Futuristic fine-tuning

Lecturers will be able to gauge how well students are absorbing material at the touch of a button as part of a $5 million, state-of-the-art learning centre being established at The University of Queensland.

The Advanced Concept Teaching Space (UQ ACTS) in Campbell Drive is due for completion by the end of 2007.

UQ’s first Collaborative Teaching and Learning Centre (CTLC) opened in the Sir James Foots Building in 2005 offering $1.5 million in technology.

While the 1500sqm2 ACTS will have the look and feel of a modern lecture theatre, it will also host futuristic systems designed to maximise communication.

Students will be able to integrate their own technology with the systems in the room. For example, they will be able to download learning materials, including lecture recordings, on to their own iPods, laptops, personal organisers and/or mobile phones.

Similarly, student work brought to class on a variety of media can be easily screened to the whole class.

As well as advanced projection systems at the front of the room, students will each sit at an individual touch-screen enabling a wide range of services.

The screens will enable instantaneous polling and voting, not only keeping students involved with content but giving lecturers immediate feedback on how well key concepts are being understood.

Students will also be able to type in questions rather than ask them out loud therefore overcoming any shyness.

The screens will also allow students to move through slides at their own pace, look ahead and review or perhaps even branch off into specially prepared supplementary material.

An automated translation system is also under development, allowing students without English as their first language to instantly look-up unfamiliar terms.

Derek Powell, Manager of Teaching Technology Support and originator of the ACTS concept, said the new facility will boast teaching technology not expected to be commonplace elsewhere for at least a decade.

“ACTS will be, in effect, a laboratory for teaching technology and capable of evaluating each new practice in a rigorous way. It will allow the best emerging technology to be tested and adopted in mainstream UQ teaching spaces years sooner than otherwise,” Mr Powell said.

The University is committing $5 million of the $11 million allocated to it under the Commonwealth Governments Learning and Performance Fund to the project.

Media: Philip Taylor, Manager, Academic Facilities (07 3365 3140); Derek Powell, Manager Teaching Technology Support and originator of the ACTS concept (07 3365 1027, 0401 717 965); or Shirley Glaister at UQ Communications (07 3365 2049).