What Happened to the Computer Lab?
This free webcast on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, should be of interest to many SCUPers. EDUCAUSE describes it this way: Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by Beth Schaefer, and the topic will be "What Happened to the Computer Lab?" Over 80 percent of respondents to the annual ECAR study of undergraduate students report owning laptops, yet usage of expensive public computer labs remains high. Although computer labs might still be necessary, one can’t help but feel that traditional labs are anachronistic in a world of wireless connectivity, iPods, and smart phones. Labs are expensive to equip, staff, and maintain, and often the layout maximizes the amount of equipment that can be put into a given space rather than the creation of a comfortable or stimulating learning environment. Rather than predicting an entirely new model, this presentation will focus on low-cost changes that can be made to the design, layout, and operation of existing computer labs to meet both the changing needs of students and the necessities of the economic recession.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: computer labs, information technology, IT planning, learning space design
Rebooted Computer Labs Offer Savings for Campuses and Ambiance for Students
 Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.
 What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT. Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works. That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed. During a recent tour of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, we noted the plethora of 'breakout' rooms which resemble the spaces this article describes as being created from what used to be computer labs. More than 11 percent of colleges and universities are either phasing out public computer labs or planning to do so, according to this year's survey of college technology leaders by the Campus Computing Project, released last month. At colleges that have not pulled the plug on their labs, nearly 20 percent are reviewing the option. This is the first year the Campus Computing Project has asked the question.
UVa will phase out computer labs like this one, at Thornton Hall, and let students log in to the campus network on their own machines to use expensive software. Institutions agree that computer labs, much like student centers and libraries before them, are due for an extreme makeover. That is why several technology officials contacted by The Chronicle believe in creating work spaces that hardly resemble the computer labs of the past.
These new spaces might be lounges filled with modular furniture and plasma televisions; virtual labs that give remote laptops access to software; or bigger, better computer rooms with state-of-the-art machines and pleasing architecture that can act as de facto student centers. Fortunately for young caffeine addicts, nearly all officials interviewed said they planned to let students drink and eat while typing away—something that has long been forbidden in traditional computer Labels: academic planning, computer labs, facilities planning, learning spaces, technology
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