Bookings for MR028 and Med-Chi Hall
MR028 and Med-Chi Hall - two digitally enhanced rooms
MR028 and the Med-Chi Hall have been redesigned to support active, collaborative and distributed learning as part of the University's strategy to develop its physical spaces to provide an outstanding educational environment.
We've listened to feedback from users and have made some changes to the IT equipment in Med-Chi Hall. Each bay now has a PC, keyboard and mouse for students to share instead of having to connect wirelessly to the screen.
Facilities and capacity of MR028 and Med-Chi Hall
The rooms consist of 6 or 7 bays for team/group learning. Each bay has a 55-inch display screen. The bays in Med-Chi are now equipped with PC, mouse and keyboard to connect to the screen, whilst the MR028 students can wirelessly project their own device's screen onto the display or use one of the room's tablet PCs. In both rooms each bay has localised focussed sound, a web cam and microphone to allow each group to independently web conference with external users and power sockets to charge devices.
The main teaching wall consists of three large interactive touchscreen monitors as well as a lectern which enables the lecturer to control what is shown on the different displays around the room. Optimal placement of speakers, microphones and voice-tracking video cameras enable crisp and clear lecture capture, as well as facilitate video and web conferencing sessions. In addition, the Med-Chi room has 3D capability in the room.
The capacity of MR028 is 49 students/participants in groups (7 bays, 7 chairs per bay) with an additional 15 stackable chairs. The capacity of Med-Chi is 42 students/participants in groups (6 bays, 7 chairs per bay) with an additional stackable chairs.
Room Bookings
Prioritisation Guidelines
In the following guidelines the following terms are used, and are therefore defined below for clarity:
- Occasional - 1 or 2 sessions
- Recurrent - 3 or more sessions
- Distributed (with an equivalent setup) - scenarios involving students/participants on campus and at a distance. Those at a distance are located in rooms at other institutions with an equivalent setup to MR028 and the Med-Chi Hall.
- Distributed - scenarios involving students/participants on campus and at a distance. Those at a distance can be located anywhere as long as they have access to the internet.
Priority will be given to courses that will use the room:
- On an occasional or recurrent basis to support distributed (with an equivalent setup) and digitally-based team/group learning (highest priority).
- On a recurrent basis to support distributed and digitally-based team/group learning
- On a recurrent basis to support digitally-based team/group learning
- On an occasional basis to support distributed and digitally-based team/group learning
- On an occasional basis to support digitally-based team/group learning
- For distributed learning/video conferencing that does not involve digitally-based team/group learning
- For team/group learning that is not dependent on the technologies in the room (lowest priority)
- For any other booking requests that do not fall into the above
Within the above hierarchy priority will be given to courses that wish to embed the pedagogies that the room supports throughout their course and thus require regular use of the room (once a week or fortnightly use throughout the course), as well as use the room to their maximum capacity (49 students in MR028 and 35 students in Med-Chi Hall, or combined use of the rooms providing a capacity of 84. This is on-campus physical capacity. If students/participants are at a distance, there is no limit to other than the teaching staff required to manage the activities within the sessions or the capacity of the room, if a room with an equivalent setup to MR028 and Med-Chi Hall is being used.
Terms and conditions associated with booking these rooms
Staff using the rooms will agree to:
- Their use of the room being evaluated, involving contributing to focus group sessions, surveys etc
- Contributing to awareness-raising activities associated with the rooms, including speaking to other staff about their use of the rooms, contributing to case studies, promoting the design of digitally enhanced courses etc
If it transpires that some staff are not using the rooms for the purposes that they were designed for, then any requests that these staff make for these spaces will be given the lowest priority at the time when room bookings requests are reviewed for the following academic year.
Process
The two digitally enhanced learning spaces are given the specific room classification of 'DELS' in the University's central timetabling software CMIS. This will ensure the spaces are not booked as part of the process for allocating rooms suitable for teaching events such as tutorials/seminars. School administrators will be informed about the use of the rooms, the process for booking them and the terms and conditions. The central timetabling team will highlight the above when they contact Schools for their requests for teaching spaces for the forthcoming academic year. Schools will need to specifically request the use of these rooms as part of their request for teaching spaces. Competing bookings within Schools will be dealt with at School level. If there are competing bookings between Schools then CAD will consult the Deans for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Taught Studies (to be confirmed).
The advantages of managing the room bookings centrally ensures it is part of standard practice for teaching spaces, MyTimetable displays the appropriate location of teaching sessions to students, and there is transparency for all involved. The central timetabling team can provide reports on room usage which will inform support and the staff/courses that will be part of a CAD-led evaluation.
Med-Chi Hall
The central timetabling team will manage bookings for Med-Chi Hall during core teaching hours, which are Monday to Friday 08.00 hours to 18.00 hours. If there are undergraduate or postgraduate taught teaching sessions that require the room outwith these hours then these will also be managed by the central timetabling team, who will have these added to the Suttie booking system.
Information on bookings will be visible to the Suttie Centre Booking System, in order to enable the Suttie Centre to manage bookings for NHS Grampians users, the Med-Chi Society, and other non-core users. All bookings in core hours made in this way will be added to CMIS via a request from Suttie Centre staff. Bookings set up via the Suttie Centre Booking System will then appear in CMIS and vice-versa during core hours.
For the purposes of the Suttie Centre Room Booking system, priority levels 1, 2 and 3 can request bookings within any timeframe, priority levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 can request bookings within a 90 day window, and priority level 8 can request bookings within a 28 day window.
Core activities (undergraduate and postgraduate taught teaching) take priority at all times, including evening and weekends. In the case of Med-Chi Hall, the Med-Chi Society have priority for evening bookings unless there is a core activity taking place in the evening.
For NHS bookings—once you have received confirmation please visit the Suttie Centre Reception the day before your booking. You will be issued with a username and password to be able to log onto the computer in the room. You will also receive a Trustcard which will allow you to access the MedChi Main Hall from the Car Park in front of the building. After your booking please return the Trustcard to the Suttie Centre reception.