditional courses and visa-versa.
Our campus project was approved by a provost’s pedagogical team of faculty, AV/IT staff, and instructional support specialists. They acknowledged that this was an important and timely investment, enabling a budget allocation, but this didn’t address the staffing and supply chain concerns.
Fortunately, SUNY (State University of New York) set up a special contracting process that enabled the rapid deployment of pre-approved integrators. This was invaluable as we reached out to a regional integrator (Audio Video Corp) participating in that contract, who initially built the room, and had an in-house engineering team and access to campus standard equipment. Things were looking up!
Next, we had to shift classes and events scheduled in the space for the remainder of the summer to provide unfettered access to on-campus staff and external contractors to get to work. With some staff support, we were now well-positioned, and the photo below was taken within a week of the project receiving a “green light.”
Summer Projects Include Self Care
Summer gets away from us quickly! During a recent Learning Space Collaboratory meeting, the leadership was probing participants when to gather this summer for roundtable conversations. Following a long silence, a vice provost from a prominent university broke the silence with, “Our administration is encouraging all the faculty and staff to stand down this summer as much as possible to catch their breath after 18 months of non-stop COVID hustle.” His words articulated the emotion of what was being left unsaid. We resolved to gather virtually for short conversations rather than an in-person gathering. We all miss each other, but self-care is paramount right now.
This is not to suggest that folks in higher education somehow are more stressed than other hard-working people, but most of us experience a degree of autonomy that was well-explained by another LSC participant, “When you have a general vs. specific job definition, particularly for faculty, most of us default to doing too much rather than too little.” Boom, there it is!
February’s column “For the Love of AV” described our “Deep roots in teamwork, fierce commitment to sharing and supporting each other, and enabling discovery…together.” But I’m reminded of the safety check each time we get on an airplane and how important it is to place your own oxygen mask on first, before helping others. To take care of others before taking care of yourself can make us all less effective overall.
I’m going sailing for a couple of weeks. Hope you’re taking time to work in a garden, visit with family, fly a kite, play with kids or grandchildren, or doing whatever your passion leads to. We’ll let you know how our new HyFlex room turns out soon, meanwhile – stay safe and take time to enjoy the summer – you’ve earned it!
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.