Elizabeth Stanwyck is a full-time lecturer of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
The College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences will be piloting a program similar to SCALE-UP called CASTLE (CNMS Active Science Teaching and Learning Environment:
http://www.umbc.edu/cnms/CASTLE.html)
We plan to launch our CNMS Active Science Teaching and Learning Environment (CASTLE) with the beginning of UMBC’s Fall 2010 semester. It has custom-made tables to serve 93 students working in groups of three with one (Dell) computer per group, following the SCALE UP model. (The tables have flip tops for the computer monitors so that they can be closed to create a flat table, which we hope will be good for both security and instructional purposes.) Nine 7′ tables will seat nine students each and two 6′ tables will seat six students each. We were able to incorporate many of the things you suggested, including the document camera, eight 52″ wall-mounted monitors, an upgraded instructor computer with both a 24″ monitor and a StarBoard monitor, a walk-around bluetooth StarBoard controller, teacher microphone/speaker system, and DVD/VCR player.
We are in the process of ordering SchoolVue classroom management software, which has been used successfully in our Chemistry Discovery Center for ~four years. We anticipate that Fall 2010 will be a pilot semester for the classroom and instruction. We are offering CASTLE use to faculty of introductory and other courses in the our College’s teaching departments (physics, mathematics, statistics, biology, and chemistry-POGIL) who plan to use it as a platform for innovative instruction. At the moment, the classroom has been reserved for 41 hours per week for Fall 2010.
Lili Chu is teaching Matter & Interactions physics in a SCALE-UP setting.
See “Better Intro Courses Seen as Key to Reducing Attrition of STEM Majors” on page 306 in the 15 October issue of Science.