Think back to the first time you ever saw - or heard - a media presentation in school. Chances are that your teacher rolled a film projector or even a film strip projector into the classroom and you saw a science program. Remember Our Mr. Sun or Hemo the Magnificent? Maybe it was a mathematics class on PBS, or even a feature film shown just for fun. Regardless of the topic, if you still remember the experience, it had an impact on you. Today, instructional technology is far more sophisticated than it was when we saw our first media presentations but educators use it for fundamentally the same reason. It engages the student.

Last year, in an effort to improve faculty and student access to state-of-the-art instructional technology and programming, City College began the initial phase of a five-year installation of a Dynacom integrated media delivery system. This fiber-based multimedia system enables instructors to bring relevant information, regardless of format or location, into their classroom. Up to six pieces of analog or digital source hardware can be reserved for each class session. This hardware, located in a control room away from the classroom, is operated by mastering a hand-held remote control device thereby freeing instructors from handling software and operating equipment.

Source voice, video, and data are displayed in each classroom via multisync projectors on large wall screens. Information sources currently available through the system include: Macintosh and Windows computer platforms all with CU-SeeMe and Internet connections providing access to the Web, E-Mail accounts and CUNY+, U-matic and VHS video, slides, 16mm film, television cameras, CD-Interactive, CD-ROM, Audio-CD and laser videodiscs. When installation is complete cable TV, a satellite downlink, CD-Recordable, digital cameras,and connection to CUNY's distance learning network will also be accessible. In other words, this system will provide faculty and students with interactive access to information on demand.

The multimedia classrooms opened for use August 1994. By mid-September, they were completely reserved Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. At the end of the 1994-95 academic year thirteen courses were holding all of their class sessions in the multimedia classrooms and we were turning people away due to lack of space. It is important to note that more than a third of the faculty who reserved these rooms were individuals who had not used instructional technology in their classrooms before. They either thought it was too troublesome and time consuming to set-up equipment or that it was not practical to manipulate and integrate information in a useful, creative manner. The new multimedia system freed them of their technical worries and put control of learning materials back where it belonged: into their hands or their students' hands.

This September, we opened another multimedia classroom which is already seventy percent reserved. Two more lecture halls will be installed by the first of the year. We have had to increase hours of operation to accommodate evening faculty requests.

It is reassuring to watch faculty respond to and utilize the powerful impact of instructional technology on the student.