An eClassroom of one’s own

eClassrooms have the potential to be a great tool for student groups. However, due to prohibitively high costs, many clubs on campus have been unable to take advantage of them. The Office of the Registrar, University Events Management, and Columbia University Information Technology should work toward making the eClassrooms less expensive to use so that undergraduates can afford this valuable resource.

CUIT maintains 47 eClassrooms on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. Each contains projectors, DVD and VHS players, and other equipment that can enhance lectures, presentations, and events. The classrooms are mainly intended for academic use, but University affiliates, including student groups, can also rent them for non-academic purposes. Clubs can use them to present slideshows or screen films. However, they must pay $600 to rent such a classroom for half of the day and $1,200 for a full day. CUIT charges a rental fee mainly to cover the additional time required to check and reset every room for the next day’s classes. Unfortunately, few student groups can afford the sum. They face the difficult task of attracting students to their events without the excitement of high-tech presentations.

The University should lower the fee for student groups to rent eClassrooms. While doing so may increase staffing costs for CUIT, Columbia has already invested a great deal of money to create the program in the first place. The high fee discourages students from utilizing the classrooms. For many smaller clubs, the rental fee is greater than their entire budgets for the semester, making the classrooms nearly unaffordable. Newer groups with little or no capital—which could benefit most from using the technology to increase their membership—are unable to use the technology at all.

eClassrooms allows students to engage in campus life in a way never before possible. By lowering the cost of using them, the University can get greatest value out of its investment.