Many of the schools and learning spaces across OCU recently received a technology upgrade.
Gerry Hunt, chief information officer, said he worked with deans to help implement their creative solutions to new problems posed by COVID-19 and the new guidelines on campus.
“In terms of the main campus, I worked with each of the deans to determine what sort of needs they had, and what sort of challenges they were facing with the need to social distance, the need to have some of their students not in the classroom while others are, and really just kind of hearing what their challenges were and helping them come up with solutions to those problems,” Hunt said.
Hunt said each school required unique solutions and equipment, but the performing arts schools had larger changes implemented. In the Ann Lacy School of American Dance and Entertainment, each of the seven dance studios now has a Zoom cart, a cart with a large television and rotating camera allowing the instructor to teach while distanced in the classroom or remotely. Three classrooms in the dance school also received fully equipped Zoom carts.
Melanie Shelley, associate dean of the Ann Lacy School of Dance, said she met repeatedly with Dean John Bedford and Jo Rowan, dance department chair, as well as having individual discussions with Gerry Hunt discuss the particular needs of the School of Dance.
“He’s also a problem solver and creative and is able to listen to what our needs were, and without having someone be open and creative like Gerry has been, I don’t think we would have gotten the results that we have,” she said.
She said Zoom carts for off-campus faculty are run by school faculty members trained to use the carts and cameras.
“We also have a really great student staff, our work study program, so they are all trained on the Zoom carts also, so in an emergency situation, they also could help to operate the Zoom carts for the faculty member. And the faculty member can still see everything,” Shelley said.
Anna Schmidt, dance management junior, said most of her courses are dance practice classes, and the technology has worked smoothly with the hybrid structure of the dance classes.
“It’s honestly been way more seamless than I expected; it’s gone really well. I forget that the weird protocols are in place. It still feels like I’m very much in a class dancing,” she said. “Even at home because they can see us at home, so teachers who are fully remote can really watch the gallery view and see everyone in their rooms and still give corrections.”
Schmidt said the dance school provided students with preparation in the form of extensive videos to educate them about the new technology and processes. She said her academic classes have used Zoom to make conversations effective by using breakout rooms and the chat function to communicate between students without breaking social distancing.
Hunt said many of the other classrooms across campus received cameras and mics. This included cameras in five rooms of the Sarkeys Science Building, three rooms in Dawson Loeffler Center, and four or five rooms in Walker Center, Hunt said. Additionally, Walker Center was provided with “Owl” cameras, which can be placed in a student’s seat and have a 360-degree view, simulating a classroom presence for remote students.
Jake Harrell, English/religious education junior, said all his classes are through the Petree College of Arts and Sciences. He said some of his religion classes used the chapel classroom space, which is used for a graduate program that takes place jointly in another state.
“They have a camera, that you can see the whole class, and then we’ve had our remote students Zooming in, and it has one screen for the professor to use and one screen so you can see all of the people on Zoom. And it was already set up that way,” he said.
Harrell said many of his professors are using their own technology, including using personal iPads and tripods. He said he doesn’t have many remote students in his other classes, so he hasn’t seen much of the new technology.
“I’ve had a couple professors do an online class to practice,” he said. “And then I also have one class that is going online in October because our professor is having a baby, so he wants to quarantine before the birth of his new baby.”
“Over at the business school, they have six classrooms they designated for Zoom capability. Two of them were already functional with Zoom; they were using Zoom even pre-pandemic. So, they had two rooms, fortunately, already set up. We got two of their other executive classrooms capable, and they have two other rooms beyond that, as well as Gardner Center, which is the big conference center on the third floor,” Hunt said.
The Gardner Center and the Kerr-McGee Auditorium were equipped with cameras and microphones to complement the existing audio/visual tech in those spaces, Hunt said.
Hunt said the School of Theatre received two public address systems in the form of wireless microphone packs in classrooms to help make communication easier. Two large spaces in the Wanda L. Bass School of Music were also outfitted for Zoom capabilities, and faculty in the School of Music were provided microphone pucks for their laptops in order to pick up room audio more clearly.
Shelley said the deans of each school had to file paperwork to the Emergency Operations Committee, explaining their technology needs.
Hunt said another challenge of outfitting the schools with the necessary technology was a shortage of available equipment as the nationwide need for technology increased throughout the pandemic. He said many of the purchases were made as needs were realized and sent to campus tech and most of the costs were covered by the CARES Act.
“A little bit of it came from the campus technology budget, like the initial webcam purchase and a few purchases where we were proactively anticipating some of the needs back at the very start of the pandemic. We purchased some of those items, but the majority of it is being paid for through the CARES Act money that universities around the country got from the federal government,” he said.
Gerry Hunt said the tech implementation wasn’t the work of campus technology alone. “This isn’t about campus technology services and the things that we did, it’s about what everybody’s done. It’s the ideas that came forward from the schools. It’s the ideas that came forward from my team. It was the trial and error as we go, trying to figure out how it would work best. It’s patience and understanding when things don’t work the way we thought they might. It’s the students being willing and flexible to be taught in these special ways. It’s certainly the faculty,” Hunt said. “Absolutely there’s been hiccups, and there’s going to be more going forward, and my team’s ready to help support in whatever way we can. This absolutely is a complete team effort.”
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