Colleges Struggle to Keep 'Smart' Classrooms Up to Date

Many institutions, especially public ones, lack the money to refresh computers and other equipment

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By DAVID DEBOLT

Colleges have been building so-called smart classrooms for years, equipping them with computerized projectors, digital whiteboards, and other tools. Now some of those once-high-tech rooms are starting to show their age at many colleges.

At a facility used by three colleges in Denver, for instance, a group of high-school students competing in a History Day event recently exposed problems at smart classrooms there when DVD players failed to play the students' final projects. Event coordinators scrambled to find personal computers capable of playing the discs, which were created using a format that the center's old DVD players couldn't read.

The facility, the Auraria Higher Education Center, is used by the University of Colorado at Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver.

Professors who hold classes there say that years of financial neglect have left the smart classrooms nearly unusable.

Carl Pletsch, assistant professor of history at the university, says the situation has gotten so bad that administrators "are now discouraging faculty members from using technology because they can't predict if it is going to work."

A survey, conducted last spring and e-mailed to the center's staff two weeks ago, showed professors' frustrations with classroom equipment. Among those polled, 39 percent said they were dissatisfied with classroom equipment while another 39 percent were satisfied. "The smart classrooms are now dumb," wrote one professor in the comment area of the survey. "They have not been upgraded or adequately maintained."

Mr. Pletsch oversaw the creation of the smart classrooms in 2001, as part of a project in which around 200 classrooms were given a technological facelift thanks to $15-million in state funds. Mr. Pletsch's idea was to equip every classroom with identical technology to simplify purchasing software and maintenance.

But there was no money allocated for the updates, he says.

In recent years, budget shortfalls at the state level and an emphasis on fixing problems that pose a threat to health or safety have pushed smart classrooms a little further down the priority list, says Dean Wolf, the center's executive vice president for administration.

In response to increasing complaints, officials running the center in Denver created a department to consolidate its technology support.

Jeff Stamper, division director of Auraria Campus Use and Support Services, was hired to lead the new department. In the past six months, he says, he has secured $150,000 from the institutions and has commitments from each chief financial officer to make classroom technology a priority.

Too little, too late, says Mr. Pletsch, the history professor, adding that he hasn't noticed any improvements. "It is seat-of-the-pants planning because they waited until eight years passed," he says. "I don't have any faith in it at all."

Traditionally, the Auraria center has been financed by a pool that each of the institutions, on the basis of full-time-equivalent students, contributes to.

Back in 2001, Mr. Pletsch says, he met with the chief financial officers of all three institutions and urged them to create an account to pay for updates and maintenance of the smart classrooms.

"They looked all serious and said, 'Yeah we should do that,' but of course they didn't do it," Mr. Pletsch says.

Many colleges are facing the same issues as they struggle to stay on top of frequent needs to refresh computers, projectors, and other equipment in classrooms.

Salisbury University, in Maryland, recently unveiled its Teacher Education and Technology Center and Integrated Media Center, home to 143 smart classrooms and 20 videoand audio-editing suites and a high-definition-video recording studio. Educators there plan to rent out time in some of the editing suites to help cover the costs of maintaining the $5.3-million worth of equipment in the 165,000-square-foot building.

Relying on money from the state government is not realistic, says Jerome F. Waldron, Salisbury's chief information officer for information technology. "This building was built by the State of Maryland. In five years the state is not going to come back and say, 'Hey we are really glad you did these nice things, how much do you need to update this technology?'" Mr. Waldron says.

Other ideas to secure money for upgrades are in the works, but may take time to develop, Mr. Waldron says. But because of the pace of changing technology, officials have to act fast.

"Now I look [ahead] about a year and a half because it is changing that quickly," he says. "Every freshman class, at least for the last five years, has raised the bar a little bit further."