Lois Brink using the Microsoft Surface Hub to lead a classroom lecture.

In the spring of 2018, the Office of Digital Education (formerly CU Online) worked together with faculty member Lois Brink from the College of Architecture and Planning on a collaborative project to bring online students and face-to-face students together in a single classroom. With all the technology options available, the Microsoft Surface Hub reigned supreme and was selected to be the best tool on the market to make this idea a reality.

The Microsoft Surface Hub (the Hub) is essentially an interactive whiteboard for the modern classroom. The Hub allows users to host video meetings while sharing and collaborating on documents and projects.

The Microsoft Surface Hub in Action

Lois Brink is currently using the Microsoft Surface Hub for her LDAR 6604 & LDAR 6607 Design Studio courses. During these courses, students in Denver collaborated with a studio at Jefferson University in Philadelphia to explore regenerative strategies for the Philadelphia Zoo.

Students working together on the Hub.

Lois recently shared with us some of the wonderful things she is able to do with the Hub. One of the positives of the Hub is that students in the past would typically spend about $200 on printing their final presentations, but now they are able to do their entire presentations on the Hub instead. This ended up being over $6K in savings for  students collectively. Lois is able to mark student work on the Hub as part of a continuous feed. After she is done making edits and changes, she is then able to upload all these notes to Microsoft OneDrive. This process has proven to be very helpful for sharing feedback with students.

Lois went on to describe that the resolution of the screen and the ability to have dual images on the screen make the Hub an excellent visual tool for teaching. Additionally, she stated that she cannot imagine using anything else!

The Office of Digital Education was pleased to partner with Lois on this project. We cannot wait to hear more about how the Microsoft Surface Hub is transforming the classroom experience for future CU Denver students.