Proposal

Narrative

Summary of the Tech Fee Award This technology fee proposal is a request for funds to purchase and equip a Behavioral Sciences (BS-12 building) classroom and a conference room with a videoconference system. The Department of Psychology is seeking technology that can enhance and enrich the academic experience of our undergraduate and graduate students experience at FAU. The Department of Psychology currently services over 2,200 undergraduate Psychology majors (1800 BA in Psychology; >400 BS in Neuroscience & Behavior), and another 65 graduate students through our M.A. and Ph.D. degree programs. The Department of Psychology is somewhat unique in that it is one of the few units at FAU with representation on three campuses: Boca Raton, Davie and Jupiter. Our undergraduate courses are taught on each of the campuses, yet there are many occasions when students report difficulties registering for the courses that they need because they may have classes scheduled on different days on the different campuses; traveling between the campuses is a hardship and can lead to significant delays in progress towards degree completion. Videobroadcasting of undergraduate courses, especially upper division elective courses to the Davie and Jupiter campus would give our students more choices in selecting courses based on need, and reduce scheduling conflicts. Our graduate courses have been routinely presented on the Boca campus and students who are “home” to Davie or Jupiter, are expected to drive to Boca to attend courses. Broadcasting our graduate courses would permit graduate students to remain at their home campus, attend class and then return to their thesis research projects. We feel strongly that videoconferencing could improve curriculum delivery for both graduate and undergraduate curriculum by reducing the need for inter-campus travel. A few of our Department of Psychology faculty have already been videoconferencing their courses to Jupiter or Davie, and these faculty have been impressed with the feel of the system. The overwhelming majority of students on the remote sites report not feeling “left out” or “short-changed” by not being present in Boca. With the videoconferencing system, the students will experience collaborative study and lectures on a display that allows several campuses to interact as a team without limitations. Videoconferencing enables immersive visual collaboration experiences not offered by telephone or limited web conferencing. Finally, the videoconferencing of the two rooms in Behavioral Sciences will improve options for holding faculty meetings, committee meetings, colloquium speakers, and thesis and dissertation defenses of our graduate students. The Department of Psychology has embraced an effort to enhance the culture of learning and research inquiry amongst our graduate and undergraduate students. Videoconferenced thesis defense meetings would bring our graduate students closer together and enable them to develop vested interest in the projects that their fellow students are pursuing. For the undergraduates, videoconferencing will improve options and efficiency of students’ progress towards degree completion. Strategic impacts of the Tech Fee Award As FAU grows and the technology advances, videoconferencing will greatly benefit the Department of Psychology’s services in the teaching and learning environment as well as the administrative activities of the university. Since the university is heading in the direction of offering more classes simultaneously on partner campuses, having videoconferencing in two of Psychology’s most used rooms will benefit the maximum number of students. The videoconferencing rooms would feature state-of-the-art equipment, which will provide transmission of full motion video images and high quality audio between all of the FAU campuses and any other site that has videoconference capabilities. Both rooms (BS 103 and BS 105) are excellent candidates for improvement since they are used for classes on a daily basis every semester. The original equipment in both rooms is outdated, starting to fail, and is incompatible with the centralized AV system that is being deployed across campus. We have worked with FAU’s OIT to develop a quote for a comprehensive set of A/V equipment and computing needs to build an appropriate videoconferencing system in the Behavioral Sciences building. This project is aligned strongly to several goals of FAU’s Strategic Plan for the Race to Excellence. For example, a stated goal is to “Develop an academic support structure for timely student graduation”. The proposed technology will permit the Department of Psychology to accomplish this goal by increasing the scope of course offerings and enhance the efficiency of training. Projects such as the one proposed here would fit well with the stated goal to establish FAU as an exceptionally strong brand for training, research and community engagement.

Facilities

It will be necessary to install carpeting over the vinyl tile floor presently in BS 103 to eliminate echoes and improve the quality of the videoconferencing. We estimate that this will add $4000 in materials and labor to the cost of the project. It will also be necessary to paint the back wall behind the user interface/lecture in BS 103 and in BS 105. The typical design of the videoconferencing classrooms is to paint the wall behind the speaker a contrasting color, which enhances the quality of the video transmission. We estimate that painting the rear wall in both rooms will add $1000 in materials and labor to the cost of the project. Therefore, the total cost for the facilities upgrades will add $5000 to the cost of the project.

Hardware Requirements

For: Boca BS103 VTC Classroom Equipment Total, $46,432.11 Vendor Installation Materials (Estimate), $1,500.00 Vendor Installation Labor (Estimate), $10,000.00 FAU OIT Config & Programming, $- Room Project Total, $57,932.11 Electrical work required: power on walls for flat panel displays (Estimate), $1,300.00 Telecom work required: 6 new data ports needed at lectern (Estimate), $2,400.00 Note: carpeting is recommended prior to AV installation work For: Boca BS 105 VTC Classroom Equipment Total, $41,030.22 Vendor Installation Materials (Estimate), $1,500.00 Vendor Installation Labor (Estimate), $10,000.00 FAU OIT Config & Programming, $- AV Install Project Total, $52,530.22 Electrical work required: power on front wall for flat panel display (Estimate), $750.00 Telecom work required: 2 new data ports needed for equipment rack (Estimate), $700.00

Software Requirements

None

Personnel Costs

None

Other Costs

None

Timeline

If awarded, this project will be initiated as soon as possible, with the goal for completion of both rooms within Year 1.

Sustainability

Department of Psychology budget will be leveraged in the future to support the maintenance and replacement of components, as needed.

Resource Matching

None

Implementing Organization

The Department of Psychology will implement this project.