“We had to do massive renovations here in Camden as well as in Newark to house the gear,” says Ryan.
In addition to changes to the rooms, some changes had to be made to the Polycom system.
“A room for the RPX is supposed to have at least a ten-foot ceiling,” says Dunn. “But one room that Rutgers wanted to use had a ceiling that was about eighteen inches lower. We had to work with Polycom to modify the Cloud structure so that the support bars could still handle the weight on shorter retention rods. [We also had to wait on] Polycom to approve these changes. This shows Polycom’s willingness to adapt, but, the process to have some bespoke aspects did add several weeks to the design phase of the project.”
The room and product remediation was no surprise to Dunn.
“When this solution went out to bid, we did the mandatory site surveys before submitting our proposal,” says Dunn. “It’s a complicated process to get the gear installed.”
The Results
“These dynamically connected rooms let us offer more courses that enrich the curriculum that otherwise couldn’t be feasibly offered because of low enrollment,” notes Reid Weisbord, Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law, Newark. “For example, we might have a niche course in Newark that attracts only four students here, which isn’t economically viable or pedagogically effective. But if we also enroll five students in Camden, we have a full enough class to be viable in both an economical and pedagogical sense.”
Two of the first to teach using the Holodeck rooms were Professor Randi Mandelbaum (in Newark) and Professor Joanne Gottesman (in Camden).
“It was really great,” says Professor Mandelbaum. “It did not feel like the Camden students were 100 miles away. The way the classroom works, it feels like you are all together.”
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