Ushering Dartmouth further into the information age, the College hopes to upgrade 11 classrooms by the end of the term to enhance the educational experience for students and professors.
Eight rooms, dubbed "media-equipped" classrooms, will feature, televisions, video cassette players and overhead projectors, according to Andrew Faunce, assistant director of Instructional Services. The eight classrooms are 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 212 and 213 Dartmouth Hall. The rooms should be functional by the end of the term, Faunce said.
Three classrooms, termed "smart" classrooms, will have the same equipment as the media-equipped classrooms but will also be equipped with compact disc players, audio cassette players, computer projection capabilities and better lighting controls. The College finished upgrading 217 Dartmouth last fall, making it Dartmouth's first smart classroom.
Faunce said Dartmouth hopes to make 28 Silsby Hall and 101 Fairchild Hall smart classrooms by the end of the term.
Faunce said although each room costs different amounts to remodel, the average cost for the media-equipped rooms is about $4,500.
The smart classrooms cost significantly more, according to Faunce. Renovations to 217 Dartmouth cost "somewhere around the order of $65,000," Faunce said.
The College decided to upgrade the classrooms in response to a survey conducted three years ago, said Malcolm Brown, director of academic computing.
Brown said the College surveyed faculty members and students about classrooms and "identified three areas of concern" -- quantity of classrooms, the upkeep of existing rooms and the ability to use computers in the rooms.
"Some [classrooms] were looking a bit long in the tooth," Brown said.
The first smart classroom to be remodeled was 217 Dartmouth, the prototype for project
"We recalculated the seating capacity so there is more room to move, reoriented the room so there is less distance front to back and added more chalkboards," Faunce said.
In 217 Dartmouth, the lighting is now zone-controlled, meaning a professor can easily control the lighting in many different parts of the room, Faunce said.
Last summer, before renovation of 217 Dartmouth was complete, Brown told The Dartmouth that "we have great ambitions for this new classroom. We hope it will be fantastically successful."
Faunce said the College will try to add features that were not included in the original prototype to 28 Silsby and 101 Fairchild. For example, he said the classrooms will now have computers built into the lectern at the front of the room.
Brown said the new classrooms will be a great aid to professors because they will no longer have to run around the classroom to focus the slide projector, write notes, adjust the lights and manipulate data on a computer. He said all those controls are now located within arm's reach at the podium.
The subcommittee on classroom development and utilization, which Brown chairs, is responsible for planning and maintaining the new rooms.
Brown said the committee plans to remodel at least another three classrooms, "one in each of the three disciplines," in the near future.
The subcommittee was established in early 1993 by the Facilities Advisory Committee to assess the state of the College's classrooms.
The Facilities Advisory Committee monitors the state of all of Dartmouth's buildings and decides which departments and organizations receive space on campus.
