George Murphy

gmurphy@mtsu.edu

George Murphy

Biology

Master Classroom

Davis Science Building room 130

New Technology

N/A

We propose to convert Davis Science Building room 130 into a master classroom. The room seats 70 students and is the most heavily used DSB room assigned to Biology. Enrollment data show around 1,300 biology students taking classes in this room for Fall, 2002 and Spring 2003 semesters (approximately 3,900 student/hours). Freshman and sophomore classes routinely taught here include BIOL 1030, 1110, 1120, 2010, and 2020. Assigned upper division courses are 4240/5240, 4320/5320, 4250/5250, 4110/6330, and graduate seminars, 6650/6660. At present we have only one master classroom in the building (DSB 100), and have one portable system funded by a previous TAF allocation. As more faculty use "power point" and other technology in their teaching, there is great demand for this technology. Many of our faculty teach several lectures of the same course, but in different buildings/rooms. When rooms lack essential equipment, faculty must prepare two very different types of presentations/materials for the same course. This greatly increases class preparation time, but never shows up on the workload report.