Learning Collaboration Studio – New Classroom with Many Options
Traditional lecture classrooms are a staple of higher education, but they can feel limiting to instructors who want to foster team-based learning, create fluid group interaction, and integrate technology into classroom activities.
One option for Ohio State instructors hoping try something new is the Learning Collaboration Studio (LCS), a learning space that incorporates technology resources and a flexible layout.
Formed through a partnership between the University Libraries and the Digital Union in the Office of the CIO, the LCS provides an environment conducive to diverse teaching and learning styles while also being adaptive to new technology. Funding for the LCS was provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, granted through the State Library of Ohio.
Grand Opening on May 21, 2008
Join us on May 21 at 10 a.m. for the Learning Collaboration Studio grand opening in the lower level of the Science and Engineering Library (175 West 18th Avenue). Details...
Megan Troyer, manager of the LCS, helped design the classroom to be state-of-the-art and highly mobile, allowing instructors to easily change the space's layout. Every piece of equipment in the room is on wheels – the desks, chairs, white boards, a plasma display panel, and podium can all be rearranged. The LCS also features 30 laptops running both Microsoft and Macintosh operating systems and two projectors. From the podium, instructors can choose to display the screens of any one of the 30 classroom laptops as a quick way to showcase exemplary student work or to deliver group presentations.
The LCS’s laptop computers are powerful enough to support production-grade video, audio, and still image editing. Each laptop boasts the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Additionally, LCS staff members accept requests to install course-specific software packages on each laptop, which allows all students to have access to specialty software while working in the LCS.
Another feature of the LCS is its video conferencing component. Although video conferencing has been an option on Ohio State’s campus, the LCS is spacious enough to support class-sharing between Ohio State’s many campuses – or even video conferencing with sites around the world.
Instructor Reactions
"Robust. Really robust," is how Professor H. Lewis Ulman and Professor Richard Selfe describe the LCS software suite.
Ulman and Selfe co-teach a course in digital media studies for graduate students in the English Department. Instead of responding to readings with papers, Ulman and Selfe’s students create digital images or videos. The students’ work is showcased in class over the LCS’s projectors.
"The projection is excellent," Ulman says. "You are confident that people see what is on the screen. But with two screens, you’re able to put examples up. We look at examples all the time."
"[The LCS] is unique," says Ulman. "It tests all sorts of assumptions about how we build classrooms, which we've tended to build with desktop computers, hard-wired networks, and theater style seating with a sage on the stage."
For more information:
To learn about the Learning Collaboration Studio or to schedule a class there, please visit their website at http://digitalunion.osu.edu/lcstudio
Article by Robert H. Karn