Filled with fine granular rock and mineral particles, sandboxes are a child’s paradise. They foster creativity in a realm of seemingly endless possibilities. The pull is so strong they often attract even the family cat.
Information systems faculty members are working to foster the same creativity and hope to pull more students to a digital sandbox in the Tanner Building Addition. The new network teaching lab allows students to experiment with technology used by leading commercial enterprises without ruining thousands of dollars in equipment.
“The technology in the room is great and the ability to do so much without worrying about breaking anything makes it better,” says Ryan Schuetzler, a master’s of information systems management student. “If you break something, you’re breaking only a temporary machine.”
The network teaching lab is a true techie’s paradise. It helps information systems students learn how to run software in specialized classes like data communications, securities, digital forensics, and business intelligence.
Providing students and faculty with a setup that would not limit their learning and teaching capabilities was the design objective of the high-tech classroom/lab.
“When I came here, I was severely restricted by what I could teach in data communications,” says Craig Lindstrom, information systems professor and network lab manager. “With this setup, each student gets to manage his or her own firewall, networks, and so forth. It opens up the ability to teach whatever you want to teach.”
Lectures and reading assignments play a limited role in an information systems professor’s teaching. “With technology-based classrooms you have to have state-of-the-art computers,” says Marshall Romney, department chair. “You can’t just read about it; you have to do it.”
When the professor needs to lecture, students gather at tables for group collaboration and learning. Later they practice at computer stations set up around the perimeter of the room and watch the instructor’s screen on their own monitors. “The students can have their backs to me and still see what I am doing,” Lindstrom says.
The network teaching lab is also bigger than the computer lab in the basement of the Harold B. Lee Library students once used. But aside from cutting-edge technology, professors and students most appreciate the tranquility. The noisy servers are housed in an adjoining room, making the classroom incredibly quiet, says Brandon Barrick, a former BYU TA who now works for USAA in San Antonio, Texas.
“Everything that is in the backroom now was in our old classroom,” he adds. “I would go hoarse after a review session, trying to yell over the servers.”
But the new equipment isn’t quieting BYU’s place in the market. TechRepublic, a leading technology news organization owned by CBS Interactive, gave BYU’s information systems program a top ten national ranking in 2008.
“We could never be ranked among the top ten programs in the nation without this new space,” Romney says. “We are exceptionally grateful to the Marriott School donors who made this possible.”
The brand-new, world-class network teaching lab is run almost entirely by Lindstrom and part-time TA Schuetzler. But it gives many undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to solve real-world problems on real-world equipment. It’s an amazing, highly technical classroom that prepares BYU students for life after graduation—without burying them in the sand.
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Photograph by Jaren Wilkey/BYU