Information Technology Services

Annual Classroom Technology Brief

Starting this year, ITS will share an annual Classroom Technology Brief highlighting classroom improvements and upcoming plans. We update AV equipment every 7 years and computers every 4. Rooms may be updated a year early or late to accommodate improvements. Your feedback helps us adjust the schedule as needed. We welcome your feedback anytime at classrooms@siue.edu.

Updates

We are coming off a year that saw a lot of classroom upgrades – and new classrooms too! We’ve added 25 classrooms to the new Health Sciences building, all standardized with touch panel control, document cameras, AirMedias for wireless conferencing, and cameras and mics for lecture capture. We also have a new demonstration video for how to use the new equipment on our Smart Classroom Training & Resources page.

For our annual maintenance upgrades, we’ve received equipment and started modernizing the switching equipment and touch panel interfaces in the spaces below.

Touch Panel Replacements

We’re also catching up on replacing old touch panels. After upgrading the rooms below is complete, no touch panel should be more than 7 years old.

Upgrade Cycle Update

Thanks to more cost-efficient equipment being installed in the classrooms, we will be able to catch up on our 7-year upgrade cycle this year. The extra expenses of covid threw us off the cycle for a time, but we are almost caught up. With 25 new classrooms coming online in Health Sciences, rebalancing our upgrade cycle with an affordable number of rooms each year is essential. This year and next are a great opportunity to invest in other upgrades before returning to a more balanced upgrade cycle.

What’s Coming

For FY26, we are planning our yearly maintenance upgrades and plan to start upgrading lecterns. Our oldest lecterns are close to 20 years old and are showing their age. The Health Sciences building gave us a great opportunity to present some new options with a professional look and meet faculty requests for more workspace and height adjustability. We’ve landed on two new lecterns – the Honors (small to medium classrooms) and the Freedom XRS (large classrooms). Both are height adjustable and offer increased workspace.

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We’re also working with the Library and School of Dental Medicine on a new 50 seat classroom in the basement of the Biomedical Library on the Alton campus. The classroom has furniture and is being used with temporary AV equipment. This will be our first classroom that is fully AV over IP and will be a good test before introducing the technology in other spaces. AV over IP allows for quick expansion of inputs and outputs in rooms expected to grow or change. Permanent equipment should be installed before the start of the Spring semester.

Below are the classrooms planned for maintenance upgrades of switching and touch panel interfaces later in FY26.

What Still Needs Investment?

Other items that have been requested include new document cameras for Math and microphone charging docks in the larger lecture halls. Our team has internally discussed upgrading the ceiling mounted cameras for lecture capture. If you make use of these cameras, please let us know if the current cameras are working well or if there are stability or feature improvements we can make.

Top Instructional Pain Points

At this point in the semester, we’ve received a high number of calls from AH3401, AH3403, PH2304, PH3303, and SE0222. Most of these issues are related to a yet to be identified issue with our newest AV switchers communicating with the projectors. We are working with the manufacturer (Crestron) to iron out these issues before we upgrade more classrooms with the same hardware.

The School of Pharmacy has experienced the most hiccups with their new large lecture rooms. We seem to have almost everything ironed out, with the exception of a lingering audio issue in HS1330 and 2151.

Classrooms Working Well

So far, the Health Sciences classrooms have been relatively stable. As previously mentioned, the new classrooms are mostly standardized, with a few adjustments for unique healthcare spaces. The new document cameras should give a better top-down view when annotating. Wireless presentation via Crestron AirMedia is now localized to the Wi-Fi access point your device is connected to, so you shouldn’t see a long list of potential screens to cast to – only those nearby. This feature may come to other buildings in the future.

Facility Updates

We’ve had a number of electric projector screens fail or tear over the last couple of years. Projector screens in ADW 1107, 2139, 2140, 2144, and SE2206 were replaced in the last two years. ADW1104 will be replaced when the screen arrives sometime in November or December.

What’s Coming Next

Please complete our semi-annual Smart Classroom Survey. This is a great opportunity to give us your input on what is working, not working, or missing from the classrooms.

For those classrooms scheduled for upgrades this year, we will be reaching out to walk through the space with someone from your college or school to gather feedback. This is something we would like to do before every upgrade moving forward.

Our goal is to send out an annual classroom technology brief like this, shortly after the end of every academic year. Thanks for helping us make our learning spaces better every year!

Mark Dorris
Associate Director, ITS