ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 13, 1996 TAG: 9603130068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STANFORD, CALIF.
SOURCE: JIM PUZZANGHERA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Take a seat in Stanford University's classroom of the future.
COMFORT PLUS COMPUTERS equal the classroom of the future, designed to promote free discussion and creativity.
Yeah, right there on the beanbag chair.
Grab one of the two dozen Apple Powerbook laptop computers reserved for the room, plug into the power and data receptacles hidden under small doors on the carpeted floor, beam your essay onto the huge projection screen, then stretch out as the beanbag cradles your head and arms.
``I just feel much more relaxed and fluent and able to think more easily,'' said freshman Joe Fairchild, one of 20 students in a creative writing class that meets in the new classroom, arranging the brightly colored beanbags into a circle. ``It's very similar to, say, being in your dorm and holding an intellectual conversation.''
That's what a team of faculty, staff and students at Stanford hoped for when they tried to develop a computer classroom that wove technology into a course's curriculum without overwhelming it. What they came up with in a second-floor corner of stately Meyer Memorial Library is being praised as a model for the future.
The individual components aren't unique - some universities are starting to make more use of laptops, projection screens have been around for several years, and beanbags are older than disco. What is new is combining them in an easily reconfigured classroom specifically designed with ideas from faculty and students, said Carrie Regenstein, associate director for instructional services at Cornell University's information technologies department.
``When people have money for innovation and technology, it's not uncommon for them to throw it into a pre-existing room and tell [professors] to do something innovative,'' Regenstein said. She saw the new classroom last month along with several other university information technology professionals who met at Stanford, and was so impressed she'd like to do something similar at Cornell.
``It is very thoughtfully done. It really includes the input of the faculty and the students as part of the process,'' Regenstein said. ``It puts the learning and teaching before the technology and facilities.''
That usually doesn't happen.
As computer use has soared at colleges and universities in the past decade, most classrooms equipped with them have followed the same blueprint - rows of desks topped with bulky workstations. A teacher looks out on the backs of monitors, not eager faces. Students see few of their classmates. Discussion has to wind its way around the computers. Words get swallowed by the sound of the ventilation fans whirring in each machine.
``It's perfectly miserable if you want students to talk to one another,'' said John Barson, a professor of French who has made innovative use of computers to help students learn and practice the language. He has taught in that type of classroom for about 10 years - and has been complaining about it for nearly as long. And he's not alone.
``You have to scream over the computers, and I couldn't do that,'' said Marjorie Ford, an English department lecturer who teaches the creative writing course Fairchild attends.
``I immediately liked it because [students] didn't have to have their computers all the time,'' she said of the new classroom. ``They were facing one another. They could write together if they wanted to. They could communicate with each other and still use their computers. The computers didn't become this big noisy thing that interrupted their human communication, but facilitated it.''
For many types of courses that use computers but rely on discussion and interaction, the traditional computer classroom just doesn't work, said Amy Tzon, who works with information resources at the Stanford library.
``Computer science just loves [the traditional computer classroom],'' she said. ``[But] for those disciplines that rely on collaboration, it really fails them.''
So Charles Kerns, another information resources worker at the library, spent two years asking faculty what they would put in their ideal classroom. They wanted technology, but without all the drawbacks. Writing teachers, for example, told Kerns that students are so used to computers that it's hard to get them to use a pencil and paper for in-class writing assignments. But computers can kill the intimacy a writing class needs.
With a $165,000 grant from the Charles E. Culpepper Foundation and $300,000 from the President's Fund at Stanford, a team including Kerns and Tzon first set up an experimental site in the basement of a building next to Meyer Library. They bought laptops to erase the distractions of big workstations and tested a wireless modem system to eliminate the need for wires to hook all the laptops into a network.
Some faculty suggested that, along with the desks, they throw a couple of beanbags in the room.
Students loved them.
``People wanted to get an informal, collaborative collegial environment,'' Tzon said of the beanbags. ``It just looks like a perfect ergonomic way to use a laptop.''
In case you're wondering, nobody fell asleep. ``When you're in a regular classroom, it's easier to fall asleep,'' said junior Marianne Lenz, ``because nobody will notice.''
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KRT. Marjorie Ford's says her creative-writing studentsby CNBat Stanford University think more freely in the comfort-oriented
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