In an attempt to innovate the classroom experience with enhanced interactivity between course content and media, MU’s Department of Space Planning and Management updated a room in Strickland Hall in fall 2010.
Decking it out with interactive whiteboards and seats “much more comfortable than your average chair,” these futuristic rooms were created with the purpose of improving the classroom experience. Instructors at the time lauded the room’s ability to create a “more mature and intellectual,” rather than “institutional,” learning environment.
Now less than a year later, plans have been set to expand the program to other facilities on campus.
We are enthusiastic about concrete initiatives to better integrate interactive media into the classroom, as we’ve all at one point been in the audience of a broken projector or DVD player. Enhancing the technology of our classrooms is certainly a worthwhile task, and we advocate it when appropriate.
However, carrying a $100,000 price tag apiece, these rooms seem excessive compared to MU’s ever-increasing list of deferred maintenance projects on campus. Rather than using what limited money we have to improve cracked walls and chipped painted, MU’s move to spend thousands on brand-new technology is made more frustrating by the technology’s underuse by instructors.
Now a semester after the room’s installation, MU reports positive feedback from students and teachers about the room’s atmosphere. One instructor, graduate student Thomas Coleman, said he did not use the technology at all.
It’s apparent to us that MU is not being choosy in the ways in which they fill the room. Rather than randomly assigning classes to these futuristic rooms, MU needs to be deliberate in considering how the room can enhance certain curricula more than others. MU should also consider assigning certain professors to the room who actually intend to apply the technology to their teaching, rather than a teacher for whom the technology is unneeded.
And even broader, MU should consider placing fiscal responsibility over the quite-marketable endeavor of producing the most innovative classrooms around. We should place the quality of our entire campus into the forefront, rather than fixing things that don’t need to be fixed.