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7/30/2003

By Terry Calhoun

Here at the Syllabus conference in San Jose, we were all thrilled with our day-long visit to Stanford University on Monday and the wonderful facilities we experienced. Of special interest were the many sessions in Wallenberg Hall, home to the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL). There we interacted in several experimental “smart” learning spaces utilizing video, large screens, and various collaborative software programs. If you can picture Tom Cruise in Minority Report, utilizing floor-to-ceiling transparent displays of visually arresting data and moving the data around by waving his arms in the air . . . well, we’re not there yet . . . but these are clearly good first steps on that path. Many attendees from other institutions were in awe of the capabilities and of their apparent cost!

In the panel discussion following most of the day, David Brown or Wake Forest University made the distinction between such “experimental” learning spaces and learning spaces designed with “proven-to-be-best” technologies. We’ll talk a bit more about some of what we saw, but this author thinks that a really inexpensive way to enhance learning in classroom space is pretty easy to introduce and quite inexpensive. I’m talking about instant messenger, IRC chat.

David first stated that he has spent probably a year of his life attending conferences of 1-3 days’ duration, and this particular day, on the Stanford Campus at Syllabus, was perhaps the one day during which he had heard more interesting and useful stuff than on any other single day – so you can get a feel for the load of information we were all processing.

Quite a bit of what we were hearing was the use of these new technologies to “make thinking visible” and to engage individuals in more collaborative groups as they explore knowledge – or argue about it. I particularly liked the way the smaller classrooms in Wallenberg had large displays connected to wireless controls and laptops that let anyone in the room with a laptop, keyboard, or a mouse manipulate the large screens – and move files from those screens to the laptops, and back and forth.

However, David then went on to say that from his perspective in the provost’s office of a smaller institution, his primary concerns in planning for technology in classrooms would be the cost of the technology and of the staff to support it. He would be aiming to build with “proven-to-be-best” technologies, the ascertainment of which he thoroughly appreciated pioneering facilities like Wallenberg Hall for breaking ground on. He had lots of good advice and most of it can be found online, as well as slides from the presentations of Steve Ehrmann (Flashlight Program) and Bob Smith (the Stanford staffer who managed the building’s planning and implementation).

Well, not to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm (including mine) for what is to come, or for the capabilities of Wallenberg Hall, but I think you can get a long way to some of the more useful functionalities by putting a wireless node in the room and letting the students “chat” during class. Pretty simple, pretty cheap!

My first introduction to “chat” during lecture was about 1998 when Harvard’s Berkman Center held its first online law class.