By Rebecca V. Frazee and Lisa Stephens of FLEXspace.org, featuring several friends and colleagues who wish to remain anonymous, but the brave ones include: Parke Rhoads, Parke Rhoads, Principal, Vantage Technology Consulting Group and Ari Bose, IBI Group – Director and US Sector Lead, Buildings – Toronto, ON
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 “HEAV – HEAV – Higher Ed AV Magazine Feature”
Sharing “disaster” stories is an act of generosity. Whether they’re funny or distressing, everyone can relate to the challenges. Nobody relishes throwing a colleague or their campus “under the bus,” but ideally, we should celebrate our failures – transparency can save a ton of time, energy, and effort.
Revisiting the Value of FLEXspace.org
When FLEXspace was in its infancy, our friend Lennie Scott-Webber created a graphic that perfectly illustrated the functionality:
Active learning is best supported at the nexus of pedagogy, space and technology, fostering communication and collaboration among the professionals representing each key stakeholder area. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of disaster stories reported were rarely traced to technology or structural failures. Far more frequent was a lack of structure to support effective communication.
Understanding “The Other Guy’s” World
Of course, we’re not limiting this to dudes, but the saying goes, “walk a mile in the other man’s shoes” so we’re rolling with it!
Early Career Lessons Learned in Design Thinking – Podium Style
Parke Rhoads from the Vantage Group was the first brave soul to share a disaster by describing a lectern at “an Ivy” designed by a committee. “Ever make a mistake you revisit to remind you of how far you’ve come?” Parke described how he worked with “engineers who thought they were designers” following the perfectly logical assumption that mapping out surface real estate needs for a document camera + CRT monitor + light + microphone + touchscreen = a 6-foot wide 400-pound lectern. “In the rearview mirror, context, usability, aesthetics, modularity and built-in agility for technological shifts weren’t well enough considered. The lectern was despised and obsolete, ripped out of the hall, and now stands at the College Inn as both the Valet Parking Kiosk AND a testament to early failures and future pledges to learn and evolve into a true designer and design thinker.”
Every early career AV-IT tech can learn from Parke’s experience. Take the job seriously, but never take yourself so seriously that you can’t laugh and learn from “teachable moments.”
Ari Bose from the Toronto-based IBI Office shared a quick story that many can relate with post-pandemic. “We went back to our offices for the first time and scheduled an in-person meeting in our Board room with our CEO and President. We had no clue how to operate the AV system in the room anymore, so we sat face to face (6 of us) sharing content on MS Teams. Seemed pretty ironic to be hosting a Teams meeting in-person with all the participants… talk about truly being hybrid!”
This may fall short of a true AV “disaster” but our thoughts immediately went to the faculty. While immersed in design and installation, how often do we leave the training and communication to others? Are we checking in with faculty to test whether our “just in time” directions – hopefully taped inside a door, under a keyboard, or on a non-password-protected screen are easily understood by our faculty friends?
Our remaining storytellers sought a little anonymity. No problem… “Our worst AV project was when a general contractor would not let us in the building to verify the installation of conduit and floor boxes because they owned the building. Sure enough, we ended up with no conduit for classrooms and floor boxes nowhere near the neighborhood they were supposed to be. Lesson learned! Include oversight of the project in the formal documentation!” Ouch!
“Then there was the light fixture hung directly in front of the projection pathway. Never mind that documentation was provided to the architects and contractors. It took a while to figure out how to warp the image to fit. Lesson learned: Coordinate and double-check the drawings to ensure AV is on the architectural drawings AND elevations!”
Back to a few stories from Parke… like the ductwork that was moved late in construction to accommodate a supply chain issue. Some structural steel was late to arrive and needed to be worked around differently.
This led to a large, wheezing air duct placed on the side of the auditorium platform…where it was immediately picked up and amplified by the microphone on the lectern, making the space practically intolerable to use. We ended up moving the lectern and projector/screen 8 feet over, at great expense.
How about the department that ordered custom lab demonstration benches to be installed into the classroom, with integrated AV, and failed to realize they wouldn’t fit through the door (fixable, but not until the end of the semester when the classrooms could be taken offline and the doors removed)
Wait! That’s my story from 25 years ago! With my own version of the 400 lb 6-foot podium! No seriously… fell in love with the contractor’s work in a totall totally different work environment – got a quote, he took measurements inside the classroom, and on delivery day, the pathway from his van into the classroom took an amazing race route to find the doors and elevators that could get the podium inside the classroom – through a side door, with the trim removed.
We Really Need The DVD/VCR!
A faculty committee from a large R1 with approximately 450 centrally scheduled rooms demanded that every classroom on campus be equipped with a DVD/VCR player and a computer, but also complained that the classrooms cost too much and were frequently in disrepair.
Analytics revealed that the DVD & VCR players were used 0.02% of the time and that 80 faculty (out of more than 600) accounted for roughly 90% of the use of the installed computers. When all the analysis and planning were complete, it was revealed (essentially) that the faculty demand for all this unused equipment was adding on average about $3 million to the overall cost of classroom AV installations.
As the new, simplified systems were deployed across campus – faculty ratings of classroom AV usability improved by 1.2 NPS points (about 20%).
Right out of a Hollywood script!
Saving the best for last- seemingly right out of the original “Ocean’s 11” script. The AV system was repeatedly failing and shutting down intermittently in a historic classroom, frequently used for VIP events. The system was completely replaced. Power was monitored. All cabling was replaced and tested. Then Parke put on his “Physics Professor” hat and started looking around – and discovered that this space was adjacent to a plasma physics lab that included experimentation with large electromagnetic pulses, strong enough to cripple all nearby electronics.
(Including, it turned out, the hearing aids of a student who was too polite to complain).
Hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane!
Guest contributors
Parke Rhoads, Principal
Vantage Technology Consulting Group
Parke has leveraged his background as a college science professor into creative, award-winning technology learning environments
Ari Bose, Director
IBI Group – Toronto Office
Ari is an architect specializing in sustainable design and contractor relationships on multi-billion dollar projects!
The FLEXspace Team
Assistant Dean, Digital & Online Education
School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, The University at Buffalo
Project Director, FLEXspace.org
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.
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, 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.