4/14/15
The interns toured Frey Hall this week with Diana Voss to learn more about the technology available in this relatively new building. We began with the most recent addition to Frey, which is the Testing Center in rm 109. With a webcam on each of the 60+ computers and rows of overhead surveillance cameras monitoring every student, the room was designed to take every measure against potential cheating. The computers themselves look more impressive than the typical ones founds in our SINC Sites and are equipped with fancy keyboards with built-in fingerprint scanners. My initial impression of the Testing Center was that of slight intimidation: it’s only missing a metal detector at the entrance to make it look like a prison complex. But, I suppose the appearance is expected of a high end testing center such as this.
Next, we went upstairs to check out the study lounge outside the classrooms. There are two tables with a number of AV cables for students wanting to connect their laptops to a larger TV screen. These areas are intended for casual group studying, but Rose was concerned that students were reluctant to use them, believing that the lounge was a COLA that had to be reserved. Hopefully we can come up with another acronym that better describes the more relaxed accessibility of the area.
Our class also visited rm 219 down the hall, which is equipped with two rotating cameras and several microphones built into the lecture tables. The purpose of this room is to accommodate Distant Learning (DL) courses, which allows students to take a class with instructors that are located miles off campus or vice versa. The courses essentially work as a video chat between students and instructors, allowing for interaction through the room’s microphones. I was impressed that the camera in the front of the room even snaps to whichever student opens a microphone. The concept sounds very fun and I would love to enroll in a DL class just to play around with the technology.
Lastly, we returned downstairs to the huge classroom where many of us took Gen Chem or Orgo Chem in. The technology in here is reminiscent of that from the Fine Arts SINC Site with tablets, Wacom styluses, and microphones. Additionally, each table has moveable cameras for group presentation of written work and USB ports to charge phones. I feel that both this room and the DL classroom would be suitable places to hold Bootcamp in!
As for mentoring, I feel that I am becoming more and more comfortable with site manager duties. Steven allowed me to practice perm scheduling using his Math SINC Site e-mails and I had little trouble organizing consultants fairly into the site’s shifts. Ming showed me how to do end of the year evaluations and discussed qualities of good consultants that she would be most inclined to give hours to during scheduling.
On the other hand, I regrettably struggled with a help desk call under Erika last Tuesday night when an instructor was complaining about the lack of presentation options in room W4545. He was presenting a DVD to his students and needed to pause the video once in a while to make his own comments. He was able to accomplish this, but gave me a a long list of complaints anyway. I was unsure of what his problem was and so I did not know how to resolve his issue. I ultimately gave the call to Erika to take over, who found out that he wanted a remote to control the video instead of having to manually pause it, as well as a display of the video built into the instructor podium. I ended up filing a footprint listing his requests. On a lighter note, I took a shadow hour with Lillian on Friday morning, which was my first time working inside TLL. I learned about the poster printer room, the HD desk setup (which features dual monitors for easy searching), and more on workshops.