National University of Singapore – UTown
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Town Green, NUS UTown |
UTown is a new campus for the National
University of Singapore (NUS) and opened it’s doors to Students a the start of
this academic year in August 2011.
It is located close to the NUS main campus,
and although separated by a large trunk road, both campuses are joined via a
vehicle and pedestrian bridge.
UTown has been developed to create a new
educational hub that includes teaching facilities, study facilities and residences,
for both UG and PG students. It is home to a resident population from over 60 countries and is based in some measure on the collegiate
style of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.
Although much accommodation is still under
construction, UTown has already established itself as a lively intellectual,
social and cultural environment that puts excellence in teaching and learning
at its heart.
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View from the Education Resource Centre across the Town Green |
My meeting was scheduled to start at the
Educational Resource Centre, located at the heart of the campus and which is
the place for students to interact, have access to a wide range of technology
including a high level of support in using that technology, and spaces to
collaborate.
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The Education Resource Centre |
The Education Resource Centre (ERC) operates
on a 24/7 basis during term time
It is a completely revolutionary concept
for the University, as all other learning and teaching spaces for students are
held and managed by individual schools and faculties. This is the first opportunity to create a
pool of centrally managed spaces, equipped to a common standard and delivering
new standards of support to the students and staff.
As I arrived quite early for the meeting, I
started to explore and soon found the “Learning
Café” which was open and serving coffee.
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External area of Learning Cafe |
The Learning Café consists of 2 areas, a
large covered external area and a more traditional café with a Starbucks outlet
serving the usual range of drinks and snacks.
Although it was still quite early, a number
of staff and students were using both areas.
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Learning Cafe, view of outlet |
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Learning Cafe |
Although there were some MACs provided in
the space, most people were using their own devices, plenty of power had been
provided for this purpose.
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Power for mobile devices |
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A familiar scenario with floor boxes |
I was
delighted to find that my host is a graduate of Aston University, and knows Birmingham very well.
My host is the Director of the Centre for
Instructional Technology, which includes all aspects of IT Services. The Audio Visual
function is part of the Centre, but is kept as a separate and distinct team,
providing key AV services to the ERC and it’s facilities. We were joined by the AV Manager, (who I
noted has a BA in TV & Film).
The ERC is a really interesting design, and
I found that we were traveling through internal and external spaces almost
seamlessly. Everywhere is covered, to
protect people from the rain, but a room would lead to a balcony and back to a
room again.
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External space |
We started the tour by looking at the Auditorium,
This is a 200 seat lecture theatre which
has been built using recycled wood for the internal walls, the design and construction of UTown has been undertaken to be as environmental friendly as possible as is reported to be the University's "greenest building".
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Lecture theatre with recycled wood for improved sound proofing |
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Power to every seat |
This room has 3 projectors, for dual
projection and for when in use as a theatre for video screening.
The glass writing wall at the front of the
room has an interesting dual purpose,
Two of the panels can slide out of the way
to expose windows which open up the room to the corridor outside.
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Balcony and corridor for functions and events |
However, staff and students find that
even with the lights down, there is too much reflection on the glass to make
them really usable for any length of time, and so a mobile whiteboard has been brought into the
theatre for use as required
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Mobile whiteboard agains detail of wood finish |
The design of the building has had to
accommodate 3 very old trees which were included at the centre of the building,
unfortunately, during construction, one of the trees was then struck by lightening and lost despite
the care taken by the design team.
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Protected trees accommodated in the design |
Surrounding the trees are various areas for
sitting and working
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Granite table and stools with integrated power |
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External Amphitheatre |
The
Study
The wirelessly enabled study consists of a
large number of individual study and research spaces in a quieter environment
than those of the social and collaborative spaces.
This is the final week of examinations for
these students, so we had to make as little noise as possible in this extremely
quiet study room,
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Study carrels |
The study carrels were a very nice design
and not only had plenty of space for students to work with a range of
resources, but had power for devises and individual light switches
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Alternative furniture |
A range of spaces and furniture is
available to suit most student’s needs
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Comfy furniture, not in use at this time, but usually popular |
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View from the study to the learning space outside |
Learning
Corridors
The external spaces are all set up for
social interaction and study and are called “learning corridors”. Their purpose is to ensure that seamless
collaboration can be undertaken anywhere in the ERC with access to power,
wireless network, mobile whiteboards, and in some areas, “quick access “PC’s
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One of the Learning Corridors |
The columns provide both lighting and access to power
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Power embedded in column |
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This space is open on 2 sides, but PCs and printers located here |
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This outside space can be used not only by groups
of students but also by teachers leading classes |
This external classroom also includes a fixed white board for active discussions, and is outside the PC Commons
The
Computing Commons
The Education Resource Centre has two
Computing Commons. One with PC and one
with Macintosh computers, both of which
are all open to NUS Students 24/7.
