Technology upgrades across campus are giving more students an interactive classroom experience.
Numerous central pool classrooms - spaces that are open to classes held by any school - are in the process of a massive technology update.
Changes include increased accommodations for "clicker" technology, upgrades in projection technology, Windows 2007 on all classroom computers and the installation of SMART Sympodium, a new program that can record a professor's voice as well as what he does on the computer in a lecture hall.
John MacDermott, director for instructional technology for School of Arts and Sciences Computing, said the combination of increased funds and a plethora of requests from professors allowed the Classroom Facilities Review Committee to step up its activities this year.
Within the past two years, the provost's office has doubled the funding for classroom technology upgrades to $2 million per year. Provost Ron Daniels was "anxious to see the pace of these developments accelerate" MacDermott said.
That money is allocated to individual central pool classrooms by the committee, which consists of representatives from the Registrar's office, Facilities, all the undergraduate schools, faculty, students and the Vice Provost for University Life, MacDermott said.
MacDermott said clickers are seeing an "explosion" in popularity this year. Clickers are handheld devices that let professors collect and display data from students during class time.
More classrooms now have the software necessary for clicker use.
"Now we have a system that we can use on a large scale," with the capacity for several hundred students to use the clickers, he said.
College senior Aliza Machefsky said the Smart Sympodium technology was extremely useful in her Cellular Neurobiology class.
As an Orthodox Jew, she said the recording of the professor's voice and markings on PowerPoint slides allowed her to relax over the Jewish holidays because "essentially, you have the class right in front of you."
Kristen Haneman, also a College senior, was not as enthusiastic about the new clicker technology.
"I think it's not fair that you have to buy it yourself," she said.
MacDermott said that automated e-mails are sent to all the professors who teach in a particular classroom to inform them of the availability of particular technologies and to offer resources for help.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.