It’s that time of year again – back to school. It’s a new academic year, full of potential and hope and (likely empty) promises of keeping your workspace and book bag clean and organized. But for colleges and universities, it’s an opportunity to showcase the latest and greatest campus technology updates they’ve made to help students succeed and expand their educational horizons. New year, new U(niversity) right?
An emerging trend that many are noticing in the higher education space is the adoption of interactive displays – a technology that is enabling teachers to engage and collaborate with their students in ways they haven’t before. Interactive displays offer an opportunity for students to visualize and comprehend information in a way that’s inherently more aligned with how the human brain processes it.
Learn More About Interactive Displays
Prysm, a display and visual collaboration solutions provider, recently released a case study featuring Michigan State University’s use of their display technology and how it “facilitates leading-edge collaboration and communication – virtual and physical – that makes accessible new areas of research and development for the classroom.” MSU Professor of technology and human learning Dr. Douglas Hartman expounded on several reasons why this technology is so beneficial to the educational environment, one major one being the adjacency of sources on the screen.
“Affordances like ‘adjacency’ enable our research and development team to push the boundaries of teaching and technology in many ways and then examine the impact,” Dr. Hartman explained in the study. “For instance, by displaying versions of the Declaration of Independence side-by-side on Prysm’s large digital canvas, and then asking students to analyze how the versions were edited over time, our team can examine how to better design high-level strategies for analysis and synthesis of important information sources. It may seem like a simple thing, but the simplicity of the digital workplace opens up sophisticated new ways for students to learn what took place during the summer of 1776 when delegates negotiated draft after draft of the document in Philadelphia.”
Beyond the obvious benefits that interactive displays bring to the table for faculty use, this technology makes remote education a more engaging experience. For students studying online, this level of engagement via interactive displays means higher comprehension and a more enjoyable, memorable education as a whole.
Not to mention the fact that university assets like these interactive displays position schools as forward-thinking and ready to invest in aggressively in the education of their faculty and students. Attitudes like that are what attract top educators and students. One might even argue from a bottom line perspective that knowing school budget is being set aside for innovations like interactive displays could drive higher alumni donations.
The world of EdTech is a rapidly changing place and I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing more technologies like interactive displays in our colleges and universities to create a more rewarding educational experience for the students of tomorrow.
Interested in watching the full webcast with Prysm and their partner AVI-SPL about how interactive displays are strengthening collaboration abilities? Click here.
