Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62215
… Learning! Technicians in the audio - visual command center at the new Charles F. Knight Executive Center at Washington University in St. Louis monitor and con- trol audio and video in each classroom simultaneously. projectors, CDs to DVDs, the classroom, in many cases, has become both stage and recording studio, as educators deliver more sophisticated multimedia presentations to more media- savvy students. As a result, the staging, production, and for- mat of educational materials promise to become almost as important as the materials themselves. ent functions. Now, the technology has really come full circle. IT and AV have become so interconnected, they're almost the same," says Russell Just, an AV technician and head of the audiovisual command center at Washington University. Equipped with everything from document cameras to data BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 43 Advancements in multimedia technologies and an emphasis on audiovisual prowess are turning business school class- rooms into true theaters of educational presentation. In the "command center" of the 135,000- square-foot Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a row of televi- sions is positioned above a large console of switches, gauges, and computer monitors. Technicians sit beneath the array of equipment, monitoring the activity in each classroom, from a professor's movement in the classroom, to the quality of the audio and lighting, to the status of each piece of equipment. This bustling room—known at the Knight Center as "mis- sion control"—looks more television production studio than computer lab, more Hollywood than higher education. Anyone who enters is almost sure to think the same thing: This isn't the typical IT support for a business school. With its growing reliance on distance learning, videocon- ferencing, and multimedia presentations, business is embrac- ing the latest in audiovisual technologies, perhaps more than any other discipline. And now that most higher education institutions have adopted the latest computer and Internet technology, presentation technologies represent the next frontier for business schools to explore. "In the past, IT support and AV support were two differ- Camera…