Each of these spaces has it’s own unique
and distinct designs, both include a range of breakout spaces and study rooms.
PC
Commons
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View from the external classroom |
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PC Commons |
The PC Commons is housed in a very large space with generous space to enable students to reconfigure loose furniture to suit them.
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The equipment in the project rooms include touch screen technology |
Other than the project rooms around the internal edge of the room, there are no permanent partitions to divide the space. Rather, extremely nice and interesting structures have been created to provide semi-private collaborative working spaces.
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Collaborative rooms inside the "Birdcages" |
507 table with whiteboard surface for group
working, not area in centre for pens and board rubber
MAC
Commons
The MAC Commons also combines project rooms, generous spaces to work and movable furniture.
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Three leaf clover shaped tables with 6 MACs with view of the project rooms |
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Range of furniture |
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Mobile equipment for presentation |
Again, a range of collaborative pods have been provided using free standing screens.
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Movable furniture taken to the comfy window seating. Also shows more views of the outside |
In addition to the project rooms and
equipment available for students, there are also Video Conference codecs and
visualisers available for loan from the “XChange”
The XChange is the on site office where NUS
IT Care support is provided for the whole of UTown. The IT Helpdesk is staffed during “normal”
working hours and is located at the entrance of
a suite of facilities to provide students with access to develop their
multimedia and video projects in a professional setting.
The Suite includes a Presentation space
that doubles up as a Video Recording studio and a 45 seat Viewing theatre. It is easily convertible as it has a bank
of retractable seating.
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Retractable seating in the Presentation Room |
The presentation space is supported by an
adjoining Visualisation Suite for audio-video post production and documentation
services.
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Presentation Studio |
For Students who want to prepare for
presentations, do voice overs etc. there are two recording booths equipped with
video, audio and teleprompter recording facilities.
The staff in the XChange provide training
and support to students using the facilities.
Only one picture of the presentation suite
from the web!
Classrooms
There are a number of classrooms located at
the ERC and fall into three main categories:
The
Global Learning Seminar Room: A space we couldn’t enter as it was being
prepared for an examination, but one which has been set up as a highly
interactive room to facilitate lectures not only between the various NUS sites,
but also with other sites overseas. It
is equipped with wireless microphones, mobile furniture and dual projection
systems
The
Active Learning Seminar Room: A technology enhanced
seminar rooms set up to support project and enquiry based group discussion and
class presentations.
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Collaborative Group workstations |
although technology rich, these rooms can also be used without technology.
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The screens are motorised and can be located in the desk when not required |
Staff, located in the centre of the room,
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Teacher located in the centre of the room |
… are
able to take presentations from the group’s LCD screens and display to the rest
of the class o the large projection screen for class discussion
Basic
Seminar Rooms: although described as basic, all of these room have full presention
systems with a PC and data projector The
furniture is movable to allow the staff to change the layouts to suit their
style of teaching, and this alone is new and inovative for teaching at NUS
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Teachers station, not a formal lectern |
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Reconfigurable furniture and a whole wall for writing |
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Other movable furniture, the large LCD screen is provided as a confidence monitor for the teacher. |
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Crestron equipment control |
There are also two “Learning Node Seminar
Room” using the Node chairs from Steelcase (which some of us are now starting
to experiment with)
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Node chairs |
This seating enables the layout to avoid the
ubiquitous column!
These chairs also give staff a range of
options for layouts to suit both teaching and group discussions.
There is just so much to see and talk about
on this new campus, that I can’t cover it all, but there is one last,
innovative feature that I want to share.
Teaching staff at UTown are often moving
between campuses to teach, so in recognition of this, a new “Faculty Lounge”
has been created.
This is a dedicated space for staff to use
between lectures and includes comfortable seating, space to interact with
colleagues, a kitchen and space to use computers.