Classroom Upgrade Process and Schedule

Instructional Innovation and Technology receives funds in the form of Tech Fee grants to upgrade classroom technology each fiscal year. IIT uses several metrics to determine which classrooms will be targeted for upgrade. These metrics include age of equipment, chronic support issues with equipment, and frequency of use of classroom. In some rare cases classes are chosen for upgrade outside of these criteria due to business needs or initiatives. Below is a description of each metric and some considerations that are important:

1. Age of Equipment: The IIT Learning and Production Environments team keeps a master database of all classroom equipment. As of Spring 2021 IIT is directly responsible for 521 classrooms between the Atlanta and Perimeter College campuses. IIT tries to prioritize equipment that is oldest for upgrade first. However due to logistics of bringing classrooms offline and the scale of upgrade, some rooms may be chosen in a block while some rooms on campus may be highest priority in our next refresh cycle.
2. Support Issues: The IIT Learning and Production Environments team looks at trends of support tickets across all directly supported classrooms. If a room has had an abnormally high amount of emergency support requests or other issues IIT may choose to escalate the upgrade of that room if it is deemed technology in the room is primarily responsible for issues.
3. Classroom Utilization: The IIT Learning and Production Environments team works directly with the University Registrar and Classroom Scheduling team to analyze requests for classrooms, most utilized classrooms sizes, space demand by type, and which spaces the Classroom Scheduling team feels need upgrade.

Using these metrics, the IIT Learning and Production Team meets with campus stakeholders to finalize a plan for upgrade to match each year’s budget. IIT utilizes internal project management resources as well as renovations teams to define a timeline for work, trying as best as possible to minimize the disruption to classes. It is common, however for some classrooms to be unavailable during May or Summer semesters while work is done to improve them.