By Teresa M. Craighead
Professor Roger Trancik's Sibley Hall office is a high-ceilinged affair stacked with eye-catching geometrical models of modern cityscapes. It takes only a brief conversation with the professor of landscape architecture and city and regional planning to discover that these objects are the artifacts of a changing field that now uses computer modeling to design waterfronts, plazas, roadways and all the other elements that define an urban environment.
What is remarkable is not that computer technology has invaded planning, architecture and design, or that Trancik identified this trend and realized his urban design students needed sophisticated computing skills to successfully enter the professional job market. What is remarkable is that his revitalized urban design studio class has, in three short semesters, become almost totally computerized and that his teaching methodology has been transformed in response to the learning opportunities provided by emerging technologies.
In 1994 he set out to educate himself about specialized computer applications and design techniques and to develop a new approach to teaching. He used his sabbatical leave to learn about digital 3D modeling, computer graphics and image manipulation software. "After 27 years of doing it by hand, I had to take the big leap and transform what we used to do manually to embrace emerging digital design technology," Trancik said.
The next step was to find a computerized classroom--a teaching space where he could explain design concepts and demonstrate them via a projected computer image, and where students could immediately practice the demonstrated techniques on their own computers.
The problem was to find enough computers for the 25 students typically in his class.
"Each student has to have his or her own computer," Trancik said, "otherwise the most skilled students take over and other students don't get a chance. The group approach doesn't work in this form of teaching."
Trancik turned to Cornell Information Technologies' Academic Technology Services (ATS) division for help. When he saw the PowerMacs in the Martha Van Rensselaer Instructional Lab, he knew he had found a home for his class. In addition to providing access to the instructional lab, ATS responded to the needs of Trancik and other instructors by hastening the installation of new Zip drives, which permit students to store and transfer large files. A LitePro Digital Projection System, a scheduled replacement for an old black-and-white projector, arrived shortly after Trancik started teaching in the lab. The class uses a lab server as a repository for a shared library of graphic elements representing surface textures, building details and other modeling elements. Graphics, imaging and 3D modeling software also can be accessed by his class in the landscape architecture computer lab when the MVR Lab is closed.
Trancik's personal journey from the conventional to the electronic classroom has made him a champion of instructional technology. We are in the midst of the "transformation from the old school to the new school of working and teaching," Trancik said, and new classrooms need to be designed and equipped so that professors can teach effectively. It is essential, he said, that "each student has his or her own computer, has eye contact with the professor and can see the projected image." Trancik has even discovered that the height of the computer he uses during a teaching session is important. "We are moving toward an entirely new kind of classroom," he declared. (See " Classrooms get technological make over to expand the range of teaching" March 13, 1997, Cornell Chronicle.)
In Trancik's electronic classroom, students spend a few weeks learning the computer tools and skills and the urban design principles they need to create a 3D computerized model of an actual site. Trancik simultaneously lectures and demonstrates via projected computer image while students watch and then practice under his guidance and that of a teaching assistant. Later in the semester, each student develops an individual computer design project for a waterfront site in New York City as part of an outreach program developed with the city's planning office, Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York, and the landscape architecture and city and regional planning departments on campus.
The software takes some of the tedium out of the process, Trancik explained. "You still have to learn the basics of design, and computers will never replace hand-drawing techniques, but they provide us with another set of extremely effective tools for urban planning and design. You can enter the 3D environment you are creating."
At the end of the semester, students give their final computerized presentations to invited guests from campus and New York City. Trancik looks forward to the day when networking, distance learning techniques and videoconferencing will allow students to share these images more readily with collaborators and community groups in New York City and to when his electronic classroom will extend across the state.
For more information about using ATS instructional labs and about instructional technology course support, contact Patrick Graham, instructional support coordinator, pmg1@cornell.edu , 255-9154. Also view the Web site at http://atc.cit.cornell.edu/itsupport/.