"Improving communication" is the goal behind a new Web site on classroom issues presented by the Classroom Steering Committee.

The Web site, accessible at http://wings.buffalo.edu/faculty/classrooms, provides a vehicle to communicate more effectively to the campus community "all the improvements, all the listening we've done" on classroom issues in the past five or six years, said Sean Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment and planning, and chair of the Classroom Steering Committee. "One of the big ways to get that message out is to use the Web."

	The Classroom Steering Committee wants classroom users to provide information on conditions in the trenches.
photo: Frank Miller

Added Mark Greenfield, Web development manager, paraphrasing the Web site: "We want to effectively involve and inform the constituents of classrooms. So not only do we want to let the campus know what we're doing, we also want a vehicle where we can get that kind of feedback back from faculty."

Although those involved in classroom issues have used such traditional communication methods as talking to the Faculty Senate and to the deans, "I don't think we effectively reach the people actually teaching in the classrooms and what their issues are," Greenfield said. "So the idea of this (Web site) is to make it very easy for whoever is using classrooms-not just faculty, but even students-to provide us with information in terms of what they see in the classrooms; what can we do to make the classrooms a better environment.

"When you think about the teaching mission of the university, that teaching mission happens in the classrooms," he said, noting that until about five years ago when Sullivan became very involved in the issue, there was no "advocate" for the centrally scheduled classroom space and getting funding for those spaces was difficult.

"Given where we were 10 years ago, and where we are now, I'm amazed at how much improvement there has been to the classrooms."

Greenfield said he understands why faculty members may not realize the progress that has been made-the topic of classroom quality has been a volatile issue at recent Faculty Senate Executive Committee meetings-but one of the goals of the Web site "is to really let people know that we do consider the classrooms important."

The Web site, online since last month, is user-friendly, "a comprehensive, one-stop shopping for any information about classrooms," Greenfield said, stressing that users do not need to know the university hierarchy in order to obtain information.

The primary audience is faculty members; secondary audiences include students, administrators and service staff who are responsible for classrooms, such as departmental schedulers.

The site features a wealth of information about classroom issues at UB, including the minutes of the steering committee's meetings and its recommendations for classroom and technology improvements, timelines for improvement projects, an overview of the classroom planning process, an overview of the scheduling process, an inventory of physical and technical attributes of the centrally scheduled classrooms and information about the technology classrooms.

A particularly important feature of the site is the general "feedback form" in which classroom users can register complaints and make suggestions.

The committee is interested in hearing from "front-line faculty who are actually out there teaching," who can provide "anecdotal information about their experiences in the classroom," Greenfield said.

He pointed out that a search mechanism soon will be launched on the site to allow users to search the database on the centrally scheduled spaces to obtain such information as how a classroom is equipped. In addition, the search feature will allow searches for all criteria in the database. That would enable a faculty member to pinpoint a classroom that will meet all of his or her needs - location, technology and space, he said.

Another, longer-term addition will be multimedia. "We going to be taking still shots of the classrooms, movies of the classrooms, providing floor plans and seating charts," Greenfield said. "Right now when you go to the specific information about Knox 20, you're getting the physical attributes and the technology attributes. Hopefully over the summer, we're going to be adding the floor plans and adding still shots of what the rooms look like."

With the Web site, the committee is "trying to improve people's understanding about all that we're doing," Sullivan noted. "For the past five years, we've spent more than $1 million a year improving our classrooms and people don't know that because we spend our time developing recommendations, not sharing what we're doing broadly with the public.

"I hope people are observing that we are hearing them and we're trying to respond to what we're hearing," he said, adding that the Web site and classroom improvements "are demonstrations of that, and we want to keep hearing."