College Planning & Management

MAY 2013

College Planning & Management is the information resource for professionals serving the college and university market. Covering facilities, security, technology and business.

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IN THE KNOW EN H A NCI NG + ENGAGI NG + C ON N EC T I NG M AY 2 013 THIS MON TH 89 EMERGING TECHNOLOGY 90 TECH WATCH 91 TECH UPGRADE Multimedia U Effective multimedia technology ignites student learning. by JASMINE EVANS T oday, in college classrooms, instead of the silence of students taking notes in notebooks, one may hear the soft tapping of laptop keys. Instead of students raising their hands to answer a question, many classes now require clickers. Technology in the classroom has been evolving at a rapid rate, leaving teachers and students sometimes running to keep up. Multimedia technology, which specifically refers to technology related to audio and video, is no exception. From SmartBoards to YouTube, colleges throughout the world are taking multimedia technology to the next level in hopes of triggering curiosity, excitement, and understanding in students. To AV and Beyond Raymond Kent, managing principal of the Sustainable Technologies Group and adjunct faculty at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, OH, notes that multimedia technology activates more than one of the senses for students. Students have to listen, watch, and possibly use their hands to interact with whatever technological set-up the teacher has provided. This approach can lead to higher information retention and greater understanding by students. Ronald Berk, former professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in a study that multimedia technology, specifically videos, engages both sides of the brain and taps into verbal and spatial 86 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MAY 2013 learning processes. This deep interaction with the brain can allow students to remember what they learn in class better and to understand the material in a different way. At Cuyahoga Community College, the administration has spent millions of dollars changing the way the classrooms are laid out and the way technology is infused into the rooms. The technological changes have given faculty more flexibility and opened their eyes to new ways of doing things. For example, in one of the buildings at Cuyahoga, they have a new audio distribution system. Professors can record what's going on in class and the audio file is linked to the recording studios in the building. Professors also have the option to edit those recordings in one of the five editing suites. Their fiber optics also allows them to do the same with video in the classroom. Even though the system was designed and added in 2009, Kent asserts that it is still incredibly state-of-the-art as they have built on it over the last few years. "The key to designing a multimedia classroom of today or tomorrow is making sure you design the right infrastructure, flexible infrastructure," says Kent. Since technology is constantly changing, whatever schools choose to put in their classrooms should be able to adapt to changes that are made. At Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA, the AV Department is working hard to standardize a new projection system to adapt to the evolution of projection technology. Instead of projectors that require a laptop with cables, the professors at WWW.PLANNING 4EDUCATION.COM

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