Here at Royal Roads University we’ve been simultaneously pursuing opportunities and dealing with challenges. Like many universities, RRU is dealing with low enrollment numbers while at the same time completing a new campus in Langford and developing plans for a donated property on Salt Spring Island. At the same time we’ve been refining our ed tech and learning design platforms and processes to support the University’s Learning Teaching and Research Model.
We continue to use Moodle, locally hosted in several unique installations, as our primary learning management system. WordPress maintains a key function as a platform for student portfolios, some course content, and as the Swiss Army Knife of DIY web publishing. We transitioned from Collaborate to Zoom and continued with Kaltura into the Canadian cloud iteration.
A major upgrade on campus is the development of six hybrid capable classrooms. These rooms have been upgraded with remotely operated cameras at the front and back of the room, ceiling arrays of microphones, all controlled via a Crestron platform at the classroom podium. These rooms can capture near-perfect audio in the classroom (students and instructors) for the online attendees. The video cameras have three presets, and they also allow remote direction and zoom from the podium. Hybrid capable classrooms have been important for some blended programs that wanted to offer an online synchronous option for residencies, and for on-campus instructors that discovered half their class was down with Covid. A faculty and staff workshop on using the hybrid classrooms has been developed and programs are considering how hybrid synchronous learning can become a planned component.
A big change coming for Royal Roads University is the opening next year of the Langford campus building which will be shared with our partners the University of Victoria and Camosun College, along with tenants the Justice Institute of BC and School District 22. This five story building will have learning spaces custom built for each institution right in Downtown Langford. Classrooms in the Langford building will be hybrid capable.
The most recent destination on a tour of RRU campuses is the recently donated property on Salt Spring Island. The largest gift every provided to Royal Roads, this property from the Bloom Canadian Alter Ego Trust, includes orchards, gardens and a unique waterfront house. Programming for this property is still being conceptualized.
