Prior to Tuesday, the largest classroom psychology Professor Gary Gregarus had ever taught in was Lockett Room 2, which can hold about 375 people.
Now, Gregarus can say he has taught a class of almost 1,000 students.
Tuesday was the first day the University held class in the auditorium of the new Academic Center for Student Athletes, which seats more than 1,000 students.
The new auditorium will host five classes this semester, including geography, psychology, biology, music history and sociology.
Both Bill Wischusen’s Biology 1201 and Gary Gregarus’ Psychology 2000 classes met Tuesday.
With the aid of several teacher’s assistants and a lot of advanced preparation, the first day of classes in the new auditorium went by smoothly and without any major problems, said Joseph Hutchinson, executive director for Centers for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.
Most professors and students also responded positively to the premiere of the new classroom.
“Instead of concerns, I’m concentrating on the good opportunities for us to use the state-of-the-art technology,” Gregarus said. “Yes, there are concerns, but as a counterpart to every concern is an exciting opportunity.”
The University’s largest auditorium features a power outlet, an Ethernet connection and an electronic student response keypad in each seat.
The power outlet and Ethernet connection are designed for laptop use, and the electronic keypad can be used to take attendance, conduct short quizzes and take class polls. The results from the student response system instantly can be accessed and turned into graphs for the professor to display.
The back row of the auditorium currently is missing the electronic keypads, but Hutchinson assures students those soon will be installed.
The enormous screen at the front of the auditorium actually can be split to project three different images. This gives instructors the capability to project lecture notes and visual images simultaneously.
Although it was not used Tuesday, instructors also can use a manual tracking camera at the back of the classroom to project their own image on the screen, giving students an up-close picture of their professor’s face.
Professors wear a wireless microphone to project their voice in the auditorium, and they control the screen with a remote. A touch-screen computer controls the projector.
Gregarus said he thinks the impressive new classroom provides an exciting learning environment for both him and his students.
“I think part of the feeling is the contrast to walking into some classrooms, like in Himes Hall, where it’s dingy, you don’t know if anything is going to work, there are 100 extra desks per room and people are crammed in,” Gregarus said. “I hope that this gives [the students] an extra sense of ownership and involvement in their education.”
Gregarus hopes the new auditorium will add to students’ sense of pride in their campus.
Students in Tuesday’s classes were impressed with the auditorium and its technological capabilities.
“It’s the biggest class I have ever seen,” said Jay Huber, a biological chemistry senior. “It’s more of a textbook type class, definitely not a paper-based class.
Shira Bettis, a pre-veterinarian junior, compared the auditorium size to that of a movie theater. She said she is used to a significantly smaller class size, but was not intimidated by the huge auditorium.
Both Bettis and Mimi Fuselier, a construction management sophomore, said they only had minor problems seeing certain things on the screen from the back of the class.