In order to start planning for dual delivery, Learning Environments (LE) created a preliminary list of equipment and distributed it to the IT Academic Technologies Subcommittee. This subcommittee is part of the Faculty Senate Committee, the University Committee on Information Technology. It is chaired by Scott Rixner and seated by faculty across the university. It advises the Office of Information Technology (OIT) on academic technology in classrooms. The committee met and provided initial feedback into what is important for classroom technology design. Upon receiving the feedback LE began procuring a set of test equipment to pilot the options with faculty in classrooms.
Faculty from the IT Academic Technologies Subcommittee came to campus to view, test and provide feedback on some equipment that we are evaluating using in classrooms. The faculty members who were in involved in testing were: Renata Ramos (Engineering), Farès el-Dahdah (Humanities), Scott Rixner (Engineering), Lesa Tran Lu (Natural Sciences) and Kathy Matthews (Natural Sciences). There will be a second round of testing with the Academic Restart Committee. Even though needs change based on pedagogy, there are consistent themes resulting in basic requirements.
These are (pictures available here):
Learning Environments is working with the Office of the Registrar (OTR) in collaboration with the Academic Restart Committee (ARC) on which classrooms will be used for fall. Each room being used will be assessed on which type of camera, monitor, and microphones will be in the class as each classroom configuration is different. The first set of rooms has been identified as they are some of the larger classrooms that will be utilized for fall.