Tidal Wave II is already a reality at UCR, which is the UC system's fastest growing campus with a projected growth rate of 1,000 more students a year for the next 8 to 9 years. The impact is already being felt in undergraduate lower-division courses that serve hundreds of students.

To allow for courses to enroll more students and to leverage technology to give those students an enhanced learning experience, the campus has built three state-of-the-art classrooms or "learning environments" in the past two years: the University Lecture Hall, the CNAS Undergraduate Multimedia Teaching Facility, and the Multimedia and Production Lab in new Arts Building.

University Lecture Hall

Faculty input was critical to the planning of the 575-seat University Lecture Hall, which officially opened its doors in January. "Faculty met monthly with the architects during the design process and told them what they wanted. The architects designed a facility that would meet as many of the requirements as possible, within the budget restraints," says Leo Schouest, manager of Faculty/Student Technical Support in Computing & Communications. "Every use of technology was designed to facilitate and foster interactivity with students in large classes."

University Lecture Hall (Source: Susan Carter, UCR)

Organic Chemistry Professor Tom Morton was the first instructor to try out the new lecture hall during its pilot phase this fall. Morton was interested in testing out the facility's digital projection system and multiple screens to enhance the experience of his students during his lectures.

"Students say that they learn Chemistry best by watching the instructor work out a problem," Morton says. "They also say that a pure PowerPoint presentation goes too fast for them and that they prefer the pace of when you actually draw things out for them."

Morton used the University Lecture Hall's movie theater-sized screens to show his animated PowerPoint presentations as well as what he was drawing on the marker boards (or Smart Boards) so he could work out problems in real time and toggle between the presentation and problem solving. He also found the lecture hall's video capabilities useful for projecting live and close-up how he assembles models of molecules so that every student could see in detail what he does.

Faculty from a range of academic disciplines -- biology, psychology, business administration, and economics -- are currently teaching large lower-level courses in the hall, using its high-tech equipment in a variety of ways. Although no one is using the facility right now to teach to a remote audience, the hall was designed to allow for that use.

Undergraduate Multimedia Teaching Facility

As UCR enrollments increased in recent years, the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) found itself with an overwhelming number of students in its undergraduate statistics courses. Instructors found themselves teaching larger lecture sections, and, since these courses are commonly accompanied by computer labs, having to schedule more lab sections, thereby making it difficult to give students individualized attention.

Click for larger image (Source: Robotel control panel; UCR)

In response to this growing problem, the College built the Undergraduate Multimedia Teaching Facility . The number of computers in the lab tripled, allowing for a reduction in the number of lab sections offered with a particular course. (For example, a course that previously required 10 lab sections can now be done with four.) Although the number of students in a lab section has increased, the classroom's state-of-the-art instructional technologies enable the instructor to communicate more easily with students and engage them in participative and active learning exercises while making optimal use of both time and space.

"The impact on teaching capabilities and student learning has been enormous," says Lecturer Linda Penas, who helped design the classroom and has used it extensively since it came online in Fall 2000. "Using this facility has enabled us to provide detailed individualized attention in a large classroom setting. The interactive capabilities have greatly enhanced the methods of dissemination of information to students and have transformed even shy students into active participants." Penas reports that the classroom has "invigorated interest and piqued curiosity among students while promoting creativity on the part of instructors and TAs". (It has also provided a side benefit of dramatically reducing her previous workload of maintaining the Statistics Department's computer labs.)

The classroom features a complete suite of Robotel classroom management technology, which gives instructors the ability to project their workstation's contents to all computers in the facility. Any student's or group of students' workstation contents can be projected in the same way, thus engaging the class in a "participative" classroom environment. The instructor can also multicast images or multimedia presentations from a laptop, VCR, or document camera to all computers in the classroom, providing students with up to four inputs of information displayed on their screen at the same time.

Looking to the future, the College built an infrastructure that would allow the facility to "grow" so that it could be connected to other UCR classrooms by the campus's high-speed network, and perhaps to remote locations for distance learning.

Multimedia and Production Lab in New Arts Building

In Spring 2001, UCR opened its new Arts Building, the campus's signature architectural gateway, with 55,000 square feet for teaching and learning the Arts as well as sharing performances and exhibits with the community.

The following Fall quarter the campus premiered the building's state-of-the-art creation lab called the Multimedia and Production Lab. A suite of six rooms, the main lab has 16 multimedia audio-video consoles that are connected to each other and to the instructor, like the Robotel classroom used to teach statistics.

Click for larger image (Source: Multimedia & Production Lab; UCR)

"The Lab mimics a Hollywood studio," says Schouest. "Each Macintosh workstation includes a 22-inch flat panel display, with all of the modern software and hardware and with high-speed Firewire connections. There are also scanners for large format negatives as well as 35mm color printers and plotters. And there's a digital performance suite in which students can stage and film their own movies, complete with sound tracks."

General Assignment Classrooms

In addition to building new facilities, UCR is retrofitting all of its general assignment (GA) classrooms to make them multimedia capable (high-speed Internet access, projection capabilities, etc.). "By the summer of 2003 we will have upgraded all 60 of the rooms," says Schouest. "We're also trying to bring non-GA classrooms up to speed and trying to standardize how they work so instructors won't have to constantly be on a learning curve."

These examples are but a sampling of the modern learning facilities that exist throughout the UC system. If your campus has developed or is planning to build high-tech classrooms, we'd like to know about it. Send an email to the TLtC at tltc@ucop.edu.