Developing a Devised Multipurpose Computer Room for a Large Class

The progress of multimedia and information technology has brought forth a lot of capabilities to realize advanced educational environment. Using a notebook computer with a portable LCD projector enables educators to introduce an interactive electronic chalkboard into a classroom. Along with technological advances, classroom technology has been studied to improve a conventional lecture style in a classroom. A Master Classroom is a very cost-effective implementation to serve a variety of class sizes and curricula[1]. It is a specially-equipped classroom providing a wide range of computer, media, projection, communications and control capabilities, including connection to the campus network. However, most of the effort cannot be applicable to design a computer classroom, because it does not have individual computers for each student. In our educational situation, it is often required to teach more than a hundred students in a large classroom or in a computer classroom. Therefore, studies like a multimedia -presentation system for a large classroom[2], a large scale distributed workstation system for computer science education[3], and so forth have been reported. In 1997, when our institution established two new departments, it was planned to facilitate a new computer room for a large class. Although there are many precedents to facilitate such a room in a variety of sizes, our goal was quite challenging. For a small size, the case like an electronic classroom[4] can be referred; however, it cannot be applicable to design a large computer classroom as is. Further, there have been done a lot of studies on a teaching/learning environment in a classroom, there seems less investigation to that of a computer room, especially to meet a large sized multipurpose requirements. As a computer room tends to be designed mainly for computational use, it has not been suitable for multipurpose educational use by several reasons. Firstly, large size CRT displays tend to obstruct students' view for classroom presentation. Secondary, put a set of computer components on the desk results in insufficient workspace for each student, and thirdly poor presentation facilities due to the most efforts should be concentrated on designing the computer system itself. In the next section, design concept of a devised multipurpose computer room for a large class is described.