The IT Department added two new collaboration hub tables on the second floor lounge of Hillside Hall. Finished just a week before fall classes began, this technology allows students to share individual work from their laptops on a big screen TV.
“This is brand new for this campus,” Tom Sawyer, chief information officer for the IT Department, said. “This is as good as you’re going to see anywhere in the country.”
He added, “Nobody else has done it. The company that put this together for us had never done one like this.”
The collaboration hub tables work by letting up to four students connect their laptops or tablets to the TV screen through a chord. The chords are kept in a small black box on the table, which also holds a touch screen panel.
Students can view each other’s work from their individual laptops by touching a number on the touch panel. The information from one student’s computer is shown on the screen and can be switched between each student’s laptop by pressing a button.
Sawyer said the keyboards and mouse are wireless in order to better assist students and keep the tables neat. He said he did not want chords hanging out, as with some of the other IU campuses.
Though located in Hillside Hall, the tables are not owned by the Department of Education or Business — they are available for everyone on campus.
No appointment is needed, but use is on a first come, first serve basis.
Aside from working at IU Southeast, Sawyer also works with three other IU campuses.
He added a total of nine collaboration hub tables at the campuses and one in the new IUS Graduate Center in Jeffersonville.
“[Other IU campuses] have similar technologies, but they haven’t put them together quite like we did,” Sawyer said. “We did them a little bit different.”
Sawyer said the idea for the collaboration tables themselves actually came from collaborations among IT Department members. He said the staff members brainstormed ways to keep up technologically with changing teaching methods and worked with other IU campuses to see how they could best implement new technology at IU Southeast.
After seeing other campuses using collaboration hub tables, Sawyer said they worked to add some on campus.
In addition, Sawyer said he noticed how his grandchildren were starting to work on collaborative kinds of projects as early as elementary school and thought colleges and universities should keep pace.
He said he hopes new equipment, such as the hubs, will help take the technology discussion off the table for faculty and students.
“There should be no reason why, technologically, they can’t do the things they want to do,” he said.
The collaboration hub tables are meant to be a pilot for IU Southeast to see if and how well they work. Sawyer said the IT Department is looking to find out if this is something teachers and students want and can use.
“We’re trying to get faculty involvement, as well as student involvement, in analyzing it,” he said.
If the pilots are successful, Sawyer said the IT Department plans on adding more collaboration hub tables in the future.
Though exact locations are yet unknown, they have looked into spaces in the Physical and Life Sciences Buildings, Knobview Hall and the University Center South computer lab.
“We wouldn’t do tables exactly like this, but we would design them for that space,” Sawyer said.
These new additions were not the only changes that came along with the newly renovated lounge in Hillside Hall.
Sawyer asked to add various types of seating and circular tables. Numerous outlets were also added to allow more students to plug in their cellphones, laptops and other devices.
Lee Staton, manager of communications and special projects for the IT Department, designed the collaboration hub space in Hillside Hall and conducted all the research on the tables.
“As we do more spaces like this, we’re not just talking about technology we’re going to put out. We’re trying to accommodate the fact that most students are bringing three or four devices to school now,” Staton said.
Sawyer said the ultimate goal is to make a collaborative classroom of some kind at IU Southeast.
“I think this campus is behind a little bit in our classroom technology infrastructure,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is just bring it up to date.”
By SAMANTHA FRAZIER
Staff
sefrazie@ius.edu
