By Professor Rajiv Kishore, rkishore@buffalo.edu & Lisa Stephens, stephens@buffalo.edu

How can you tell when a collaborative classroom design is effective? In the case of the new Jacobs Hall 214 Learning Space, the students are quick to smile and share what they like about the room: "I don't have to bring a laptop;" "We can videoconference with students from all over the world;" "It's a really quiet room, it's easy to hear the instructor;" "It's a really attractive room - the lighting and furniture is nice!"

Several staff and professors from the School of Management collaborated with CIT's Network and Classroom Services to create a high tech, flexible environment around three guiding principles:

• Provide and control technology: create a hands-on technology-based learning environment with a desktop for each student to both enable and limit technology use depending on instructional activities and objectives;
• Arrange seating for collaboration: create a team-based learning environment using cluster-style seating in the classroom (rather than traditional lecture hall seating) for promoting teamwork both among students in the classroom, and with those connected globally;
• Collaborate globally: connect the classroom and student teams transparently through video-conferencing and other common web-conferencing technologies for promoting collaboration with universities abroad and gaining access to industry guest speakers from anywhere in the world.
  
  

Problem-solving skills, team-based work, and an understanding of global issues and cultures are increasingly important in today's business environment. This classroom provides a great combination of hands-on problem solving using high-end technologies (such as access to SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning software) and a team-learning environment that also allows global collaboration using the latest telepresence technologies.

One innovation incorporated as a "proof of concept" was using specialized paint for whiteboards. "The faculty requested a way to maximize white board space, and this allowed three of the four walls to be used as white boards" said Dave Costello, Assistant Dean and IT Director; "We were able to save money and provide the faculty exactly what they needed."

In order to maintain the integrity of the student computer configuration at each workstation the IT staff implemented Faronics' "Deep Freeze" software. Classroom computers are configured with the software each instructor requires, but when the students log off at the end of class, the computer is returned to its original configuration with a simple reboot. Dave Costello explained, "This has saved the IT staff lots of support hours by not having to constantly reimage machines. The machines are always ready for the next class coming in the door!" Instructors also value having control over student's use of computers, restricting access to class-related exercises, because the workstation monitors are otherwise retracted beneath the desktop during lectures.

This classroom has been used in Professor Kishore's Management of Globally Distributed Services graduate class to connect with an MBA class in South Korea for a collaborative team project (with paired teams), and to have a senior executive from IBM deliver a guest lecture from Singapore into his class. It was designed to enable the use of SAP and other technologies in the school's new MBA option on Global Services and Supply Management and its MS programs for real-time, hands-on problem solving and collaborative learning activities, whether the students are in Buffalo or abroad.