FYI Seaton Hall . . .

[michigancat]

I'm guessing kilt sells smart boards for a living

[Rage Against the McKee]

I think the "scale up" thing would be great for a lot of classes, but the engineering types who frequent Seaton don't seem like the general personality type who would benefit from sitting in a group during a lecture.

[WildcatNkilt]

As someone who has been engaged in providing technology solutions for schools (but not things like White Boards) I can't tell you how many times I've talked to IT staffs who just roll their eyes at things like Interactive White Boards and group collaboration and how the money that pays for those robs money from core IT infrastructure improvements and upgrades.    Maintaining those systems with only a finite number of human resources becomes more cumbersome as they age, and maintenance contracts are expensive. 

IT Staffs would much rather improve core connectivity, improve things like the WLAN experience to facilite a secure BYOD environment, as well as upgrade server capacity or the cloud experience that can drive content to the individual user.

Right, but none of the money for a new building is used to improve core infrastructure.  All maintenance contracts would initially be rolled into the cost of the building, and not into the campus IT's yearly budget.  And for future maintenance contracts, the school of "x" could just as easily roll it into their budget instead of it coming out of the general IT budget. 

My whole point is K-State is KSTATEO'ing this up before the building is even built.  They will be behind on classroom experience compared to other universities when the doors first open.  Again, a lot of it is driven from the college so maybe fingers should be pointed at the School of Engineering and not Kansas State University for half-assing it.  I hope that the K-State's school of business visits new higher education buildings before breaking ground on a $30mill building to ensure they are staying competitive.  Lecture classrooms are becoming the thing of the past.

[Rage Against the McKee]

I always preferred professors who used the chalkboard instead of powerpoint, anyway. If it's important enough for the professor to write on the board, it's important enough for me to write it in my notes. I always just kind of checked out during powerpoint lectures. I would imagine a video presentation on the monitor at a table around 6 other people with the professor behind me would be even worse.

[WildcatNkilt]

I think the "scale up" thing would be great for a lot of classes, but the engineering types who frequent Seaton don't seem like the general personality type who would benefit from sitting in a group during a lecture.

Thats whats great is the new teaching style isn't as much as a lecture as it is more of a time for the instructor to do question/answer sessions and cover topics that were not understood previously.

A good example of how these classrooms are being used:

1)  Professor assigns students to read chapter X through Y before next class and take a 20 question quiz before class.
2)  Before next class, professor reviews quiz results from the students.
3)  Professor noticed many students missed questions 11 and 17.
4)  Next class, professor covers topics that were questions 11 and 17 for first 15 minutes of class so students can better understand.
5)  Rest of class is collaborative teaching/lecturing/examples, etc.

The biggest challenge across universities is getting the older professors to adopt the new method of teaching. 

As far as being used in an engineering classroom, this is one of the first types of education to adopt the method.  Many engineers on here I'm sure can attest to the fact that engineers do not work alone.  There are a lot of collaborative efforts in order to achieve an end result.  KU's new engineering building will have at least six 60+ student classrooms that are of the Scale-Up type. 

[Rage Against the McKee]

Don't labs accomplish the same thing, though?

[EMAWican]

Can you imagine engi-nerds in the scale-up model?  PPD was bad enough. 

[WildcatNkilt]

Don't labs accomplish the same thing, though?

Yes and no.  Labs can be more hands on.  Additionally, not every class has a lab.

This is a very good read:

http://www.ncsu.edu/per/scaleup.html

Rigorous evaluations of learning have been conducted in parallel with the curriculum development effort. Besides hundreds of hours of classroom video and audio recordings, we also have conducted numerous interviews and focus groups, conducted many conceptual learning assessments (using nationally-recognized instruments in a pretest/posttest protocol), and collected portfolios of student work. We have data comparing nearly 16,000 traditional and SCALE-UP students. Our findings can be summarized as the following:

    Ability to solve problems is improved
    Conceptual understanding is increased
    Attitudes are improved
    Failure rates are drastically reduced, especially for women and minorities
    "At risk" students do better in later engineering statics classes
    Conceptual understanding is increased
    Attitudes are improved
    Failure rates are drastically reduced, especially for women and minorities
    "At risk" students do better in later engineering statics classes

   

More than 50 colleges and universities across the US have adapted the SCALE-UP approach to their own institutions. In all cases, the basic idea remains the same: get the students working together to examine something interesting. That frees the instructor to roam about the room, asking questions and stirring up debates. Classes in physics, chemistry, math, engineering, and even literature have been taught this way. If you want more information, please contact Dr. Robert Beichner.

