Flexible and Technology Enhanced Classrooms
Led by the Office of Instructional Resources, the furniture and technology in downtown campus classrooms will help facilitate active learning. Research supports that active learning strategies improve student learning outcomes.
UCF is moving to a model where all classrooms can better support active learning methods of teaching. Active learning is not a technology, nor a furniture solution. Active learning is a teaching practice facilitated with technology and furniture, but at its core is achieved through the activities practiced in the space by faculty and students.
The classrooms at UCF Downtown are designed to feel familiar while also encouraging a variety of teaching practices:
- All of the furniture will be mobile, including the instructor podium. The in-room computer can be controlled with a wireless mouse and keyboard allowing the faculty member or presenter to be anywhere in the classroom.
- An optional wireless collaboration system called Intel Unite will be available at UCF Downtown. The system allows you to bring a personal device (phone, tablet, or laptop) and mirror the desktop to the computer in the room. This means you can have a computer in every class that already has your applications, documents, and other personalization preferences set up the way you want them, every time, every course, every semester.
- The multimedia equipment will be smaller and in a corner, out of the way of the students and faculty so that almost the entire room becomes usable floor space for teaching and learning activities.
- There will be multiple whiteboards throughout the room.
- There is a projector in every room, just as there are in existing classrooms. Some rooms have additional monitors on the other walls that will mirror the content on the projector. No matter how the furniture is arranged or where the student looks they will be able to see the content.
- All of the conference rooms will have a large flat-panel monitor and a device on the conference table that will allow for connecting to the display.
- All rooms are designed the same way so that no matter who uses the room everyone has a consistent experience across the entire campus.
