Classroom Refresh

It's not hard to design and install a technology-enhanced classroom: a projector, a screen, a few cables and a computer and you have your room. Designing a campus-wide system of technology-enhanced classrooms and keeping them all operating at full capacity every day of the school year with an FTE staff of one – that's the real trick. One element of this elaborate juggling act we call classroom support is preventative replacement, A.K.A.,technology refresh.

Digital projectors have a definitive lifespan. Granted, projector lamps can be replaced indefinitely (though it isn't cheap at nearly $500 a pop), but eventually – and sooner rather than later – that projector is going to stop working altogether. Our projectors aren't abused, but they are used steadily and thoroughly. The projector manufacturers offer a fairly unambiguous clue as to the anticipated lifespan of their projectors – the three-year warranty. It's a consumer truism, but still eerily accurate: with a three-year warranty, you should anticipate problems and failures sometime during year four. And indeed, that's what happened with a recent batch of Proxima DP8200Xs – they were all installed in the summer of 2003 and several of them failed, on cue, in the Spring of 2007. Failures aside, after three years the technology has advanced enough that you probably want to change out your projectors for something brighter, more vivid, and much quieter. The inevitable switch from 4:3 SD to 16:9 HD is another reason to force systematic upgrades.

To that end, we proposed and the administration funded an on-going classroom technology refresh program for the general pool classrooms. We estimated the cost for replacing the projector and the control system (another potential point of failure with a three-year warranty) on a per classroom basis. We then applied those costs to one-third of the technology enabled classrooms, and produced a budget that allows us to refresh the critical technology (projector and control system) in one-third of the rooms every year. So after three years all the rooms will have been refreshed and, much like painting the Huey P. Long Bridge, the process begins again, ad infinitum. No projector or classroom control system will ever be more than three years old, and in fact, at any given time two-thirds will actually be less than two years old.

Why go to such elaborate lengths to keep equipment from failing? Why not just replace each projector as it dies? From a strict budget standpoint, it almost seems to make sense to wait until it's absolutely necessary to install a new unit. In fact, some of our projectors have lasted for well over their three allotted years. But it's borrowed time. Such strategies don't take into account the lost classroom time to the students and to the instructor when a projector fails precisely when someone needs to use it. One projector down for a single day can affect as many as 10 different courses and hundreds of students. Multiply that by days and weeks and see what it gets you. The technology classrooms are in such high demand that they're booked solid from morning to night. Working like a team of trained acrobats, two classroom support people can barely change out a single blown projector lamp during the 10 minute break between classes. Changing the entire projector (which includes a host of recalibration steps) would require much more time and be much more disruptive to inviolable course schedules.

Scheduled replacement also allows for advanced budgeting. I know exactly how much it's going to cost to keep the classrooms operating from year to year. Granted, I still need a general maintenance budget to deal with minor equipment replacements and the occasional, un-timed "major" failure, but those incidents will be much less frequent now. The best strategy is to replace the projectors and control systems during the semester break before they fail. Regular replacement also helps us maintain an efficient store of spare parts. When an installed projector does fail (and despite our best preventative replacement efforts, it will happen on occasion), that projector can only be replaced with the same model. Between the projector mount, the lens throw distance, and the RS232 control programming, only an identical unit can be an effective replacement. Typically, we install a temporary "swing" projector while the problematic unit is returned for repair (under warranty, of course). The three year cycle ensures that we will never need more than three swing projector types on hand – possibly only two. Ditto for the control units. If we do it right, the user should never even notice that anything was ever amiss.

The inaugural classroom refresh project is now underway and should be complete by Friday, July 13. In two more summers we'll have a stable base of classroom hardware and a methodical plan for keeping it that way. Classrooms should be exciting. Classroom technology support should not.