[Rage Against the McKee]

Can you imagine engi-nerds in the scale-up model?  PPD was bad enough.

LOL, PPD was awful.

[WildcatNkilt]

I'm guessing kilt sells smart boards for a living

Ha...no.

[sonofdaxjones]

As someone who has been engaged in providing technology solutions for schools (but not things like White Boards) I can't tell you how many times I've talked to IT staffs who just roll their eyes at things like Interactive White Boards and group collaboration and how the money that pays for those robs money from core IT infrastructure improvements and upgrades.    Maintaining those systems with only a finite number of human resources becomes more cumbersome as they age, and maintenance contracts are expensive. 

IT Staffs would much rather improve core connectivity, improve things like the WLAN experience to facilite a secure BYOD environment, as well as upgrade server capacity or the cloud experience that can drive content to the individual user.

Right, but none of the money for a new building is used to improve core infrastructure.  All maintenance contracts would initially be rolled into the cost of the building, and not into the campus IT's yearly budget.  And for future maintenance contracts, the school of "x" could just as easily roll it into their budget instead of it coming out of the general IT budget. 

My whole point is K-State is KSTATEO'ing this up before the building is even built.  They will be behind on classroom experience compared to other universities when the doors first open.  Again, a lot of it is driven from the college so maybe fingers should be pointed at the School of Engineering and not Kansas State University for half-assing it.  I hope that the K-State's school of business visits new higher education buildings before breaking ground on a $30mill building to ensure they are staying competitive.  Lecture classrooms are becoming the thing of the past.

The other issue is these are very "du juor" systems, that get phased out quickly, or even worse the company that provided them either goes out of business or gets bought out and the new company phases out the product for the latest and greatest, and the product life cycle is getting shorter for the established companies. 

Classrooms across the land are littered with the remenants of the hot technology of the day, it cost a ton of money, and a few years later, nobody is even using it anymore.

 

[hatingfrancisco]

As someone who has been engaged in providing technology solutions for schools (but not things like White Boards) I can't tell you how many times I've talked to IT staffs who just roll their eyes at things like Interactive White Boards and group collaboration and how the money that pays for those robs money from core IT infrastructure improvements and upgrades.    Maintaining those systems with only a finite number of human resources becomes more cumbersome as they age, and maintenance contracts are expensive. 

IT Staffs would much rather improve core connectivity, improve things like the WLAN experience to facilite a secure BYOD environment, as well as upgrade server capacity or the cloud experience that can drive content to the individual user.

Right, but none of the money for a new building is used to improve core infrastructure.  All maintenance contracts would initially be rolled into the cost of the building, and not into the campus IT's yearly budget.  And for future maintenance contracts, the school of "x" could just as easily roll it into their budget instead of it coming out of the general IT budget. 

My whole point is K-State is KSTATEO'ing this up before the building is even built.  They will be behind on classroom experience compared to other universities when the doors first open.  Again, a lot of it is driven from the college so maybe fingers should be pointed at the School of Engineering and not Kansas State University for half-assing it.  I hope that the K-State's school of business visits new higher education buildings before breaking ground on a $30mill building to ensure they are staying competitive.  Lecture classrooms are becoming the thing of the past.

Pretty heads on here guys.  The core infrastructure is usually the last thing that comes to mind when these new buildings are built.  And seeing as how it's not factored into the budget for these new buildings and technological classrooms it becomes pretty damn difficult to facilitate the changes and therefore someone is left with egg on their faces when it doesn't work.

Case in point being this sememster a professor decided that he wanted to use a "clicker" service in his normal classroom activities (sort of a gameshow type question and response app where students use their phones to buzz in with correct answers).  It's something that would have been a great idea but unfortunately this wouldn't work in an area that didn't support the wireless density for a class of this size (150 or so students). 

There are changes being made across campus in regards to technology classrooms, but you can't snap your fingers and turn a room in Thompson to a tech class overnight.  It takes time and money.

The good news is K-State was awarded a major grant that will allow us to overhaul most of our core networking infrastructure and push us into some pretty cool new technology like SDN and Openflow.  Those changes are going to start happening here pretty soon.

Already the West Stadium Center is one of the first sports venues in the country to offer 802.11ac capable wifi. I know that there are talks to try to come up with a solution to offer these services throughout all stadium and Bramlage as well. 

[hemmy]

Can you imagine engi-nerds in the scale-up model?  PPD was bad enough. 

Well PPD was a completely worthless class.

[Pett]

derb is so elite

Best part about shacking up with a Ford Hall filly was going over to the Derb to eat instead of Kramer.  Then again any reason to get the hell away from Marlatt Penitentiary was fine.

