The traditional lecture hall is defined by blackboards, chalk dust and uncomfortable chairs. Recent technology advances can permit truly amazing visual aids, audio aids, access to information and computation on high bandwidth networks, remote conferencing and satelite cable viewing, however ...
The standard design paradox of flexibility versus ease of use looms in the controls for this multimedia extravaganza! Can low light TV cameras operate via remote control to allow a more intimate setting than a TV stage. Would it be useful to allow students to review a tape of the lecture, or perhaps run the demonstrations that night on the computer in their room? How should visual aids be used to enhance, not upstage, the concepts presented? Blackboards may present a relatively low rate of information transfer, but a teacher can rely on them (even when the network is down!).
Electric Lecture Hall is a freshman seminar run by Prof. Paul Penfield and Edward J. Moriarty in Fall '94. This seminar addressed the entire design problem for creating a new state of the art for such a facility.
The goal of this seminar is to come up with interesting ideas for designing Lecture Halls. Freshmen work in small groups and try to design Lecture Halls which will use upto date techonology and yet provide a comfortable environment for the lecturer and the audience. The results of the studies done by these groups will ultimately be used to guide the rennovations in Edgerton Hall (34-101) which is due to be done soon.
The freshmen were divided into three groups to represent the needs of the following "customers" of a lecture hall:
These are the results of the various studies combined. The recommendations of all three groups are summarized as Edgerton Hall: A Study. To see a simulation how the controls of the Lecture Hall will be operated on the WWW, click here.
A cT application has been developed for presentation of a lecture hall simulator. To run this application on the MIT Athena network do the following: add e-lec-hall;runmock
Comments?
e-lec-hall@mit.edu
