Serving on committees may be boring on the face of it, but there's always plenty to learn about others' roles and how their expertise may affect one's own work and learning. That and an online course that I teach on how to teach online...culminated in an eye-opening visit to a music "studio."

A music instructor at a local private school accepted an invitation to visit a state-of-the-art music lab at K-State, and so it was that about a month and a half later that a half dozen of us were clustered at the lab. We were there during open lab hours, and fortunately, only the lab aide was there...for most of our tour. A student came in a little later.

Yes, Four Walls

Dedicated high-tech studio spaces are designed with pedagogical purpose and high-tech applications. On our campus, there are some 40-plus high-tech rooms for instructor presentations. There are a handful of dedicated dedicated computer lab spaces for the Humanities Commons, chemistry and math. These rooms combine changes to the physical spaces, technical equipment and telecommunications.

The location of the music lab was at a former converted television studio. Facilities brought the ceiling down. They reused the existing sound baffling. They set up transparent stands for the music. Two widescreen monitors were placed up front. The whiteboard up front featured musical staffs.

The high-tech music studio opened Aug. 19, 2005. Tim Bagby, who took us on the tour, described the collaborative design. The tech team actualized on "pretty much every wish" of the faculty professionals in the music department.

This meant state-of-the-art Apple G5 computers, 20-inch flat panels, and 15 student work stations - set up in a room set up for acoustics and sound controls. Students can create music and download their creations onto portable memory devices. They can access a variety of music. They can perform, with a full music 44-key keyboard at each work station.

Instructors had a number of systems at hand - Net connectivity, a direct quick-line to tech support, screen capture technologies, remote access to each of the 15 student stations, a DVD / VHS player, a visual presenter, and movable web cameras. The main computer had touch-screen technologies.

Another system in the room offered high security for the technologies. This included the cabling of some devices as well as motion detectors and cameras as well as an alarm system.

The cross-functional team fund-raised within the academic structure to raise the funds from a variety of pots. One published source had this at nearly half a million dollars for the various systems, materials and labor.

At the request of the professors, a full stand-alone piano is also included, for the affordances of that that keyboards cannot provide.

The room itself was very accessible, with room for wheelchairs, for presenters and for learners.

Easy Move to Virtual

Their presentations could be captured and uploaded to the campus's learning management system (Axio), known as K-State Online.

Such studio spaces work very well within the purview of particular departments. Word is that there are endeavors to meld uses between departments and academic fields, and that's a lot tougher to design. There are more voices at the table, and the technologies and software required will diverge at different points. Cooperation itself may be the order of the day.

For a photo of this studio, go to the following URL: http://www.k-state.edu/infotech/news/tuesday/archive/2005/08-23.html.