Can confirm.

Or you can have the best of both worlds and live in Haymaker

[WildcatNkilt]

As someone who has been engaged in providing technology solutions for schools (but not things like White Boards) I can't tell you how many times I've talked to IT staffs who just roll their eyes at things like Interactive White Boards and group collaboration and how the money that pays for those robs money from core IT infrastructure improvements and upgrades.    Maintaining those systems with only a finite number of human resources becomes more cumbersome as they age, and maintenance contracts are expensive. 

IT Staffs would much rather improve core connectivity, improve things like the WLAN experience to facilite a secure BYOD environment, as well as upgrade server capacity or the cloud experience that can drive content to the individual user.

Right, but none of the money for a new building is used to improve core infrastructure.  All maintenance contracts would initially be rolled into the cost of the building, and not into the campus IT's yearly budget.  And for future maintenance contracts, the school of "x" could just as easily roll it into their budget instead of it coming out of the general IT budget. 

My whole point is K-State is KSTATEO'ing this up before the building is even built.  They will be behind on classroom experience compared to other universities when the doors first open.  Again, a lot of it is driven from the college so maybe fingers should be pointed at the School of Engineering and not Kansas State University for half-assing it.  I hope that the K-State's school of business visits new higher education buildings before breaking ground on a $30mill building to ensure they are staying competitive.  Lecture classrooms are becoming the thing of the past.

The other issue is these are very "du juor" systems, that get phased out quickly, or even worse the company that provided them either goes out of business or gets bought out and the new company phases out the product for the latest and greatest, and the product life cycle is getting shorter for the established companies. 

Classrooms across the land are littered with the remenants of the hot technology of the day, it cost a ton of money, and a few years later, nobody is even using it anymore.

 

I agree with this 100% which makes the BYOD type of designs more important.  The technology needs to have the ability to adapt to new as well as play with old.  A lot of the newer technology out there has that ability (if designed properly). 

Many "mom and pop" companies tend to trunk-slam bids in order to win the jobs.  Unless a consultant is brought in, that will create shitty designs from a company that could go out of business from a few minor mistakes. 

A lot of what you said above is preventable...but it all comes with a price.  Rooms should be designed so when technology is updated it's not a complete rip/replace scenario.  Sadly, most of the time it's not. 

Whats great about the digital age is that a lot of technology now days is distributed over category cable, infrastructure that will not be going away any time soon.

[cfbandyman]

As someone who has been engaged in providing technology solutions for schools (but not things like White Boards) I can't tell you how many times I've talked to IT staffs who just roll their eyes at things like Interactive White Boards and group collaboration and how the money that pays for those robs money from core IT infrastructure improvements and upgrades.    Maintaining those systems with only a finite number of human resources becomes more cumbersome as they age, and maintenance contracts are expensive. 

IT Staffs would much rather improve core connectivity, improve things like the WLAN experience to facilite a secure BYOD environment, as well as upgrade server capacity or the cloud experience that can drive content to the individual user.

Right, but none of the money for a new building is used to improve core infrastructure.  All maintenance contracts would initially be rolled into the cost of the building, and not into the campus IT's yearly budget.  And for future maintenance contracts, the school of "x" could just as easily roll it into their budget instead of it coming out of the general IT budget. 

My whole point is K-State is KSTATEO'ing this up before the building is even built.  They will be behind on classroom experience compared to other universities when the doors first open.  Again, a lot of it is driven from the college so maybe fingers should be pointed at the School of Engineering and not Kansas State University for half-assing it.  I hope that the K-State's school of business visits new higher education buildings before breaking ground on a $30mill building to ensure they are staying competitive.  Lecture classrooms are becoming the thing of the past.

Pretty heads on here guys.  The core infrastructure is usually the last thing that comes to mind when these new buildings are built.  And seeing as how it's not factored into the budget for these new buildings and technological classrooms it becomes pretty damn difficult to facilitate the changes and therefore someone is left with egg on their faces when it doesn't work.

Case in point being this sememster a professor decided that he wanted to use a "clicker" service in his normal classroom activities (sort of a gameshow type question and response app where students use their phones to buzz in with correct answers).  It's something that would have been a great idea but unfortunately this wouldn't work in an area that didn't support the wireless density for a class of this size (150 or so students). 

There are changes being made across campus in regards to technology classrooms, but you can't snap your fingers and turn a room in Thompson to a tech class overnight.  It takes time and money.

The good news is K-State was awarded a major grant that will allow us to overhaul most of our core networking infrastructure and push us into some pretty cool new technology like SDN and Openflow.  Those changes are going to start happening here pretty soon.

