Youth is Wasted on Young

It's the first day of school. The butterflies raced around my stomach in wild anticipation. I was used to this feeling. The uncertainty of what lay ahead of me and the excitement that followed. Except the difference between that day and others like it that preceded it, was that I was in front of the class instead of blending into a sea of seats. It was my first semester as a professor of record, and my mixture of nerves and excitement was only increased by my class' location; the newly renovated Young Hall. Radford University spent a whopping $6.5 million to create an innovative learning environment for it's students. Two years of inconvenient construction later, Radford University had a new toy to play with and I was one of the first to lay their hands on it.

I walked into the building and said, "this...is....so...cool." A sleek interior design complete with color coordination between the chairs and the walls greeted me. Along with a gorgeous spiral staircase that led up to the second floor where a "laptop bar" and spacious group work areas were set up. I continued to walk through the building, gawking in admiration. Everything I encountered had a distinct "cool" factor to it.

I walked up to the third floor to my classroom, and noticed how well spaced the hallways were. Usually classrooms are spaced out prison style, where you fit the most rooms into a designated space as possible. But there were only about five or six classrooms on this floor, and next to each classroom was an enclave where a group could meet before class. I continued to be impressed. I then walked into my class room and stood awestruck at the litany of technology that stood before me. Three (count em' THREE) HD TV's, portable whiteboards, a touch screen control panel that switched between multiple displays (computer, TV, document camera, DVD, etc), and coolest of all a touch sensitive SMARTBOARD where you could navigate web pages with the touch of a fingertip. You could even write notes on the SMARTBOARD with a digital pen. My nerdiness was geeking out. "I could take attendance on the SMARTBOARD! I could put quizzes on the document camera! I could use the white boards for group activities! I can watch Judge Judy before class!" All of these ideas of how to utilize these new innovations ran though my head as I set up for class.

I got all my things in order and as students filed in I took stock of the room itself. It finally dawned on me that the room was a claustrophobic's nightmare. It was absolutely tiny. Students were cramped onto both sides four long tables (no desks), and many student's view of the front of the class was almost completely obstructed. The University explains the room size by saying these "non-traditional seating arrangements are designed to facilitate collaborative learning and group work." If by "collaborative learning" and "group work" they meant, "giving students way too easy of a chance to cheat off each other" then they hit the nail right on the head. My colleague Tyler Morris very aptly summed up my feelings on this sudden new revelation, "while [this room] has more gadgets than the Starship Enterprise, it is not much bigger than a broom closet...not gonna work..." Indeed.


I calmed down a little and told myself that the technology in the room would make up for it's small stature. I'd be able to blow students away with this new technology and help them gain retention and understanding of course concepts. One con does not outweigh all the pros, I thought to myself. But as the semester went on the pro column dwindled. My idea of taking attendance on the SMARTBOARD failed miserably. If you touch the board twice with your finger it automatically erases everything on the board. So after the second time 80% of the class signed their name in and someone accidentally hit the board with their finger, I officially squashed the idea. Also the document camera was in an awkward place in the room, which made it very difficult to utilize. And the portable whiteboards were completely unnecessary. Having a student rip out a piece of paper and have the group take notes on that paper basically fulfills the same function. And the three TVs in the room were only there to compensate for the size of the room (this season of Judge Judy was not nearly trashy enough either....). There were students who literally could not see the front of the room from where they were sitting, so they had to have a TV in their line of sight so they'd know what to take notes on. But if you can't see the professor in a PUBLIC SPEAKING class, you're missing a pretty vital aspect of the class. Compensation for an inadequacy is not innovation.

Radford touted Young Hall as "The Future of Instruction and Learning." Apparently in the future, everything is superfluous. Don't get me wrong it's very imaginative and very aesthetically pleasing (like Avatar), but in the end there was not much substance to work with (like Avatar). There is not one useful thing the classrooms in Young Hall allowed me to do that I couldn't have done in the average classroom on campus. There is a big difference between innovation and beautiful imagination; innovation denotes an upgrade in usefulness. I can imagine creating a robotic flying unicorn that sings Age of Aquarius while leaving an exhaust trail that says, "Death to Vampires." But just because it's awesome (...and insanely ridiculous), doesn't make it useful, and therefore doesn't belong under the umbrella of innovation. If you reprogrammed that robotic unicorn with the technology to spot a landmine, send a signal to a command base, and leave an exhaust trail letting soldiers know to stay away from that area; that would be innovation. A key facet of innovation is utility, and Young Hall (even for all it's beauty), severely lacks innovation.