Introducing Hybrid Classrooms to Campus

In an effort to support additional modes of teaching on campus, Technology Support Services (TSS) and Educational Technology & Media (ETM) are working together to pilot three hybrid/remote classrooms, to develop a long-term plan for providing support and to continue to add more hybrid paces on campus.

The current classrooms that have new equipment are:

• Cremona 202

• McKenna 118

• Demaray 356

Each space is a pilot outfitted with slightly different configurations to allow TSS & ETM to learn what works well in these spaces and also to learn which technology solution(s) teachers can also smoothly integrate into their teaching methods. In this post, we will introduce you to the technologies installed in these spaces so you can be thinking about how you might utilize these features in your own teaching.

About the Rooms

Both Cremona 202 and McKenna 118 were selected in response to faculty setting up their own conferencing hardware for Zoom hybrid classes during Covid-19. To meet user needs, TSS partnered with ETM and began to develop a plan to see how we could integrate these technologies and make them part of our standard classroom model.

Cremona 202

This room contains our standard podium setup, but also has a TV mounted in the front of the room with a Logitech Conference Bar; which is an all-in-one solution with a camera, microphones, and speakers. Additionally, there is a touchscreen controller which can be used to control Zoom sessions. The Logitech camera captures a view of the whole room, instead of solely focusing on the professor. The TV acts as a secondary screen to show remote participants.

This space contains two separate systems and you may not have the room flexibility you may want due to how furniture and the room are configured.

In this space, the professor would join the Zoom meeting on the touch screen controller and plug in their SPU-provided laptop or use the podium PC to display slides. Thus, this room has two different connections to the class Zoom meeting; one to display content to in-person and remote participants, and the other for the audio and video communication with the remote students, from two different accounts.

Please note: the “second” account would be the room itself; users can start the meeting from the touch screen controller or use the meeting code to join the meeting with the touch screen controller. If you would like to read more about this configuration, please see our documentation here.

Cremona 202 Hardware

Open

Crem202 TV with Attached Logitech Conference Bar

Open

Crem 202 Logitech Tap Controller

DLMH 118

Like Cremona 202, there are separate TV and Logitech hybrid components in the room, but they are mounted on a cart instead of the wall.  This allows the instructor to re-arrange the furniture in a variety of ways that Cremona may not be able to, providing for more flexibility.

This room is outfitted with the same hardware, plus an additional camera to capture the professor directly, with a supplementary microphone pod to improve the audio capture of in-person students for class discussions. These additions are due to DLMH118 being a larger space than CREM102.

McKenna/DLMH Hardware:

Demaray 356

This classroom has a completely re-designed the podium setup, allowing for instructors to plug-in a laptop to display content with the projector. Instructors can also choose to connect the mounted camera and belt pack microphone to their laptop and run both the Zoom meeting and in-person classroom simultaneously.

The intention behind this design is to make streaming or recording a lecture easier, though it will not capture the audio or video of students. This is due to the class being tailored to ensure that remote participants can hear and see the professor, rather than to provide a more hybrid-like classroom experience. With those details in mind, ETM encourages instructors to consider how the space works within the mode in which you’d like to teach.

Demaray Hardware:

About the Pilot Process

Pilot rooms exist as opportunities for TSS and ETM to invest and test innovative technologies and/or room designs with the Office of the Registrar and Facilities. These pilots allow TSS and ETM to respond to instructor teaching goals and to the needs expressed on campus.

The final versions of hybrid rooms for some spaces may change before other rooms are converted on campus. For that reason, ETM and TSS would like to request your feedback on the technologies in these spaces as such feedback will be a vital component in how we plan classroom upgrades and choose which features to introduce within the budget we have.

Even in nonpilot spaces, your feedback and perspectives are important.

Past surveys have indicated there is a need to improve the technologies in classrooms and to provide enhanced features, such as instructor audio and video recording, or alternatively, to provide student audio and video recording. In our current pilots, we opted to address these needs while working within the budget that is available. In our continued work to address these concerns and to provide an enhanced classroom experience, it will be necessary to look for creative solutions to save money for the classrooms spaces we support and to look at how we could introduce more of these spaces, like DLMH, on campus.

Providing Feedback

If you would like to view additional details about each of these spaces, please view Hyflex Classrooms.

If you have ideas on what this could look like or you would like to learn more, we encourage you to reach out to the TSS Director, Karen Park at kpark@spu.edu or to the Assistant Dean for Instructional Design and Emerging Technologies, John Robertson at rjr@spu.edu.

If you would like to provide input on our standard classroom designs and learning space standards now.