Posted: November 22, 2005

By Sally Hritz

OSU-Mansfield debuted a new faculty multimedia and training lab this quarter that serves both faculty and staff. Mike Collura, Coordinator of the Center for Instructional Design and Development (CIDD) at OSU-Mansfield, recently announced the opening at the TELR Coordinating Council, which meets on the Columbus campus. He described the CIDD’s latest addition as “Mansfield’s version of the Digital Union.”

The new Mansfield lab is, he said, “a place to showcase new and emerging technologies, a place where faculty can explore technology that could help them improve their teaching and research, and a place where faculty and staff can get one-on-one training and/or advice on how to better use technology.” To those ends, and much like the Digital Union on the Columbus campus, the faculty multimedia and training lab offers one-on-one consultations, instructional design, small group training, media development and conversion, and equipment loan.

JF Buckley, associate professor of English, said he received help at the lab to prepare a DVD for a panel at the Modern Language Association. He was pleased with the finished product, “an audio and video presentation that was 100% synchronized with the paper I read. Without a doubt, it was the most technologically advanced presentation--and this in a panel on film!”

Collura envisioned the new lab when he started working at the CIDD two and a half years ago. Noting that the four-year-old Center had only a basic lab for small group training and few resources for faculty, he said he wanted to create “an environment where faculty could improve their overall technology skills, explore the latest and greatest technologies, and produce multimedia artifacts that reflect their work for both professional and classroom use.”

Last December, he and the Technology Services staff gradually began acquiring equipment for what was to become the faculty multimedia and training lab and opened it for business in spring quarter. They formally introduced it to campus as a resource for faculty and staff at the beginning of autumn quarter.

Dawn M. Kitchen, assistant professor of Anthropology, said she has already sought out the lab on several occasions, mainly to transfer VHS tapes into DVDs or QuickTime movies. She has edited many hours of her video research on animals in Africa and uses the finished products for her research, classes, and public lectures. “By having a collection of digitized, small video files,” Kitchen said, “I can now give lectures that are much less distracting and that make much better use of multimedia instruction. My students seem to really enjoy the short videos that I use to illustrate my points."

Collura reported that the lab has “top of the line PCs and Macs with every application you could want or need.” Software includes applications for productivity, creating and editing graphics and digital images, capturing and editing digital video, creating digital audio loops and sound effects, authoring DVDs, web development, and more.

Hardware includes four high-end desktop computers (two PCs and two Macs) and a laptop for each platform; scanners for 35mm slides, negatives, microscope slides, photos, documents, and transparencies; color printers; digital still cameras and a 3CCD digital video camera; CD/DVD duplicator with thermal printer; SmartBoard and ceiling mounted projector; PolyCom conference phone; PolyCom ViewStation mobile video-conferencing cart; a set of 32 Turning Technologies IR clickers; and a DVD recorder for non-copyrighted VHS tape conversions.

Dennis Shaffer, assistant professor of psychology, is also enthusiastic about the facility. “I use the lab (software, equipment) or the lab personnel's know-how virtually every day I'm at work,” he said, adding that the lab has helped him to enhance and highlight his research, teaching, and presentation style. He said he's using his new video skills to create a multimedia research portfolio documenting highlights of his research on a DVD. “Much of my work uses video cameras mounted on dogs, baseball outfielders, and football quarterbacks and receivers, and so a lot of what I use to teach, present, and publish is video-based.” Shaffer said he particularly appreciates the seminars on how to use different software and web-based tools, learning about technology-based grants (he’s now pursuing two), and the staff’s hands-on help.

Clearly, these professors feel the faculty multimedia and training lab is a welcome addition to OSU-Mansfield. Kitchen said she found “the equipment is of exceptional quality” and the staff “very helpful, knowledgeable and flexible….They have given me strong support, sometimes even for last second emergencies before my lectures.”

Buckley added, “thanks to the planning of [Senior Systems Manager] Major Price, the support of Dean Evelyn Freeman, and the caring, insightful genius of Mike Collura, OSU-M students are not only learning through technology; professors are learning about technology.”

The CIDD’s faculty multimedia and training lab is located in 478 Ovalwood Hall on the Mansfield campus.