Upgrading a computer laboratory to enable hybrid teaching

The school of physics traditionally operated a dedicated computer lab with 30 standalone PCs which was utilized by students during dedicated laboratory sessions for computational physics experiments and independent study work outside of those sessions. 

With the conceptual changes to our curriculum to enable a more hybrid work approach, we wanted to test the feasibility of integrating remote working student into the laboratory sessions by interfacing a low cost zoom room solution (Yealink) into the existing projector/speaker hardware. Remote students would then be able to participate with discussions within the room and discuss possible problems with the lectures/tutors and students on-campus.

The specific test case was a self-guided computer lab on differential equations run for a full day each week over 5 weeks (PHY1055 and PHY1054 ). The baseline test was run in Semester 1 2023 prior the installation of the devices and zoom connectivity for remote students was done by a conventional scheduled zoom session form the staffs office PC. The student split between those working remotely and those locally in the PC room was 50:50, with very little utilisation of the conventional zoom support. The SATLE project was seeking to improve on this by having a better integration of remote students into the space.

The SATLE grant provided the funds to test a relatively low cost Zoom-room setup including a camera capable of following a speak and a few wirelessly connected microphones. With some initial delays to be able to integrate this into the DCU IT infrastructure it became apparent that while zoom integration and camera where sufficient, the audio was not good enough for the size of the room. 

Luckily we were able to upscale the solution due to additional funding by Intel. The significant investment we were able to secure allowed us to not only integrate the original device and additional ceiling microphones in this space, but allowed us to fully refurbish the spaces for group work. We also added  a second, similar equipped space allowing for linking both rooms for larger on-campus classes including hybrid activities, lecture recording, and group work. This, while beyond the original scope of the SATLE project, has allowed us to use these spaces also for hybrid seminars and other non computer lab based lectures/labs with much larger class sizes. Overall the added zoom functionality greatly improves all the type of activities we can have in the computer room. 

That being said for the original activity – to integrate remote students into computer lab sessions – the acceptance of the zoom support has not improved and remote students remain non-communicative. We believe this is largely been made redundant with the increased use of AI supporting coding task, which reduced the amount of required support in the first place. With remote work being more and more used asynchronously the key benefit of the zoom room is more the flexibility of the teaching space (recording, live streaming) rather than remote student support we envisioned.

The device purchased from the SATLE fund remains being used in one of our newly configured rooms (N201) and a similar one was purchased for the second (N222). Both have become an integral part of the schools teaching infrastructure way beyond the limited zoom supported computing space and will allow us to much better integrate remote working students in all our teaching activities from the original envisioned live support during computer lab sessions to now streamed and recorded seminars/lectures and hybrid hackathons/workshops.

The full hybrid room conversion we have now in place, suitable for larger spaces requires more significant funds than was provided by the original SATLE seed grant, however for smaller seminar rooms the original solution is adequate and can be productively used.