High-Tech Classrooms Usher in a New Era of Teaching

Gordon Parker hoped the new classroom would improve the learning experience for one of his graduate classes. He didn’t expect to cover nearly a third more material.

“It’s crazy,” says the John and Cathi Drake Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. “I’ve never been able to get that far with this class. And it’s not like I just opened up the hose and talked faster.”

Parker’s class in linear control system and design was a guinea pig of sorts for a new classroom, Room 402 in the R. L. Smith Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Building. Named “The Fernstrum Family Adaptable Classroom,” it has been decked out with a dazzling array of instructional gadgetry.

Read the entire story “High-Tech Classrooms Usher in a New Era of Teaching” by Marcia Goodrich

In March 2013, for the First Friday Social, the campus was invited fpor a demonstration of the news teaching faci;ities in the Fernstrum Classrooms.