Already the West Stadium Center is one of the first sports venues in the country to offer 802.11ac capable wifi. I know that there are talks to try to come up with a solution to offer these services throughout all stadium and Bramlage as well.

What immediately come to mind is Fielder Auditorium and their hard lined Ethernet ports built into the desks, obviously no one one uses those within a few years after they're installed because of wifi. I know they served a purpose for a bit but now it's just a wasted (albeit fairly small) cost. Hopefully they're thinking of future proofing, or at least being flexible to allow for future modifications with the new buildings so they can stay relevant longer. 

[Belvis Noland]

Let's please focus on what's most important...  who's building will look best from the outside?  Our or KU's? 

I mean, scale-up sounds neat, but I don't really give a crap.  I just want to see a badass building as I'm crusing by on my way to badass BSFS for 8 games a year. 

[Rage Against the McKee]

What immediately come to mind is Fielder Auditorium and their hard lined Ethernet ports built into the desks, obviously no one one uses those within a few years after they're installed because of wifi. I know they served a purpose for a bit but now it's just a wasted (albeit fairly small) cost. Hopefully they're thinking of future proofing, or at least being flexible to allow for future modifications with the new buildings so they can stay relevant longer.

When I was in college, the ethernet jacks in Fiedler Auditorium were never used because almost nobody took their laptop to class.

[hatingfrancisco]

What immediately come to mind is Fielder Auditorium and their hard lined Ethernet ports built into the desks, obviously no one one uses those within a few years after they're installed because of wifi. I know they served a purpose for a bit but now it's just a wasted (albeit fairly small) cost. Hopefully they're thinking of future proofing, or at least being flexible to allow for future modifications with the new buildings so they can stay relevant longer.

The biggest thing is density.  The number one issue with wireless on Campus is there aren't enough access points installed to support everyone and their 3 devices everywhere across campus.  It's being addressed but as with anything there are speed bumps (outdated cabling, architecture, etc) so it's not an easy task. 

New buildings are easy as they tend to get the current latest and greatest.

[WildcatNkilt]

Let's please focus on what's most important...  who's building will look best from the outside?  Our or KU's? 

I mean, scale-up sounds neat, but I don't really give a crap.  I just want to see a badass building as I'm crusing by on my way to badass BSFS for 8 games a year.

KU Engineering Expansion


KSU Engineering Expansion


Ours will look nicer, but KU's expansion is much much bigger.

[EMAWican]

What good is the latest and greatest teaching "technology" when over half the engineering professors struggle to turn on an overhead projector?  Christ.     

The main thing is outside aesthetics and addressing over-crowding within classrooms and labs (and just having a computer for students to access).  K-State isn't MIT, and that's a good thing. 

[sonofdaxjones]

Captain Obvious point of the day is that the latest WLAN stuff from all the usual suspects can support the density.    Just need to make sure the core switching can support the AP's (I see it all the time, entities plugging in AP's that have 3-600 Mbps plus throughput capability, and they plug them into 10/100 switch ports that don't have enough POE power to fully power the AP itself . . . hello!!).

It's not as sexy, but I'd rather see all the collborative stuff in the back office and made acceessible through a BYOD and the network via a portal/app whatever.   When I start seeing the flatscreens and the customized furniture the alarm bells start going off.   Looks great though, probably easier to sell to dumb incoming Freshman and their parents.

[Belvis Noland]

K-State isn't MIT, and that's a good thing.

MIT is among the most prestigous engineering instutions in the U.S. 

So, why is this a good thing?

[Rage Against the McKee]

Captain Obvious point of the day is that the latest WLAN stuff from all the usual suspects can support the density.    Just need to make sure the core switching can support the AP's (I see it all the time, entities plugging in AP's that have 3-600 Mbps plus throughput capability, and they plug them into 10/100 switch ports that don't have enough POE power to fully power the AP itself . . . hello!!).

It's not as sexy, but I'd rather see all the collborative stuff in the back office and made acceessible through a BYOD and the network via a portal/app whatever.   When I start seeing the flatscreens and the customized furniture the alarm bells start going off.   Looks great though, probably easier to sell to dumb incoming Freshman and their parents.

I think all of the flatscreens and nice furniture seem kind of high-schooly.

[EMAWican]

K-State isn't MIT, and that's a good thing.

MIT is among the most prestigous engineering instutions in the U.S. 

So, why is this a good thing?

Do I even have to argue this?  If you want to be an engineer, let me know how that 8.2% acceptance rate and $42k+ in tuition per year works out.  But they have cool tech-ey classrooms and scale-up, tho.