Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62198
The distance learning suite at the University of Arizona A tech-connected study room at Case Western Reserve University Design Meets Technology Architects have discovered that it doesn't matter how advanced a room's technology is if a room's design doesn't encourage its use. Last year, for example, Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, Ohio, completed construction of its more-than- distinctive, $36-million, tech-ready Peter B. Lewis Building. When school administrators chose the renowned Frank Gehry as its architect, however, they had not realized the lengths to which Gehry and his staff would go to make sure the building's classrooms were both technologically advanced and user-friendly. From the placement of the podium to the swivel in the chairs, technology went hand in hand with the building's design. "One of the architects asked me to tell him about the first around and create a conference table with the row behind them. It was a very clever solution to my little problem." In fact, it seems the term "high-tech" is quickly becoming too narrow to describe what's happening in classroom design. Schools are finding it more difficult to divorce technology from a room's total functionality. Talk of chairs, walls, and floors becomes mixed in with discussion of wiring, computer stations, and switches. This holistic approach is one reason that today's new classrooms are such a success, agrees Gerard McCartney, CIO of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "We didn't want technology to be the big novelty of these Collopy. "But in the finished building, there's a classroom where the depth of the desks is not uniform from row to row. Some desks are about one and a half times as wide as others. Furthermore, there are two rows of desks on any level. I final- ly realized that students in one row can turn their desks 15 minutes of a typical class. I told him I'd have my students read a case or background material before class. Then during class, I'd have them break into small groups," explains Fred Collopy, professor and chair of the school's department of information systems. "'How does that actually happen?' he asked. I told him that some students stand up around their desks, some go into the hallway, some change seats and move up so their group is all on one level. Because of the tiers of the seats, it can be difficult for groups to form if they're not on the same level. "And that was it. There was no further discussion," recalls classrooms, but we wanted lots of novel functionality in the rooms," he says. "For instance, the chairs in all of our class- rooms rotate through 360 degrees to facilitate discussion and interaction." This may not seem like the kind of detail that strikes most people when they think of technology, he admits, but it's as important to the design of a "high-tech" classroom as any software or hardware. The Luxury of Space Besides budget, a primary constraint to integrating new tech- nologies has simply been a lack of space. Without the funding for new buildings, business schools that bought new technol- ogy often struggled to make it fit comfortably into an older building with traditional architecture. Vinod Kumar, dean of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton College in Ottawa, Ontario, knows this difficulty far too well. When school administrators realized they needed to update the school's information systems, they were afraid that they would have to make concessions because of a lack of available space. The project received a boon, however, when donors came forward to fund construction of a new building. The Sprott Technology Centre, completed last October, boasts data feeds from various stock exchanges, SAP enter- prisewide software, an e-business lab, and a trading lab. "When we started the project, we thought we would only Students in NIU's professional sales program monitor a role-playing exercise in a remote mock office. 30 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 be able to have the e-business lab," says Kumar. "But as we started talking about the project, Reuters became very excit- ed about our plans and donated ten years of free data feeds. Then, we got significant donations from the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Sprott Investment Company. With each new donation, the plan was enhanced." At one time, Misic and David Graf, dean of NIU's business