DeKALB – Technology modernizations installed as a result of a $700,000 funding appropriation approved in June have served in a mostly hidden but integral role as NIU has returned to in-person classes, said Matthew Parks, associate vice president of IT and chief information officer.

About two-thirds of the recent appropriation went into what Parks called standard smart-classroom modernizations and upgrades for about 80 rooms throughout the DeKalb campus.

“We’ve got several hundred classrooms on campus, and a good number of those classrooms had aging computers, projectors, document cameras, et cetera that were really past their useful life, so we directed a large portion of this money into those core upgrades,” Parks said. “We prioritized the implementation in classrooms that had a combination of aging technology and a high volume of students that would be using those rooms.”

The remaining third of the funds went towards equipping about 50 classrooms that had been unable to receive upgrades in the Summer  2020 with live-streaming capabilities, Parks said.

“Going in to this semester, the expectation was that we would be much more in-person, and I think that has proven to be true, but we also wanted to make sure that faculty and instructors had flexibility in the event that they are presented with the situation where one or more students need to attend class remotely,” Parks said. 

While the live-capture technologies have seen limited use in most classrooms due to low rates of COVID-19 infection, Parks said precautions caused by the disease brought about other new, unanticipated challenges that have had a broader impact on classrooms.

“One thing that we caught in the 11th hour, as we were wrapping up all the technology enhancements, were the noise issues in some of the classrooms due to some of the HEPA filters, in addition to the instructors having to use masks,” Parks said.

As a result, NIU’s IT teams have deployed amplification devices and upgrades to multiple classrooms, as faculty and instructors see fit, Parks said.

Although many of the recent upgrades are applicable to conditions imposed by COVID-19 regulations, Parks said these technological improvements are one more step towards a further expansion of the college classroom that he expects to become widespread not just at NIU, but within higher education in general in the coming years and decades.

“We’re not looking at these as short term investments,” Parks said. “We’re looking at them as part of the package to extend the reach of the classroom for years to come.”