New Projectors 1M Are Making SLCCs Classrooms More Flexible

A Flexible Impact

Shirkey says the flex classrooms’ main success is found right in its title – flexibility.

Instructors are able to manipulate the class and technology setup before teaching, support BYOD and use the space to test new technology.

“Because it’s such a flexible design and we’re not strictly aligned with one specific setup for one instructor, we can go in and change the setups for multiple instructors,” Shirkey says. “We’ve been able to try new technologies, like Solstice [by Mersive]… So it’s really given us the ability to have a laboratory to test new technologies for both instructors and students. Students can get on wireless with their phones and any device they want to bring in as well.”

The flex classrooms’ success is also leading to new construction in the future.

“We’re going out to some other campuses during this next academic year,” Shirkey says. “We’re going to build seven more rooms in the next calendar year, then do another round of six or seven the year after that. It’s about a three-year project.”

Tips to Building Your Own Flex Classrooms

1) Start small

Before a college starts building its own flex classrooms, Shirkey recommends taking the process in bite-sized pieces.

Colleges should “test drive”‘ one flex classroom at a time, and see how students and instructors take to it before launching into multiple projects.

That way, the college can see if the initial room design meets students’ and instructors’ needs, or if some tweaks are needed.

“I think there are a lot of benefits of having one room set up initially, and having faculty use it for a couple of semesters,” Shirkey says. “They did give us a lot of ideas of what they’d like to see changed or done differently for future generations of room concepts. Start small and adapt design elements, and use those suggestions and changes in future designs you’d incorporate on a larger scale.”

2) Bring in facilities and IT

Shirkey says the facilities and IT departments should be included in the flex classroom design.

These departments are able to lend a hand picking up on elements that may get overlooked during the design process, such as lighting, paint colors and furniture selections.

Getting extra help also increases the likelihood the new designs and technologies will succeed.

“You really have to consider everything with the facility – lighting, furniture, paint, carpet, electrical – and they have to budget those costs in very carefully,” Shirkey says. “I think you need that process early on, particularly the facilities department and IT department, because in our case, we did have a lot of upgrades in terms of wireless capability for those new spaces.”